Mothersalt

by Mia Ayumi Malhotra

Drawing from the sticky, milk-drenched reality of childbirth and pregnancy, Mothersalt explores the intimacies and bewilderment of early motherhood, illuminating the myriad ways in which the self, reconstituted through birth, can emerge into powerful, lyrical new forms of existence.

With haunting precision, Mothersalt explores the ways in which the lyric self is split apart and stitched back together through the experience of pregnancy and early motherhood. Interspersed with tender addresses to a child in utero, Mothersalt recounts the fraught disorientation of giving birth in America, where birthing bodies are not always recognized as empowered agents of their own story. Through the failures and reversals of the self struggling to reclaim her experience of childbirth, Mothersalt asserts a powerful new narrative of what is possible, not only in the birthing room, but in all forms of human relation.

At its heart, this is a book about resilience, healing, and joy, and the sustaining life that emerges from practices of embodied care. Through fragmentary forms inspired by Sei Shōnagon’s pillow book and the miscellany prose diaries of medieval Japan, Mothersalt brings careful, devoted attention to the labor involved in bearing and caring for young children, transforming the dimensions of the everyday and revealing its ephemeral beauty.

Genres: Poetry

100 pages, Paperback

Published May 13, 2025

About the author

Mia Ayumi Malhotra is a Kundiman Fellow, and her poems have appeared in Greensboro Review, Drunken Boat, Best New Poets, and DISMANTLE: An Anthology of Writing from the VONA/Voices Writing Workshop. She received her MFA from the University of Washington and is a founding editor of Lantern Review. Isako Isako is her first book and will be published in September 2018 by Alice James Books. Currently, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two daughters.

Reviews

[Dana]

i love a light read but i had very high expectations for the content to be ambitious or groundbreaking and it really shied away from i think having something novel to say

[Daisy]

Birth and motherhood upended everything and fractured my sense of self as a constant, whole entity. Doubled and broke me open and split me into two selves and then gave selfhood to one and wrenched that self away.


As someone who does not currently have children, sometimes it is easy to forget how literal parents are being when they say that their children are little parts of them. And it sounds terrifying but kind of incredible to let a part of yourself loose into the world and learn to let go of the illusion of control.

[Connie · Rating 5 out of 5]

from "Mothersalt": "I reek with wanting. Like yours, mine is a cavern of need."

[Kayla · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book so much. And there is so much to love: the use of refrains (I hope this is the correct term) as titles, the exploration of the body as itself and in relation to what it does/can do, how the speaker transforms from child becoming woman becoming mother, and how beautiful it is to experience seeing the self through how our child sees us. It deserves all the dang stars. I tabbed so many pages. Collections regarding motherhood/parenting/birth experiences are so important and I’m so glad that more are being published.