Daughter of Mother-of-Pearl
A work of boldness and excellence, Mandy-Suzanne Wong’s essay collection is an act of adoration for the ocean and all marine life.
The collection centers on invertebrate species, including jellyfish, snails, and mollusks. It muses on their experiences, investigates their nature, and contemplates humanity’s relationship to the ocean. Humans, whom the collection refers to as giants, monsters, and “terrestrial primates,” are chastised for polluting the seas with microplastics and “incarcerating” sea life in the name of science.
Pulling from research, poetry, fiction, and personal experience, from government reports and contemporary scholarship to the works of Michel de Montaigne and Fyodor Dostoevsky, the collection pushes the boundaries of the essay as a literary form. It contemplates the limitations of the genre and experiments with the form itself. Several essays are written from the points-of-view of sea creatures with anthropomorphized perspectives. “Digressions” is composed of overlong sentences, some over a page in length; “fragment / lamen – tations” is written in two columns, one of which offers a timeline of events related to the culture pearl industry, and the other of which shares creative narratives regarding pearls.
The prose is stylized, too, if sometimes overreliant on adverbs. Herein, an abalone reflects upon its existence “with gastropodan pedantry, molluscan meticulousness, a snail’s ponderous compulsion to hold on”; elsewhere, the book muses on “My insensitivity, how my humanity so thoughtlessly and strictly limited and calibrated my perceptions.” The collage artwork and photographs are less compelling, though, as with a photograph of a shell imprinted with the word “Why.”
Daughter of Mother-of-Pearl is a striking, evocative essay collection about the epic beauty and vulnerability of ocean life.
Reviewed by
Hannah Pearson
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
