I am scared of using Em dashes — because of you know who

Emily Dickinson, Woolf, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Plath — they’re probably laughing at us from their graves.

Hello my loves,

I hope you’re all headed into the best kind of weekend — because good rest and a beautiful book can soothe any soul. I hope you’re ready for that.

I like a good literary fiction story when I’m feeling lost in life, when I want to connect with a character who's also taking things one step at a time. Probably a female character — always.

So, I picked up Like Being Alive Twice by Dharini Bhaskar. I had already loved her other book, These, Our Bodies, Possessed by Life. If I remember right, it followed three generations of women — and I loved how she wove them together. I read it at a time when I was at crossroads with my mother, and my grandmother was still alive. Her words really hit home back then.

Like Being Alive Twice also explores a mother-daughter relationship — something I deeply crave. My relationship with my mother is always a little edgy. Over time, I’ve learned to walk around it, even gone out of my way to empathize with her otherness and embrace it. We still have paths to unravel. And I’ve been slowly finding guides in books, movies, and series — helping me make peace with the fact that motherhood isn’t about sainthood.

That’s why I especially love the mother-daughter dynamics in This Is Us — Kate and Rebecca, Beth and Carol, Beth and her daughters, Deja and her birth mother. It’s never a straight line. It’s always complicated. Always layered.

In this book too, Dharini writes about the MC’s mother — her character, her choices in a dystopian world — and how the MC processes it all. It’s coming back to me in bits and pieces. My mother is nothing like hers — but you know, it’s not about the characters. It’s about how they make you feel.

Also — Dharini uses a lot of em dashes — unapologetically — in every paragraph, in nearly every sentence. It made me laugh. It felt so rebellious.

The other day at work, I was helping someone rewrite a paragraph she pulled from AI. She was terrified of em dashes — adamant about removing every single one.

Emily Dickinson, Woolf, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Plath — they’re probably laughing at us from their graves. I use em dashes so much in my writing. It helps me build sentences that feel cohesive without being perfectly cohesive.

Emily Dickinson

“Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.”

Virginia Woolf

“She felt somehow very like him—the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away.”
(Mrs. Dalloway)

William Faulkner

“They will have to feed me and dress me and bathe me like they do the others—I never promised them anything.”
(The Sound and the Fury)

Like a handyman digging a hole: it’s not just the spade that matters — it’s the moisture of the sand, his strength, the depth he needs to reach.

Em dashes are a tool. But sometimes — on the hard days — they’re also a weapon. You use them to keep writing when you can’t quite find the right word. When your thoughts refuse to sit neatly beside each other — the em dash builds a bridge. You hope your reader picks it up like Lego blocks, and builds something of their own.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

“So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.”
He did not know that it was already behind him—just a step behind, all the time.”
(The Great Gatsby)

Sylvia Plath

“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead—
I lift my lids and all is born again.”
(Mad Girl’s Love Song)

I’m not really scared of em dashes.
I’m scared of the AI that thinks it can take over writers.
And in some ways — it is.
And that — is terrifying.

Ciao,

Fathima

P.S. What’s your go-to comfort book when life feels murky? And how do you feel about em dashes — friend, foe, or frenemy?
Hit reply or message me. I’d love to know.

P.P.S. If you're looking for another mother-daughter story, Everything Everywhere All At Once (the film) still lives rent-free in my mind.

Here are some more recommendations for you

Books

1. The Joy Luck Club – Amy Tan
   Eight women. Four mothers. Four daughters. Stories that drift between China and America, between silence and unspoken love.

2. Little Fires Everywhere – Celeste Ng
   Some mothers are born, others are made — and this book explores what happens when two families collide, led by two very different women.

3. Beloved – Toni Morrison
   A haunting story about a mother’s love that crosses timelines, memory, and even death. Intense and unforgettable.

4. The Far Field – Madhuri Vijay
   A woman searching for her dead mother’s past in Kashmir — what she finds instead is a mirror to her own grief.

5. Everything I Never Told You – Celeste Ng
   What we inherit is not just love or DNA — it’s silence too. This one unfolds like a slow ache.

6. Pachinko – Min Jin Lee
   Spanning generations of Korean women, this is an epic tale of survival, sacrifice, and the quiet strength of mothers.

7. A Thousand Acres – Jane Smiley
   A modern retelling of King Lear, but make it Midwest farmland and sisterhood. Dark, rich, and devastating.

8. The Days of Abandonment – Elena Ferrante
   What happens when motherhood and identity begin to blur? This one is raw, angry, and beautifully honest.

9. Girl, Woman, Other – Bernardine Evaristo
   Twelve lives — interconnected by race, gender, and generations. Not strictly about mothers and daughters, but soaked in feminine energy.

10. Burnt Sugar – Avni Doshi
    A daughter caring for a mother with memory loss — and all the bitterness that rises to the surface.

Movies

1. Lady Bird
   An angsty teenager. A tough mom. Two strong women who love each other — loudly, painfully, deeply.

2. Everything Everywhere All At Once
   Motherhood in a multiverse — chaotic, weird, but shockingly tender. A story about love hiding beneath all the noise.

3. Terms of Endearment
   Old-school Hollywood tearjerker. You’ll cry, laugh, then cry again.

4. The Lost Daughter
   Unflinching portrayal of a woman’s complicated relationship with motherhood. It won’t comfort you — but it will see you.

5. Turning Red
   Teenage hormones, intergenerational trauma, and giant red pandas. Surprisingly nuanced and joyful.

6. Steel Magnolias
   Friendship, mother-daughter love, and southern charm. Heartbreaking and life-affirming.

7. Divines
   Two girls on the margins of Paris — gritty, electric, and tragic.

8. The Farewell
   A Chinese-American woman visits her dying grandmother under false pretences. Funny, soulful, and full of familial ache.

9. August: Osage County
   Family dinner, but make it emotionally explosive. Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts deliver rage and grief in spades.

10. Toni Erdmann
    A father trying to reconnect with his daughter using absurd humour — and it works in the weirdest, most moving way.

Series

1. This Is Us
   No notes. You already know. Kate and Rebecca will ruin you — in the best way.

2. Maid
   An exhausted young mother escaping abuse while trying to build a better life. Brutal, beautiful, and inspiring.

3. Ginny & Georgia
   Messy teen drama meets complex motherhood. Think “Gilmore Girls” but darker and edgier.

4. The Letdown
   The postpartum reality no one tells you about — honest, awkward, and funny.

5. Big Little Lies
   Glamorous on the outside, deeply fractured inside. Every woman here is dealing with something beneath the surface.

6. Anne with an E
   A found family, a bold girl, and tender moments between mother figures and the orphan heart.

7. Sharp Objects
   Psychological thriller where the real horror lies in the mother-daughter dynamic.

8. Better Things
   Single mom of three daughters, working actress, fierce and flawed. It’s everyday life, but with poetry.

9. Gilmore Girls
   Talk fast, feel hard. Lorelai and Rory’s relationship is iconic for a reason — even if it’s romanticized.

10. Unorthodox
    A woman escapes an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. A story about finding your voice, despite everything.