Reader's Place: October 2019
TO PARENT – OR NOT TO PARENT?
Mother is a verb: an unconventional history, by Sarah Knott. 2019.
A feminist historian explores the concept of maternity across place and time, relying on her own experiences as well as diaries letters, reports, court records, clothing and objects as she herself grapples with whether to have a child or not.
Full surrogacy now: feminism against family, by Sophie Lewis, 2019. 306.874 LEW
An incisive polemic on the surrogacy industry and the feminist movement to ban it. Lewis persuasively calls for "more surrogacy," "more mutual aid," and an "open-source, fully collaborative gestation." Through an unapologetically queer, anti-capitalist lens, the author investigates the landscape of commercial surrogacy, a "reproductive meritocracy" where wealthy people are empowered to use reproductive technology that is materially and moralistically off-limits to others.
Do you have kids?: life when the answer is no , by Kate Kaufmann. 2019. 306.85 KAU
Today about one in five American women will never have children, whether by choice or by destiny. Kaufmann takes on topics from the shifting meaning of family to what we leave behind when we die. Weaving together wisdom from women ages twenty-four to ninety-one with both her own story and a growing body of research, Kate brings to light alternate routes to lives of meaning, connection, and joy.
Childfree by choice, by Amy Blackstone. 2019. 306.874 BLA
Sociologist and activist Blackstone draws on both personal experience and sociological research to explore the lives of those who have purposefully chosen not to parent. She traces the threads of modern child-free activism from the 1970s to the present, focusing primarily on the United States (though drawing on sociological data from around the globe).
Compiled by Ina Rimpau