Fighting Patriarchy through Fiction - with novelist Naima Brown
Breaking Down Patriarchy
Amy McPhie Allebest
4.9 • 654 Ratings
🗓️ 9 December 2025
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Amy is joined by author Naima Brown to discuss her newest novel, Mother Tongue, exploring the consequences of change, finding our authentic selves, motherhood, right-wing radicalization, and the importance of fiction in our fight against patriarchy.
Donate to Breaking Down Patriarchy
Naima Brown holds degrees in Middle Eastern Studies, Anthropology and Religious Studies. Her essays have appeared in Vogue Australia, the Guardian Australia, and more. She wrote, along with Melissa Doyle, the non-fiction book How to Age Against the Machine. She has spent over a decade working in news, current affairs and documentary - save for her brief stint in reality TV, which inspired her first novel, The Shot. She was born and raised in Northern California before living and working in Yemen and Afghanistan, and now lives in New South Wales with her husband and her dog. Her second novel, Mother Tongue, was published in March 2025.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy. I'm Amy McPhee, All the Best. In 2015, an Australian man suffered a serious accident when a semi-truck sped through a red light striking the vehicle he was riding in. |
| 0:14.8 | Upon waking from a coma one week later, this man found, to his great surprise, that he had been speaking in fluent Mandarin. |
| 0:23.1 | Whether it was with nurses or doctors, parents, or siblings who came to visit him, it was |
| 0:27.7 | Mandarin, which he had previously only had a basic knowledge of. It was now flowing naturally |
| 0:33.4 | out of his mouth. This astonishing story inspired novelist Naima Brown to pen her newest book, |
| 0:40.3 | Mother Tong, in which one of the central characters, Stay-at-Home Mother Bryn, awakens from |
| 0:45.9 | a coma speaking fluent French. The novel follows Bryn and those close to her as she seizes this |
| 0:52.1 | shift in language to start a brand new existence, throwing |
| 0:55.9 | her current life and all those who inhabit it into tumult and emotional turbulence, which |
| 1:00.9 | ultimately changes them all. Mother tongue is a novel that asks controversial but too often real |
| 1:07.5 | questions. What if being true to yourself means hurting the people close to you? |
| 1:12.5 | What if it means being a bad wife, a bad mother? And why is it women and not men who are far too |
| 1:19.3 | often forced to make these decisions? It's a novel that challenges our cultural expectations of |
| 1:24.8 | motherhood, of wifehood, and womanhood. And I'm so excited to be |
| 1:28.7 | discussing it today with the author, Naima Brown. Welcome, Naima. Thank you so much, Amy. I'm so |
| 1:33.8 | happy to be here. I'm so happy to have you. So as per usual, I'll read your professional bio first, |
| 1:40.0 | and then I'll ask you to introduce yourself a little more personally after that. Yeah, no. It is. |
| 1:45.2 | Naima Brown holds degrees in Middle Eastern studies, anthropology, and religious studies. |
| 1:50.3 | Her essays have appeared in Vogue, Australia, The Guardian, Australia, and many more. |
| 1:55.2 | She wrote, along with Melissa Doyle, the nonfiction book, How to Age Against the Machine. |
| 2:00.4 | And she spent over a decade working |
| 2:02.3 | in news, current affairs, and documentary, save for her brief stint in reality TV, which |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Amy McPhie Allebest, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Amy McPhie Allebest and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.