Winner of the 2022 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for
Life Writing
Growing up in the Delta town of Yazoo City, Mississippi, Teresa Nicholas
believed that she and her country-born and -bred mother weren't close.
She knew little of her mother's early life as a sharecropper during the
Great Depression, but whenever she brought up the subject, her taciturn
mother would snap, "You ask too many questions, young'un."
Nicholas left Mississippi to attend college, then settled in New York to
work in the hard-driving world of commercial book publishing.
Twenty-five years later, eager for a change, she and her husband decided
to shift careers to writing, trading their home in the New York suburbs
for a casita in the Mexican Highlands. But as her mother's health
deteriorated, Nicholas found herself spending more time in the small
town she thought she had left behind. Over long afternoons in front of
Turner Classic Movies, she grew closer to her mother, coaxing stories
from her about her hardscrabble past--until a major stroke threatened to
silence her mother's newfound voice.
Torn between her new home in Mexico and her old home in Mississippi,
Nicholas struggled to find her place in the world. She discovered that
the past isn't always the way we remember it, and as the years ticked
by, that she and her mother could grow closer still. The Mama
Chronicles: A Memoir is a funny and poignant account of a
mother-daughter relationship and, ultimately, a meditation on acceptance
and what it means to call a place home.
