Book Review: My Mother Knows by Iryn Namubiru — A Memoir That Burns Deep

A Personal Connection

I’ve spent most of my life listening to Iryn Namubiru’s music—her voice has followed me through lonely drives, and nights. So when I saw her memoir My Mother Knows, I had to get a real paper copy. And man… what a ride.

Iryn has always brought fire to the stage, and she brings it to the page too—only this time it burns.

Not Your Usual Childhood Story

The book mostly covers her childhood, but don’t let that fool you. This isn’t kids bedtime reading. This is the kind of book you read hiding under a blanket, praying no one walks in, because half the chapters feel like something you shouldn’t be caught with unless you’re ready to explain… a lot.

Speaking Out on FGM

She even dives into a cultural practice that people whisper about but never talk about out loud: young girls pulling their labia. Iryn calls it what it is—FGM—and she doesn’t sugarcoat a thing. She describes being held down as a child while older women stretched her skin like they were testing elastic.

She talks about living with the pain for years, until she finally said “enough,” walked into a clinic, and had them removed. Her big question: why are we still doing this to girls to impress men—especially when there’s no proof men even care? And honestly, she’s living proof. She cut them off and men in Uganda still worship her like she’s made of honey and moonlight.

A Complicated Mother-Daughter Story

But the real villain of this story is her mother. And I mean, wow. Iryn doesn’t just tell us her mom was bad—she circles back and tells us again… and again… and again. After 100 pages of it, I wanted to yell, “Okay, Iryn, we believe you—your mom could scare the devil out of Hell. Can we talk about something else now before she crawls out of the page and eats us all?”

Still, you can feel her pain. You can tell she carried it like a backpack full of bricks.

The Horror of “The Man”

And then come the horror scenes with “the man”—her deceased stepfather—who decided it was his business to check whether she had ‘pulled’, even flashing his erection like some kind of perverse trophy. Iryn roasts him with words so hot I swear you can smell his coffin wood burning in the grave.

Drama, Danger, and a Darkly Funny Pattern

She even takes us through her run-ins with the law—getting arrested in Japan for drug trafficking, surviving that ill-fated boat cruise—and somehow, all roads lead back to—you guessed it—her mother. It’s almost darkly funny: “Mother made me do it” could be the subtitle of this book.

A Voice That Survived It All

But here’s the thing: maybe God gave Iryn a monster for a mom, but He also gave her a voice that could calm demons. And if she ever records this book as an audiobook in her own voice, I’ll buy it again—just to sit in the dark and let it haunt me.

@irynnamubiru

Yasin Kakande

Author of The Missing Corpse