A powerful new voice, telling the American story through three generations of Black mothers.

"The Waterbearers is one of the most beautiful and truthful books I’ve ever read." —Imani Perry, National Book Award-winning author of South to America

“An epic love song and remarkable ballad of generations.” —Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams

Sasha Bonét grew up in 1990s Houston, worlds removed from the Louisiana cotton plantation that raised her grandmother, Betty Jean, and the Texas bayous that shaped Sasha’s mother, Connie. And though each generation did better, materially, than the last, all of them carried the complex legacy of Black American motherhood with its origins in slavery. All of them knew that the hands used to comb and braid hair, shell pecans, and massage weary muscles were the very hands used to whip children into submission.