Mother and Child

One Book One Northwestern, 2023–24

In Fritzi Brod’s Mother and Child, a woman gazes sweetly at her child as she cradles the baby in her arms. They are set in an amorphous but circular and enclosed space and seem connected and inseparable. Brod’s mother and child appear to be protected within a sacred womb-like form and are surrounded by a radiating aura reminiscent of the Virgin of Guadalupe, an image of the mother of Christ "clothed by the sun." The mother is also veiled and barefoot, as in Renaissance depictions of the Madonna, notably Raphael’s Sistine Madonna, which Brod, who was originally from Prague, would have known through her education and travels in Europe before coming to the United States.

In Crying in H Mart, the author talks about ways her mother considered herself to be inseparable from her; despite rough patches, there was a deep bond between them. As an example of this connection, Zauner has explained, "When I got hurt, she felt it so deeply, it was as though it were her own affliction. She was guilty only of caring too much. I realize this now, only in retrospect. No one in this world would ever love me as much as my mother, and she would never let me forget it."