Arundhati Roy, Mother Mary Comes to Me

Abstract

Arundhati Roy’s Mother Mary Comes to Me (2025) is a deeply layered memoir of her mother, Mary Roy, a renowned educator, activist, and uncompromising feminist voice. Written in the aftermath of Mary Roy’s death in 2022, the text resists the conventional portrayal of the mother as purely nurturing and compassionate, instead presenting a figure marked by paradox and defiance. The memoir unfolds through a series of juxtapositions: love and estrangement, success and failure, insider and outsider, revealing the tensions that shaped their bond. At once personal and political, the book testifies to Roy’s own trajectory as writer-activist while foregrounding the enduring relevance of her mother’s grit as her strength in life. This review critically engages with Roy’s reframing of motherhood, her articulation of the personal as political, and the text’s broader resonances for gender studies and creative writing.