The Cracks We Bear 🤱🏽

By Catalina Infante Beovic.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Motherhood is terrifying. For Laura, holding her newborn daughter brings not joy, but fear and then a wave of anger towards her own late mother for not being there.

At first, The Cracks We Bear feels like a story about new motherhood, but it soon becomes an intimate exploration of memory, grief, and generational trauma.

Laura reflects on her childhood in Chile, born in exile to staunchly communist parents and returning with her mother after the collapse of the Pinochet dictatorship. Growing up in a fledgling democracy, politics is ever-present, and so too is the complexity of family relationships. Her memories, captured in short, honest vignettes, are pieced together like a reconstructed vase, cracks and all.

The book explores the idea that we never fully know our mothers, not the woman who existed before she became a mother, nor the one shaped by motherhood itself. Infante also examines the unique bond between mother and daughter, moving between Laura’s memories of her own mother and her present experiences with her newborn.

Thematically rich, it covers feminism, mourning, misunderstanding, exile, politics, family distance, and the unspoken silences that shape us.

The tone is poetic and deeply personal, making it feel as though we are peering into an open wound. At just over 100 pages, it is a short read but one that carries weight, managing to convey the emotional push and pull between mother and daughter with striking intimacy.

I felt I got to know Laura quickly, her disappointments, frustrations, and hopes to break the cycle of unresolved family tensions. Men do not feature well here, but this allows space for the mother-daughter narrative to stand firmly in the foreground.

While I think the story could have been explored in greater depth, its brevity works. It is a quiet reflection on valuing our parents and having the courage to ask for their stories before it is too late.

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