A sensitive, politically astute examination of reproduction.
A look at how mothers are made.
In 2015, Quilter went to an in vitro fertilization clinic with the goal of freezing her eggs. At 35, describing herself as a “white, able-bodied, bisexual, middle-class woman,” she was ambivalent about motherhood but, wanting to keep her options open, decided to take advantage of the new technology. Melding intimate memoir and enlightening medical history, Quilter recounts the unexpected journey that began with that visit. Advances in reproductive technology, she knew, have given women—that is, “white cisgender women who can afford it”—myriad choices: “We can fall pregnant without sperm entering the cervix; fall pregnant with eggs that have been harvested from our own bodies years before; develop in our uterus or someone else’s a child that isn’t genetically ours.” But, she discovered, her own choice was limited. She did not have enough eggs to freeze; it was unlikely that she could become pregnant; and if she did manage to conceive, she would probably miscarry early. Devastated, Quilter became intensely focused on having a baby. Her immersion in IVF became both personal (lying on rumpled paper sheets, undergoing scores of ultrasounds, injecting herself with hormones) and intellectual, as she investigated innovations “for viewing and manipulating female-identified bodies” from the 16th century on. As she shares her frustrating yet hopeful quest, she also offers a history of gynecology, birth control, and attitudes and laws regarding abortion, adoption, surrogacy, and embryo donation. She profiles researchers and physicians, including the two men who created the technology that led to the birth, in 1980, of the first IVF baby, Louise Brown. Quilter considers the views of angry feminists who rose up in the 1980s to deride IVF for affirming “a conservative, heterosexual, consumer-oriented vision of a nuclear family.” Though sympathetic, the author never loses sight of the deep complexities inherent in the issue of fertility.
A sensitive, politically astute examination of reproduction.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1320-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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