Book of the Week | ‘Motherland’ by Milouska Meulens

Book of Week 14

This week I read the impressive story of Milouska Meulens, who looks back on her turbulent youth in a moving way.

When her father died on Ascension Day 2017, Milouska Meulens fell into depression. In the following years, her second marriage failed and she lost her job. When the pandemic hits, she decides to leave her children with their father and go to her mother. She can’t anymore.

She can hide with her mother, without shame for the Great Failure. Her mother, who carries an unforgiving past. Her mother, from whom she learned to grow up. “Never let them see your pain, Uka,” she would say, “then they can’t beat you.” Her mother, who had stayed when her father abandoned the family and returned to Curaçao. Her mother, who is really able to care for her child for the first time.

Many will know Milouska Meulens as the presenter of the Youth News for which they worked for years. She already has a number of beautiful children’s novels to her name and Motherland is her debut in adult literature.

From her mother’s hospital bed, Milouska looks back on her life. The fragments from the eyes of little Milouska are sad, who often freezes in the face of a threatening event. The older Milouska looks back on this with shame and judges herself harshly, while she was just a young girl who had to grow up far too young in a harsh world. Uprooting is a major theme in the book. If your parents and ancestors do not feel at home in the country they live in, are you able to feel at home in the country where you grow up? The conversations Milouska has with her mother about the past are intriguing to read.

Despite everything that happened to her mother, she did not become bitter. She believes that Milouska should put the past to rest and forgive people. She says the following to her daughter about this: ‘If I can forgive your father for what he did, I can also forgive my mother. And if I can forgive her and him, then surely you can too? Forgiveness, like love, knows no condition or limit, Uka’. Like Milouska, I don’t know whether I agree with this statement. However, it is a nice goal. Motherland is a beautiful book that moves you from beginning to end.

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Motherland is written by Milouska Meulens
Published at Meulenhoff publishers
Lisa Phase is a bookseller at Linnaeus BookstoreMiddenweg 29