It took Michele Filgate over a decade to articulate the essay that generated her new anthology collection What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About: 15 Writers Break the Silence. The topic of that essay was her stepfather’s sexual abuse, but what Filgate actually wanted to capture was how that experience altered her relationship with her mother. No single anthology could encompass every variation of the relationship between mother and child, but What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About covers a multitude of permutations. The frank and intimate essays follow through on the book’s promise to combat the cultural myth of the ideal mother, the mold of which all human moms—no matter how competent, patient, and loving—must inevitably break. by Sophie Ouellette-Howitz