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Culture without borders. / La culture sans frontières.

Sasha Bonét Chronicles Three Generations of Black American Women in Her Memoir

Novelist Sasha Bonét releases her first memoir, "The Waterbearers," detailing the lives of three generations of Black American women from slavery to the present, illustrating social transformations in the US.


Léa Marchand
Léa Marchand
September 23, 2026  ·  1 min read
B-Empire Magazine
Brief

Sasha Bonét, a New York-based writer, publishes her debut memoir titled “The Waterbearers,” in which she traces the history of three generations of Black American women in her family.

She recounts the life of her grandmother Betty Jean, daughter of former slaves in Louisiana, who raised eleven children; then her mother Connie, who sought to achieve a middle-class life in a predominantly white Houston; before focusing on her own role as a mother in New York with her daughter Sofia.

The memoir opens with a quote from Toni Morrison, Nobel Prize-winning author, emphasizing the importance of understanding Black women’s history to grasp that of the United States.

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