Jessamine Chan writes dystopian literary fiction about motherhood, surveillance and institutions that turn care into something measurable and punishable. The School for Good Mothers follows Frida, whose single lapse in judgement leads authorities to remove her young daughter and send her to a residential programme where women are trained and assessed as mothers under constant observation. Robotic children, behavioural scoring and bureaucratic language make the system feel both speculative and disturbingly close to existing social services. Chan’s novel is controlled, dark and emotionally claustrophobic, with the pressure coming less from one villain than from rules designed to define acceptable motherhood. The School for Good Mothers is most useful to readers seeking feminist dystopia in which surveillance and bureaucratic assessment are applied to parenting rather than work or politics. Read more Less
No products in the cart.