You are receiving this review of "My Mother and Me."  in response to your request made over at "ProseChef: Gourmet Reviews" , the place to receive honest, insightful, and constructive feedback! While my goal is to help improve your piece of writing, please take into consideration that my thoughts and suggestions are merely a reflection of my individual reading experience; feel free to implement any suggestions you find helpful when and where you're inspired to do so. Thank you for this opportunity to give you my suggestions and feedback.

With disclaimers aside, sit back and unfold a napkin onto your lap. Your work is on the menu, so let’s dig in! Together we will find the recipe to success!




First, I want to reiterate my sincere appreciation for making a review request, especially for this piece. I don't often get to review pieces of non-fiction so it was a nice break from my normal reading habits. Biographical pieces of work are always special to read because they're a small glimpse into something that exists in reality—there are no dragons or magic to explain away things and there are no bullet-dodging heroes to save the world here! A personal piece like this comes with the natural benefit of assumed authenticity which makes the writing really impactful because there's emotion within and behind every sentence; these aren't mere lines of prose, they're someone's actual lived experiences.

I found this piece of writing to have a powerful theme: an exploration of the relationship—or really, lack thereof—you had with your mother. It's heartbreaking to read of the non-existence of such an important relationship. The bond between mother and child is one that, to most people, is one of the most important they will ever have. The traditional maternal essence of nurture, care, love, safety, empathy, compassion, etc. doesn't appear to have been present in your relationship and that's such a tragedy and injustice. But you've persevered and that says so much about your character and strength.

Through exploration of your mother's past traumas, you've come to a realization that your mother's lack of a traditional role in your life may have been a defense mechanism. Her hardened shell was in response to former transgressions. She may have lacked the capacity to be a mother figure because she was denied the opportunity to ever let her walls down due to the abuse she suffered. She couldn't open herself up and allow herself to be vulnerable because she had learned those things always resulted in pain.

You have a very emotionally heavy theme and the framework is certainly in place. I have some suggestions to tighten up the prose to really capture this glimpse into your upbringing.

My first suggestive edit is to clean up your title. It's the first thing a potential reader will comes across and first impressions are everything. A title acts as a doorway to your piece. If the doorway scares away a reader, then it stays shut. Likewise, if a title comes across as sloppy, mismanaged, or contains errors, a reader is far less likely to read the work. They'll assume if there wasn't care put into the title, they can expect even less care was put into the main body of the piece. You've got an important and self-reflective experience that deserves to be read and shared. You're currently doing a disservice to yourself, your experience, and the opportunity to share it with a wider audience.

You current title is My mother and me. If you wanted to go the grammatically correct route, it should read My Mother and I. Notice I also capitalized each of the "important" words. Most style guides direct writers to capitalize nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs, and the first word and the last word in a title (regardless of the word's part of speech). Because that's the standard in publishing, not adhering to that rule makes a title come across as amateur, unsophisticated, and an indication that the level of writing within the piece is probably low-quality. Proper capitalization in your title will negates all of those assumptions.

You may choose to keep the grammatically incorrect form of the title for stylistic purposes, but I'd still suggest at least using proper capitalization: My Mother and Me.


Section Rating: 3






My mother died in 2000.
This isn't the first line of your piece. But it should be! This line is where your narrative actually starts. Everything else stems from it: your reflections on her past, her traumas, your upbringing, and your estranged relationship with her. By starting with your mother's death, it offers a fast and logical progression for the rest of the piece. After we lose someone, we tend to reflect and analyze our relationship with them and sift through memories. And that's essentially what you're doing in this piece. You don't have to throw out anything before this line because there's still ways in which to incorporate that information later on in the piece. Also, by starting with her death you're already letting your readers know that no matter what they're about to read, there's no more time to fix the issue. It's done. And now the only thing that can be done is your own healing by trying to find closure through understanding and forgiveness. And that's a nice way to pull on the heartstrings of your readers as they try to place themselves in your shoes. That's a powerful vehicle to transport your readers.

As a general comment for this section, there seems to be overall lack of organization to the piece. It's kind of like reading someone's thoughts that are all over the place. Focus on one set of thoughts, let the reader explore and experience them, and then progress. For instance, you mention your father's actions and abuse toward your mother then bounce around to another topic and then revisit your father's abuse again a couple times later on. I'd suggest to fully explore your father's abuse and it's implications and then move on to the next item. If you give this piece proper structure, it'll come across as more coherent and palatable for readers.

Begin with your mother's death. Then discuss her childhood—her father's controlling behavior, her time in a Japanese prison camp, her immigration to the Netherlands, the death of her brother. Then move on to her relationship and marriage with your father and the abuse she suffered with him. I would suggest adding in some specifics about this abuse. It's one thing to tell your readers that your dad was emotionally abusive, but it's more impactful for them to experience a particular instance of that abuse. Next, I'd suggest you discuss your relationship with your mom. Again, explore a few instances where she failed to live up to her role or a few instances where you needed her to be your mother and she wasn't available or willing to perform the role/function. Then, to wrap everything up, revisit your mother's death and her apology to you. Put an emphasis on how you've come to realize that your estranged relationship with your mother is because of her trauma and learned helplessness. Explain how you've managed to cope with that realization and where you are on your journey toward peace, closure, grief, and forgiveness.

By structuring your exploration of thought and memory with your mother in thematically-contained sections as I've suggested above, it'll be easier for a reader to consume and understand the narrative.

There a few instances where your sentences seem to get lengthy. Non-fiction essays, because of their natural emotional underpinning, are often victims of word explosion—i.e. rants, tangents, unfocused trains of thought. Reign them in and tighten them up to maintain the serious tone of the piece. Instead of a comma, try using a period. It cuts off the thought and can used to heighten emotional response to what's being read by guiding how it's read.


Section Rating: 2





As I suggested above, I think you've got an opportunity to expand on your framework. Rather than tell your readers about your mother's past, her traumas, and her experiences, show them. Let us follow your mother through her time in a Japanese Prison Camp. Let us see how her father was controlling. Let us see her go through the trauma of losing her brother and moving across the world to the Netherlands. Let us see the overbearing nature of your father and his emotional and physical abuse. As it reads now, this piece comes across more as a greatest hits playlist/recap of your mother's traumas rather than an exploration and analysis of them. By exploring these stories through actual occurrences, your readers will be better engaged and care more because of it. The actual occurrences you reference don't have to be lengthy in nature, but should be more than the fleeting sentence you're currently relying upon.

Section Rating: 2.5





The pacing and voice of the piece were muddled because of the lack of structure. The stream of thoughts wandered back and forth across time without any sense of reason. I'd suggest following a linear path to makes things easier to read. We can see how your mother developed into the woman she became one story laid upon another until they add up to your estrangement with her as your mother. It just seemed like whatever memory entered your stream of consciousness at the time of writing made it onto the page. Carefully edit and move your lines of prose around to provide clarity and directionality. Each step on the path should move toward the purpose of the essay. Even though this is non-fiction, we still want to treat the real life events just as we would a plot: it needs structure for the piece to be effective in its aim and presentation.

Section Rating: 3





I'd like to see more instances of your mother laid out for us. Show us who she was. She was more than a response to her trauma. Let us explore her through her life experiences and events in her life shaped her into the woman that was incapable of showing love and affection toward you.

Section Rating: 3





This rating is a reflection of careful and thoughtful analysis. I divided my commentary and suggestions into focused, individualized sections. Each section was rated on a scale of 1-5 dependent on criteria (shown in the link below) specific to that section. At the very end, the average of all sections was calculated. That average became my overall rating for the piece.

I don't particularly enjoy giving a piece of writing a rating because it feels like grading. And most writing in our community are works in progress and I don't like to assign "grades" to unfinished projects. However, when required to give a rating with a review, I believe my approach in calculating that overall rating is balanced and fair.

For a breakdown of my rating methodology, please see: "You Gave Me How Many Stars?" 

The score from all sections was 13.5. This equates to an average of 2.7 per section which I will round up to a 3.

You responded to this review 07/10/2023 @ 2:36pm EDT

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