Elissa Altman in conversation with Joanna Rakoff at Brookline Booksmith

How can a mother and daughter who love (but don’t always like) each other coexist without driving each other crazy? It’s the universal question that has defined mothers and daughters from Demeter and Persephone to Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher. Motherland is a story that touches every home and every life, mapping the ferocity of maternal love, moral obligation, the choices women make about motherhood, and the possibility of healing.

Elissa Altman is the critically acclaimed author of Poor Man’s Feast: A Love Story of Comfort, Desire, and the Art of Simple Cooking and the James Beard Award–winning blog of the same name and Treyf: My Life as an Unorthodox Outlaw. Her work has appeared in O: The Oprah Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The New York Times, Tin House, The Rumpus, Dame Magazine, LitHub, Saveur, and The Washington Post, where her column, “Feeding My Mother,” ran for a year. Her work has been anthologized in Best Food Writing six times.