The School For Good Mothers & A CASE FOR Dystopian Fiction
Need a new book for the new year? I just finished a debut novel that blew my mind – The School for Good Mothers, by Jessamine Chan. It’s from 2022 (I’m behind on my reading list, okay!), but here’s the great thing about dystopian fiction: it’s ageless. I found a lot of comfort reading it specifically as we transitioned from 2024 into 2025, a new year that started with two terrorist attacks and devastating wildfires. The world seems to get stranger and scarier all the time, and novels that lean into that are vital in helping us better understand the world around us. In general, the dystopian genre gets a bad rap, labeled as depressing or bleak – however, at its heart, all dystopian fiction is deeply humanistic, and The School for Good Mothers is the perfect example of that.
The first element in any dystopian story is a deep examination of our societal systems, the invisible network of political, cultural, economic, and social forces that bind our reality, usually blown out for thematic effect. In The School for Good Mothers, Chan makes the invisible visible by painting a near-future world in which the belief that mothers must be perfect becomes enshrined into law. We follow Frida, a divorced working mother who briefly leaves her two-year-old daughter, Harriet, at home alone, gets reported, and is sent to a state-run rehabilitation program. There, she and dozens of other mothers must pass a nine-unit parenting course, or lose their children forever. The units ramp up in difficulty, until it becomes clear they’re designed to be essentially impossible: when none of the mothers are able to finish a difficult physical evaluation, they’re told “A parent should be able to lift a car. Fend off a bear. [...] You can’t let your bodies get in the way.” Ultimately, in order to be a perfect mother, the women are taught that they must let go of their own personhood. It’s a brilliant way to illustrate the impossible weight of societal expectations, and an often gendered double standard in the way that America views parenting.
The second element at which The School for Good Mothers excels is relevant satire about the time period. In our age of smartphones and Big Data, Chan turns her lens on the dangers of society’s increasing reliance on technology to run our world. When Frida is caught by child protective services, they install cameras throughout her house and trackers on her phone, running the evidence through a computer program that analyzes her motherly fitness. The program is supposed to eliminate “human error,” but of course, we build our human biases right into our technology. The program finds Frida to be socially isolated rather than community oriented, erratic, self-absorbed, and stunningly resentful rather than remorseful about putting her child in danger. Not very motherly at all. At the state’s re-education facility, Chan pushes the concept further, when the mothers learn that in order to pass the course, they’ll be practicing with extremely lifelike robotic doll children. Frida must spend the next year raising and showing sufficient motherly love to a synthetic toddler, which will record everything and monitor her expressions for signs of improved maternal instinct. An impossible task, and yet a natural escalation of our increasing reliance on technology and data to quantify the unquantifiable.
While the novel has a dark premise, the best part about dystopian fiction is the genre’s third central element, a strong belief in the triumph of the human spirit. Though dystopian stories usually end with the main character either breaking free from or conforming to the system, they tend to center around characters actively resisting the totalitarian forces around them, and Frida’s no different. Chan’s real triumph with this element, however, comes with Frida and her assigned toddler, which she names Emmanuelle. In the beginning of the novel, Frida is existentially horrified that she’s been tasked with raising a robotic child, and feels forced to perform affection and motherly love for the camera in its eyes. As Frida raises Emmanuelle, however, feeding her and changing her and talking to her and learning her quirks and habits, she comes to genuinely love her as a daughter. The central dramatic irony that runs through The School for Good Mothers is that Frida is unable to be anything but a good mother, even in the darkest of circumstances. Humans can be empathy machines, and the dystopian genre points to this as one of our greatest strengths.
The School for Good Mothers is an incredible example of what good dystopian fiction can do, and why it should be a genre on your reading list. Give it a shot if you haven’t! Great for fans of Emily St. John Mandel, Margaret Atwood, and Ling Ma. In the mood for a classic instead? Start with Nineteen Eighty-Four or A Clockwork Orange. Happy reading!