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I HAD A MISCARRIAGE

Name: I HAD A MISCARRIAGE
Author: Jessica Zucker
ISBN: 978-1-55861-288-4

A MEMOIR, A MOVEMENT

by Jessica Zucker ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 9, 2021

A contemplative, sensitive, and necessary work in the field of pregnancy and parenting.

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A psychologist shares the intimate details of her miscarriage.

During her second trimester, Zucker, whose work focuses on reproductive and maternal mental health, suffered a miscarriage at home. Based on her experiences with the silence, shame, and stigma that often surround this emotionally charged experience, she created the #IHadaMiscarriage campaign and wrote this memoir/manifesto to enable a broader discussion of the subject. The author is candid about the personal, frightening details of her loss, and she smoothly interweaves her moving story with the narratives of some of her clients, all of which are complex and worthy of examination. “Miscarriage, pregnancy, and infant loss is not just a ‘woman’s experience.’ It does not discriminate. There is also no ‘one way’ to feel about these specific losses.” As the author shows, while some women experience relief after a miscarriage, most feel a profound sense of loss and grief. Throughout the book, Zucker is attuned to diversity and the unique circumstances facing marginalized groups (“I want to acknowledge that my experience represents just that—my experience”), and her inclusive approach allows women to embrace their feelings and express them rather than hide them or diminish their significance. She discusses how important it is to accept the loss and yet not feel like a failure because it happened, and she consistently emphasizes its unfortunate prevalence (“One in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage—and that’s just of the pregnancies that are known”). Zucker also writes about her need to name her child and chronicles her trip to Japan to discover “the unique ways Japanese culture acknowledges pregnancy loss.” Given that so many pregnancies end without a successful birth, this book should serve as both balm and guidebook for those suffering from such loss.

A contemplative, sensitive, and necessary work in the field of pregnancy and parenting.

Pub Date: March 9, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-55861-288-4

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Feminist Press

Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021

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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

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Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

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BLACK BOY

A RECORD OF CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH

by Richard Wright ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 28, 1945

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This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.

It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.

Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.