The Sweet Potato Queens' Guide to Raising Children for Fun and Profit

November 12, 2007
After a successful foray as a novelist (2006’s The Sweet Potato Queens’ First Big-Ass Novel
), Brown returns to instructional mode with this frothy and ribald guide to parenting (“the most incredibly full-time volunteer job ever”). Beginning with the physical changes during pregnancy, she notes the joy of gaining “big, voluptuous, cleaving breasts” until realizing that “most everything south of them grows exponentially at the same time.” There’s even advice on talking to a pregnant woman (“a crapshoot on a good day”). But fairly quickly, the baby is out and hungry (“Breast-feeding was just about the greatest job I ever had,” Browne confesses, recalling her daughter “latched on to me like my own little refrigerator magnet”). At that point, there’s a division between Alpha Moms (“who make their own dirt from scratch”) and Beta Moms (“the one that Alpha Moms trust only to bring the paper towels and trash bags to the parties”). Like a sassy best girlfriend, Browne offers her (and her fellow Queens’) brassy take on teaching tykes values and manners with an irreverent way of dealing with cussing and kids trying to bilk the Tooth Fairy out of $100.

Starred review from December 24, 2007
Browne once again proves she's the perfect reader of her own rollicking, raucous and riotously funny essays on motherhood and child rearing. You don't have to be a parent or even on the road to parenthood to appreciate her skewed views on the topic. She wonders why mothers dispense scare tactic misinformation to promote abstinence (like French kissing will make you “turn up pregnant”) when the truth is far more frightening (episiotomies and “nipples the size of salad plates”). Browne's spirited reading coaxes the laughs out of the material with a gentle Southern drawl, not a standup comic's rim shot. Her observational humor is mixed with tales of empowerment and life lessons. Listeners will have a hard time staying dry-eyed during the final chapter where, choked with emotion, Browne relives a harrowing month that included a fatal car accident and a cancer diagnosis for a woman who was a second mother to her. Simultaneous release with the Simon & Schuster hardcover (Reviews, Nov. 12).