The Pots (that mothers leave for their daughters) is an adult novel, centered around the coming-of-age story of sixteen-year-old Makhosi Mthethwa, whose typical village life in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa is disrupted by her mother’s acquisition of a potter’s wheel.
 
When her mother teaches herself how to use the wheel to make pots, Makhosi must help her fulfill her goal of selling them. The two will have to face Makhosi’s increasingly abusive father, who is threatened by his wife's potential independence. Makhosi will also have to confront her seemingly unbothered older brother as the turmoil builds in their home, in a society where male dominance is the norm.
 
Mama must take all the shame and the abuse, any cost to ensure that Makhosi pursues her education and has a different life. As Mama slowly disappears into herself, the three of them must break past the stereotypes that have always governed them and figure out how to be a family without the glue that kept them together.