Again and again, Mia and Kai are asked whether their mothers are really their mothers. Kai’s mother is black, her father is white. With Mia, it’s the other way around. The two are annoyed. Together they think about what they can do to avoid being subjected to the exhausting questioning and come up with an original idea.
Henriette Barkow’s book vividly recounts how two children of color navigate everyday situations in which they are denied a family context by the racializing practices of their environment.
Thats’s my mum is an empowering book for Black children, children of color, and their families: by taking action, Mia and Kai succeed in effectively counteracting racist justification pressure for themselves.
The narrative is written in English and Urdu languages.
Henriette Barkow/Derek Brazell 2001: That’s My Mum. London: Mantra Lingua.