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How to Be Unmothered: A Trinidadian Memoir
Mapping the fault lines between mother and child (humanity's first and supposedly strongest bond), and with a poet's homeric vision of her native Trinidad, Camille U. Adams weaves the Caribbean island's history of colonial violence with her own family's legacy of abandonment.
For generations, the women of Camille U. Adams' family have left their daughters. Some follow the siren call of rum, the centuries-old vice which alighted on Trinidad's shores from European ships. Others flee the behind-closed-doors beatings of husbands, fathers, and brothers, rushing into any arms that offer refuge. Some simply disappear, their passage marked by unkept promises and open wounds.
As a young girl, Adams finds solace in Trinidad's whispering fever grass, sweet ixora flowers, and the cradling branches of the rose mango tree—all of their roots connecting her to the land's long memory. But where flora gives way to the rank pavement of Covigne Road, gunshots echo and men amass in the doorways of derelict garages, their mouths and hands promising violation. Home offers no just an explosive father, cowed sisters, and a mother whose only reprieve is control. Cloying, suffocating, the maternal embrace threatens to blot out all else. Is it better to be choked, or not to be held at all?
Tormented by her mother's presence and haunted by her absence, Camille U. Adams' dazzling debut is a breathtaking account of survival and self-determination, reimagining the meaning of escape, its cost, and what comes after.
For generations, the women of Camille U. Adams' family have left their daughters. Some follow the siren call of rum, the centuries-old vice which alighted on Trinidad's shores from European ships. Others flee the behind-closed-doors beatings of husbands, fathers, and brothers, rushing into any arms that offer refuge. Some simply disappear, their passage marked by unkept promises and open wounds.
As a young girl, Adams finds solace in Trinidad's whispering fever grass, sweet ixora flowers, and the cradling branches of the rose mango tree—all of their roots connecting her to the land's long memory. But where flora gives way to the rank pavement of Covigne Road, gunshots echo and men amass in the doorways of derelict garages, their mouths and hands promising violation. Home offers no just an explosive father, cowed sisters, and a mother whose only reprieve is control. Cloying, suffocating, the maternal embrace threatens to blot out all else. Is it better to be choked, or not to be held at all?
Tormented by her mother's presence and haunted by her absence, Camille U. Adams' dazzling debut is a breathtaking account of survival and self-determination, reimagining the meaning of escape, its cost, and what comes after.
273 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 19, 2025
10 people are currently reading
348 people want to read
About the author
Camille U. Adams
2 books61 followersCamille U. Adams, Ph.D. is a Trinidadian memoirist, poet, nature writer. She has received several Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations. Camille has also been awarded a variety of writing fellowships that supported her work and granted her a vital writing community. Having served as a Tin House juried reader and as an editor for literary magazines has allowed Camille to give back to the writing community. Currently, Camille teaches English and is hard at work on book two.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
November 2, 2025
A brave memoir by Adams exploring Trinidad and Tobago’s history and her family’s legacy of leaving and how it impacts the next generation
Camille Adam’s debut memoir explores her family life and what is was like to be unmothered. It is a deeply personal memoir that highlights the author’s relationship with her mother. I do enjoy memoirs written by Caribbean authors on topics that are considered “taboo” and this was executed in an excellent manner.
Camille Adam’s debut memoir explores her family life and what is was like to be unmothered. It is a deeply personal memoir that highlights the author’s relationship with her mother. I do enjoy memoirs written by Caribbean authors on topics that are considered “taboo” and this was executed in an excellent manner.
September 4, 2025
This book is brilliant...if I do say so myself. And I do :-)
You should read it and discover that what I say is true.
You should read it and discover that what I say is true.
September 23, 2025
Wow. Where do I begin??
This was such a moving, poignant, thoughtful, explorative piece of work. I might be biased as the oldest daughter of a Caribbean woman who abandoned me just like her mother did to her…and her mothers mother did before, but this was probably the best work I’ve read this year. Why aren’t more people talking about it?? This book is part of the starter pack for beginning the journey of understanding a parent who is incapable of caring for anyone else because of their own trauma, narcissism, unfulfilled dreams, you name it. Not only was it moving, but the storytelling, the prose, the descriptions were incredible. Easily one of my next rereads.
This was such a moving, poignant, thoughtful, explorative piece of work. I might be biased as the oldest daughter of a Caribbean woman who abandoned me just like her mother did to her…and her mothers mother did before, but this was probably the best work I’ve read this year. Why aren’t more people talking about it?? This book is part of the starter pack for beginning the journey of understanding a parent who is incapable of caring for anyone else because of their own trauma, narcissism, unfulfilled dreams, you name it. Not only was it moving, but the storytelling, the prose, the descriptions were incredible. Easily one of my next rereads.
November 8, 2025
I don’t think I’ve ever read anything quite like Camille U. Adams’s prose poetry memoir. Lots of books are called poetic, or lyrical; but when you read *How to be Unmothered*, you’ll find out how completely it redefines those terms.
This is a story of a mother and her daughter: how she abandoned her child, not once but countless times, both physically and emotionally—and in all of the ways that matter. It’s the story of broken families and evil and still somehow absent fathers, of abuse and trauma echoing across generations. It’s the story, too, of how family members gang up against their weakest even as they protect those who cause the most harm. It’s the searing indictment of a wounded child.
The style that Adams has chosen to write in is striking for how much it occludes as it reveals: This is not a direct assault on her mother, and it aches with a daughter’s need to tell her own story without humiliating her mother or airing the family’s dirty laundry. And yet the daughter is compelled to speak, her anger palpable. And speak she does, in words full of rhythm and pain.
A bruise and a wound. Read with care—both for the author and yourself if these things may trigger your own memories of hurt. I have been throughly mothered, and my heart aches for Adams… But reader, she does not need my pity. It’s clear by the end of this book that she has found her way, and that she stands strong and tall, defiantly alive, still here. In a recollection so painful, it feels like this is what matters; that in the end, this is what counts.
Thank you to Restless Books for an e-galley in exchange for a review.
This is a story of a mother and her daughter: how she abandoned her child, not once but countless times, both physically and emotionally—and in all of the ways that matter. It’s the story of broken families and evil and still somehow absent fathers, of abuse and trauma echoing across generations. It’s the story, too, of how family members gang up against their weakest even as they protect those who cause the most harm. It’s the searing indictment of a wounded child.
The style that Adams has chosen to write in is striking for how much it occludes as it reveals: This is not a direct assault on her mother, and it aches with a daughter’s need to tell her own story without humiliating her mother or airing the family’s dirty laundry. And yet the daughter is compelled to speak, her anger palpable. And speak she does, in words full of rhythm and pain.
A bruise and a wound. Read with care—both for the author and yourself if these things may trigger your own memories of hurt. I have been throughly mothered, and my heart aches for Adams… But reader, she does not need my pity. It’s clear by the end of this book that she has found her way, and that she stands strong and tall, defiantly alive, still here. In a recollection so painful, it feels like this is what matters; that in the end, this is what counts.
Thank you to Restless Books for an e-galley in exchange for a review.
November 13, 2025
WHEW. I don’t think I’ve consumed something this heavy in I don’t even know how long. I listened to this as an audiobook and the richness in Camille’s voice is earth shaking. Camille narrates her own story of her life growing up in Trinidad. I hope I don’t speak out of turn to say that her accent is so pronounced, I think it is patois. -I know not all Caribbean’s speak patois.
Listening/Reading this book is such a loud reminder that we as people need to know other people’s stories. Camille’s story had to be told. There were parts of this book where I just wanted to pause it and not finish it because there was so heavy trigger points. But I’m so glad I pushed through.
Camille and her sisters had a mother that left her abusing husband to live in New York and left the children to stay with the abusive father.
This story speaks on themes such as family violence, alcohol abuse, incest, with the co sign by the Christian church.
Camille and her siblings only even knew wickedness from her parents. And the family on Camille’s father’s side supported the system that harms children.
Camille left us with a cliffhanger at the end, but I believe the audience comes to feel pride -in mammoth proportion- for the choice of freedom.
Listening/Reading this book is such a loud reminder that we as people need to know other people’s stories. Camille’s story had to be told. There were parts of this book where I just wanted to pause it and not finish it because there was so heavy trigger points. But I’m so glad I pushed through.
Camille and her sisters had a mother that left her abusing husband to live in New York and left the children to stay with the abusive father.
This story speaks on themes such as family violence, alcohol abuse, incest, with the co sign by the Christian church.
Camille and her siblings only even knew wickedness from her parents. And the family on Camille’s father’s side supported the system that harms children.
Camille left us with a cliffhanger at the end, but I believe the audience comes to feel pride -in mammoth proportion- for the choice of freedom.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 3, 2025
This book blew me away - to write of the harrowing events of a traumatic childhood from a lens of power and knowledge is already a feat; to do so in magnetic, rhythmic prose that sweeps you up and doesn't put you back down until the very end is a triumph. I've never read a book like this, and I will avidly read all that Camille U. Adams writes from now on.
November 21, 2025
I found myself having a lot of sympathy for Smiley, the author Camille Adams mother, the one she is allegedly unmothering from, which I don't think the author intended. But it's hard not to have sympathy for a woman who is in an abusive relationship, even if she herself is highly abusive to her daughters. In some ways Adams explores this, as she looks at the generations of women in her family who left their daughters, but so much of this focuses on her very visceral pain of being left behind and betrayed by her mother. I do understand, and I agree that what she went through was terrible, but I still felt just as bad for Smiley as I did for Camille Adams. What a horrible situation to be in, to have to choose between your own safety and your children.
I wish the book had talked more about the connection to trees, and I wish I had more of a sense of Trinidad as a country. I thought I would hear more about the culture and the people, but most of what is talked about is the author's family, and all their connections to each other. The author implies a lot of incest but to me it just read as a family living for generations in the same small community. Not as shocking as it was made out to be. The thing I did like about the book was the language. Similar to the book I read earlier this year that was set in Jamaica, My Own Dear People, this book is written in a pidgin/patois language that lets you hear how the people of the author's community talk to each other. As someone who doesn't speak that way, I didn't catch every word, but I got the gist. It took me a little while to get into the author's voice, but once I did, I tore through this book.
I wish the book had talked more about the connection to trees, and I wish I had more of a sense of Trinidad as a country. I thought I would hear more about the culture and the people, but most of what is talked about is the author's family, and all their connections to each other. The author implies a lot of incest but to me it just read as a family living for generations in the same small community. Not as shocking as it was made out to be. The thing I did like about the book was the language. Similar to the book I read earlier this year that was set in Jamaica, My Own Dear People, this book is written in a pidgin/patois language that lets you hear how the people of the author's community talk to each other. As someone who doesn't speak that way, I didn't catch every word, but I got the gist. It took me a little while to get into the author's voice, but once I did, I tore through this book.
November 21, 2025
Did some advertising work for this book through Restless and was so excited to get my hands on it when it came out - and WOW. This book was so, SO beautifully written, prose bordering on poetry with the detailed and rhythmical way the words were transformed on the page. This was contrasted by the rawness and horror of the story being told, which made the reading experience all the more outstanding and unbelievable. Wow, wow, wow, wow, WOW, what a debut!!!
December 12, 2025
In my quest to read the wonderful books I picked up at the Miami Book Fair, I've just finished How to Be Unmothered: A Trinidadian Memoir by Camille U. Adams, and it is nothing short of breathtaking.
From the first page, Adams draws you into a Trinidad that is as lush and tender as it is bruised by violence, abandonment, and longing. Her prose is poetic, sometimes whispering, sometimes singing, charmed by the unmistakable cadence of Trinidadian speech, which gives the narrative a musicality all its own.
Adams is a gifted storyteller. Her humor, sentiment, and raw honesty ooze off the page. You don’t just read her words, you hear them.
Through Camille’s eyes, we move from the protective hush of fever grass and rose mango branches to the danger lurking along Covigne Road, and finally into a home where love and threat intertwine. Her rendering of these spaces, physical, emotional, and ancestral, is both poetic and precise.
The women in her lineage vanish in different ways, and yet the novel insists on the power of survival, the possibility of choosing one’s own escape, and the complicated aftermath of that choice.
Adams’s writing is mesmerizing, her storytelling instinct undeniable. This debut is not only a testament to resilience but also a celebration of voice, Trinidadian, feminine, and fiercely original. It lingers long after the final page, echoing like a memory you’re certain you lived through yourself.
From the first page, Adams draws you into a Trinidad that is as lush and tender as it is bruised by violence, abandonment, and longing. Her prose is poetic, sometimes whispering, sometimes singing, charmed by the unmistakable cadence of Trinidadian speech, which gives the narrative a musicality all its own.
Adams is a gifted storyteller. Her humor, sentiment, and raw honesty ooze off the page. You don’t just read her words, you hear them.
Through Camille’s eyes, we move from the protective hush of fever grass and rose mango branches to the danger lurking along Covigne Road, and finally into a home where love and threat intertwine. Her rendering of these spaces, physical, emotional, and ancestral, is both poetic and precise.
The women in her lineage vanish in different ways, and yet the novel insists on the power of survival, the possibility of choosing one’s own escape, and the complicated aftermath of that choice.
Adams’s writing is mesmerizing, her storytelling instinct undeniable. This debut is not only a testament to resilience but also a celebration of voice, Trinidadian, feminine, and fiercely original. It lingers long after the final page, echoing like a memory you’re certain you lived through yourself.
October 7, 2025
Camille wrote a devastating, beautiful memoir where the words sings off the pages. There is a cadence to her prose in a way only poets truly possessed. This memoir strikes a personal chord in a way I haven’t felt in years. Time legitimately stood still as I read this in two sittings at the breach. No spoiler, but I couldn’t go into the ocean when reading this gem. This is the first Trinidadian author who I read and simply adored from the first chapter. How to be Unmothered came highly recommended by writing mentor, Jaquira Diaz. I wholeheartedly recommend this rising star and look forward to more of Camille’s work in the future. Team memoir 💫 🌻
November 30, 2025
What a gorgeous book! The lush poetic language throughout this memoir propels the reader eagerly through each page, the rhythm and rhyme of Adams’s narrative voice furthering the power of her message of resilience. Her eventual independence is hard fought, and she doesn’t shy away from difficult self-reflection nor from explorations of betrayal from the adults she should have been able to trust. She strikes the ideal balance of adult wisdom reflecting on childhood naïveté. This vulnerability and candor have the reader rooting for her — and learning from her — all the way through.
March 19, 2026
So glad I attended an Authors Guild event to be introduced to Camille U. Adams' work. Poetic and heartbreaking, powerful and layered with the personal and the collective historic; this book is testimony to those who build new chapters for themselves after the weight of family scripts. Wonderful for those reflecting on first-born daughter identities, generational "curse breakers", Caribbean and diasporic narratives, motherhood and navigating male violence and control.
December 12, 2025
The Homer-like poetry it's written in was so fun that I got the audiobook so I could hear the author read it aloud. Painful subject matter written in a very beautiful way.
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January 7, 2026I reviewed this book for the Pittsburgh Review of Books https://pghrev.com/mothers-and-daught...
February 4, 2026
What a beautifully written memoir. The prose is melodic and descriptive. It is such an engaging format for such a heavy story.
March 8, 2026
I wish more people were talking about this book- 3.5
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews