Mothers is Kusahara Umi’s debut English title, collecting and translating 15 years worth of self-published short stories developed on themes of love, family, and loss. Mothers contains 12 short stories that encapsulate different facets of the human experience. A man grapples with his complicated relationship with his mother, who he abandoned after leaving home for college, and whose heart (and body) were too big for the world to be kind to; a young girl finds a small bird, and after nursing it…