What are Junior's mom's hobbies, personality, and dreams?

We only get brief glimpses of Junior's mother in the novel. What we do know is that she is an avid reader.  Junior mentions that she "still reads books like crazy. She buys them by the pound. And she remembers everything that she reads" (Alexie 11). She is a recovered alcoholic (Alexie 46) and goes to to Church to find support in times of need (Alexie 170). Junior believes that she may have gone to college and became a teacher if someone paid attention to her dreams. This is shown by the cartoon he drew of his parents on page 12.

As a mom, she is honest with Junior.  When Oscar, the family dog, becomes ill, she is the one that has to break the bad news to Junior that "[the family] [doesn't] have any money for Oscar" (Alexie 10). She knows that the news will hurt her son but he did need to know that there was nothing the family could do to save the dog. She is also supportive of Junior.  She and his father do not put up much resistance when Junior tells his parents that he wants to go to Reardan in "Go Means Go." As Junior remarked in the chapter, "It was almost like they'd been waiting for me to ask them if I could go to Reardan" (Alexie 46).

As the novel progresses, she becomes more and more protective of Junior. When Junior is concussed during a basketball game in the chapter "Reindeer Games," she worries about possible further brain damage. Junior lists his mother's worry as one of the reasons why he stops attending class after his Grandmother and family friend Eugene dies (Alexie 174). It climaxes when Mary dies in the fire that consumed her trailer. She slaps Junior repeatedly (something that does not happen in the Spirit home at all), making him promise that he would never drink (Alexie 208). It is believed that Mary was too drunk to save herself when the trailer caught on fire. Grandmother was killed by a drunk driver and Eugene dies during a drunken argument. Given that she is now sober and the reader has seen the effects of alcoholism on the Spirit family, it is no surprise she would want to protect her now only child from alcohol.