“You can’t hug a porcupine. Not even over the phone.” — Arundhati Roy on her mother, Mary Roy
On September 2, 2025, Booker Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy released her memoir Mother Mary Come To Me. Published by Penguin Hamish Hamilton, this 374-page book marks her first full-length personal work after decades of novels and political essays.
This is more than childhood recollection. It is a literary reckoning with her turbulent bond with her mother, Mary Roy — a pioneering educator and women’s rights activist. Love, rage, admiration, and pain mingle in clear, unsparing prose that resists neat answers.
✍️ Arundhati Roy: A Literary Voice of Our Time
Arundhati Roy reached global fame in 1997 with The God of Small Things, which won the Man Booker Prize. She later wrote forceful political essays that challenged war, inequality, and state power.
This memoir turns inward. While earlier books confronted public power, Mother Mary Come To Me studies power inside a family. The private life that shaped her voice as writer and activist now takes center stage.
Think of Arundhati Roy as someone who spent decades writing about injustice in the world. Now, for the first time, she turns the lens on her own home — examining how the woman who raised her was both her greatest teacher and her deepest source of pain.
👩🏫 Who Was Mary Roy? Mother, Reformer, Force of Nature
Mary Roy founded Pallikoodam, a progressive school in Kottayam, Kerala. She won a landmark Supreme Court case in 1986 that secured equal inheritance rights for Syrian Christian women — a decision that transformed property law for Christian women across India.
The memoir shows more than the public reformer. Mary appears mercurial, brilliant, and often cruel. Roy recalls an attempted abortion, verbal attacks, and a home ruled by fear. Yet Mary also opened doors to great books and demanded high standards — a mix that forged a fierce intellect.
Can a person be both a feminist icon and a cruel parent? The memoir forces us to hold these contradictions together — acknowledging Mary Roy’s historic contributions while not erasing the private harm she caused.
| Aspect | Mary Roy’s Public Legacy | Private Reality (per Memoir) |
|---|---|---|
| Education | Founded Pallikoodam school | Demanded impossibly high standards |
| Legal Reform | Won 1986 SC inheritance case | Home ruled by fear and volatility |
| Feminism | Champion of women’s rights | Verbal cruelty toward daughter |
| Intellect | Brilliant reformer | Opened doors to great literature |
🌑 Childhood Shadows: Painful Memories Revisited
Roy recounts stark scenes from childhood. She describes being pushed out of cars, ordered to leave home, and slapped after showing a scarred stomach. These details reveal a life shaped by volatility and dread.
Hard years bred resilience. Roy became her mother’s “valiant organ child,” alert to severe asthma and constant demands. The trauma cut deep — and it later fed the toughness and imagination that mark her art.
Key Paradox: The book refuses simple judgment. Mary is both tormentor and teacher, cruel and inspiring. Roy captures this with: “You can’t hug a porcupine. Not even over the phone.”
⚖️ Between Fear and Admiration
The book refuses simple judgment. Mary is tormentor and teacher. She is both cruel and inspiring. Roy sums it up: “You can’t hug a porcupine. Not even over the phone.”
That paradox fits many family ties. Admiration and resentment can live side by side. Such conflict can mold a creative mind and a political stance.
📖 Writing as Survival: Style and Structure
Roy frames the memoir as a novel and asks readers to read it as fiction. The prose is lyrical, fragmented at points, and deeply personal. Form follows memory — scenes loop, layer, and return.
A section titled The God of Small Things shows her writing the first novel amid inner turmoil. Craft and private life move together, step for step.
Don’t confuse: This is NOT a sequel to The God of Small Things (1997). While both deal with family and Kerala, the memoir is non-fiction (framed as fiction) about Roy’s actual relationship with her mother. The novel was fiction inspired by her life.
💔 The Role of Grief in Storytelling
Mary Roy died on September 1, 2022. The loss jolted Arundhati Roy. Years of conflict did not blunt the mourning.
Grief pushed her toward buried rooms of memory. The book becomes an act of survival. Roy faces the pain and resists clean judgment. She seeks truth and keeps the contradictions in view.
⚖️ Mary Roy’s Feminist Legacy in Context
The memoir reminds readers of Mary Roy’s lasting public impact:
- 1986 Supreme Court Victory: Mary Roy vs. State of Kerala changed inheritance rights for Syrian Christian women, allowing them equal share with male heirs
- Pallikoodam School: Built a progressive education institution in Kottayam, Kerala
- Women’s Rights Advocacy: Became a symbol of feminist reform in India
Roy places that legacy next to private cruelty. Historic heroes can be harsh at home. Legacies often knot together courage and harm — a truth the memoir refuses to simplify.
🌍 The Political and the Personal
Roy’s work often blends personal and political threads. Her essays expose injustice. Her fiction shows how systems reach into intimate lives.
This book continues that line. Childhood battles with authority and survival trained her for larger fights on the page. Home served as her first classroom on power.
The year 2025 features many literary memoirs, including Jeet Thayil’s Elsewhereans. Thayil looks outward, like a traveler. Roy writes raw confession. Her book sits closer to works that embrace discomfort, such as Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Kiese Laymon’s Heavy.
🌍 Why This Book Resonates Today
The memoir resonates on multiple fronts:
- Literary: Shows how memoir can read like a novel, blurring fiction and non-fiction
- Cultural: Reopens debate on Mary Roy’s feminist record alongside her flaws
- Social: Speaks to readers with difficult family histories, challenging easy comfort
- Political: Links private oppression to public resistance — central to Roy’s work
Family holds strong cultural power in India and often gets idealized. Roy writes openly about abuse, ambivalence, and unresolved grief. She shows how love and pain can share the same room.
The book places Indian writing inside a wider conversation about women’s voices, truth-telling, and memory’s politics. It aligns with confessional works like Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Kiese Laymon’s Heavy — books that ask readers to face pain without seeking tidy closure.
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Mother Mary Come To Me was released on September 2, 2025 — exactly 3 years after Mary Roy’s death on September 1, 2022.
Mary Roy won a landmark Supreme Court case in 1986 (Mary Roy vs. State of Kerala) that secured equal inheritance rights for Syrian Christian women.
Arundhati Roy won the Man Booker Prize in 1997 for The God of Small Things.
Mary Roy founded Pallikoodam, a progressive school in Kottayam, Kerala.
The memoir is published by Penguin Hamish Hamilton.
