Daughter of Mother-of-Pearl

by Mandy-Suzanne Wong, Yuka Igarashi (Editor)

Mollusks’ innermost selves are absolute secrets because, not only do they hide in shells or distant habitats, but also that’s just how it is with innermost selves.

Daughter of Mother-of-Pearl collects Mandy-Suzanne Wong’s reminiscences, dreams, investigations, and experiments in being with small invertebrates whose vulnerability and creativity inspire radical reimaginings of Earthlinghood. In graceful linked essays, Wong What constitutes a self if a starfish can twist off one of his arms to explore the seafloor on its own? What is an animate being, considering a living snail is also an inanimate shell? What does love mean to a jellyfish, or time to an octopus? Her encounters with nonhuman animals reshape her language into different forms from collage to fragments, and prompt uncommon engagements with various texts. She looks behind words like “invasive” and “endling” in scientific articles and in poetry, questions natural selection with a bubble-rafting snail, sees the bivalve in Dostoevsky, and studies a speculative treatise about a “vampire squid from hell.”

Personal yet de-personal, at once tender and challenging, Wong’s essays invite humans to rethink our relationship to other beings. Instead of capturing and destroying them, using them as resources or reflections of ourselves, she asks us only to coexist with them—to cherish them although, and because, we cannot fully know them.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Environment, Science, Nature

168 pages, Paperback

Published February 17, 2026

About the author

Mandy-Suzanne Wong writes fiction, essays, and poetry. She is the author of The Box, a novel, shortlisted for the US/Canada Republic of Consciousness Prize; the novel Drafts of a Suicide Note, a Foreword INDIES finalist; the essay collections Daughter of Mother-of-Pearl and Listen, we all bleed; two award-winning chapbooks, Awabi and Artificial Wilderness; and the exhibition catalogue Animals Across Discipline, Time, and Space. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, her work appears in Adroit, Black Warrior Review, Cincinnati Review, Cleveland Review of Books, Literary Hub, Longreads, and Orion, and she is a regular contributor to Asymptote. She also collaborates with DULSE in literary experiments. Her next novel, The Quiet Upwelling, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press.

Reviews

[Janina]

2.75 stars. Ah I really thought I'd love this but maybe it wasn't the right time. I love watching nature documentaries so this spoke to me from the get-go. My favorite essays were: Daughter-of-Mother-of-Pearl; Polyvitality; Digressions and fragmen / lamen- tations. The rest just didn't catch me enough. I liked the included artwork, though.

[Mikaela Fitzpatrick]

This is the most beautifully written and profound book I’ve read in my lifetime

[emma rowan]

prolly more like 3.75; why’d it take me so long to read?! but it’s also an essay collection that is refusing to be an essay collection the whole time, whose thesis doesn’t get exactly clarified until the second to last piece—and i know this is contrary to that but i would’ve like to see more of bermuda where she grew up—gonna be thinking about janthina janthina for a long time though
favorites: digressions, a foot on the sky, the one and the many, how to love a jellyfish, and mollusks mirrors and dreams

[Audrey]

A beautiful ode to the mollusks and other sea creatures and just letting them be and to be in unobtrusive in observations. This was just lovely and made me think about snails in a whole different way.

I received an arc from the publisher but all opinions are my own.

[Annie Tate Cockrum]

Animal writing that reads more as poetic (sometimes philosophical) than scientific. This sort of writing is very much my thing. At times it reminded me a lot of Sound of a Wild Snail Eating and Raising Hare but with a bit more of a Thaila Field vibe to it. Mandy-Suzanne Wong writes beautifully about non human beings in relation to us (humans) but also in relation to their own environments and ecosystems. Daughter of Mother-of-Pearl is unique and beautiful and special and I'm so glad to have read an advanced copy. It comes out on February 17th, 2026.

"It is my opinion that, during every moment, even the most fleeting chance encounter, in which an Earthling has the privilege of sharing life with someone of another species, what ought to matter is being comfortable in each other's company...being sensitive to cues which might indicates those conditions...Regardless of what remains unclear between you."

[Sharon Torres]

Mandy-Suzanne Wong has crafted something truly extraordinary with Daughter of Mother-of-Pearl. This collection of essays is not merely a book about invertebrates; it is a radical philosophical reimagining of what it means to coexist with the nonhuman world. Wong’s prose is breathtakingly innovative, shifting between collage, fragments, and dreamlike meditations that perfectly mirror the elusive, secretive lives of her subjects. She challenges our most basic assumptions about selfhood, time, and love by asking us to consider the starfish, the snail, and the octopus on their own terms. This is a work of immense tenderness and intellectual courage, one that lingers in the mind long after the final page. It is a captivating, necessary read that will fundamentally change how you see the world and our place within it. Absolutely mesmerizing.

[Jared Kolok]

Not all of these essays worked for me, but I think that's kind of the point? Wong sets about reimagining, inventing even, the internal worlds of mollusks. In her penultimate essay her thesis is brought forward pointedly. My boredom, disinterest, or misreading of the essays that didn't quite work for me suddenly came into sharp focus and contextualized the entire collection anew. I think its place as the second to last essay makes for a better, more exploratory collection. I wanted to like it more than I did but I am satisfied by Wong's inventive probing into the nature and personality of life.

[Emily Torres]

Reading this felt like watching a nature documentary. Some essays were stronger than others, but ones like A Foot on the Sky, Daughter of Mother of Pearl, and How to Love a Jellyfish were beautiful and solidified this as a 4 for me.

[Sonja Swift]

I love this book for how it shifted my perception in dynamic and empathetic ways. Indeed also for its resonance and oceanic depth. I will return to these essays - they are that poignant.

[Ashur]

I think this is one of those books that is going to stay with me, probably permanently.

[Venneh]

Picked this up from the library bc the cover intrigued me. I got a great essay collection that balanced neat formatting and stylistic choices with information about sea animals and alternative forms of intelligence and cognition. If you liked that documentary about the octopus, you'll love this book.

[Nicole Perkins]

Thank you NetGalley and Graywolf Press for the ARC of Mandy-Suzanne Wong's incredible book "Daughter of Mother-of-Pearl;" it is very much appreciated!
This collection of beautiful thought-provoking essays brought to mind the work of Diane Ackerman and Aimee Nezhukumatathil; it shows Mandy-Suzanne Wong to be a writer of seep spirituality with her creative roots firmly planted in the soul of nature. Wong's writing is deeply moving; she encourages readers to read with their hearts, engaging the spirit as well as the mind. I kept pausing to reread paragraphs and found myself wishing I had a physical copy so I could highlight and annotate.
When I finished the ARC, I ordered a paperback copy of this outstanding book so I can read it again, and because I want to have a copy to hold, to flip open at random and read the words of wisdom or inspiration or the question about life that presents itself. This collection is more than just essays about animal life and nature. It is about what it means to be human and the definition of humanity in relation to the creatures that people this world.