Finalist for the 2023 Southern Book Prize
A Black mother bumps up against the limits of everything she thought she
believed--about science and medicine, about motherhood, and about her
faith--in search of the truth about her son.
One morning, Tophs, Taylor Harris's round-cheeked, lively
twenty-two-month-old, wakes up listless, only lifting his head to gulp
down water. She rushes Tophs to the doctor, ignoring the part of
herself, trained by years of therapy for generalized anxiety disorder,
that tries to whisper that she's overreacting. But at the hospital, her
maternal instincts are confirmed: something is wrong with her boy, and
Taylor's life will never be the same.
With every question the doctors answer about Tophs's increasingly
troubling symptoms, more arise, and Taylor dives into the search for a
diagnosis. She spends countless hours trying to navigate health and
education systems that can be hostile to Black mothers and children; at
night she googles, prays, and interrogates her every action.
Some days, her sweet, charismatic boy seems just fine; others, he
struggles to answer simple questions. A long-awaited appointment with a
geneticist ultimately reveals nothing about what's causing Tophs's drops
in blood sugar, his processing delays--but it does reveal something
unexpected about Taylor's own health. What if her son's challenges have
saved her life?
This Boy We Made is a stirring and radiantly written examination of
the bond between mother and child, full of hard-won insights about
fighting for and finding meaning when nothing goes as expected.
