This Boy We Made: A Memoir of Motherhood, Genetics, and Facing the Unknown

Books

Winner of the Clara Johnson Award Hurston Wright Legacy Award Nominee Finalist for the Library of Virginia's Literary Awards Finalist for the 2023 Southern Book Prize A Black mother bumps up against the limits of everything she thought she believed-about science and medicine, about motherhood, and about her faith-in search of the truth about her son. One morning, Tophs, Taylor Harris's round-cheeked, lively twenty-two-month-old, wakes up listless, only lifting his head to gulp down water. She rushes Tophs to the doctor, ignoring the part of herself, trained by years of therapy for generalized anxiety disorder, that tries to whisper that she's overreacting. But at the hospital, her maternal instincts are confirmed: something is wrong with her boy, and Taylor's life will never be the same. With every question the doctors answer about Tophs's increasingly troubling symptoms, more arise, and Taylor dives into the search for a diagnosis. She spends countless hours trying to navigate health and education ...