LABOR

An Iranian American OB-GYN shares a stirring report from the trenches of women’s health care.

The frontlines of medicine have lent themselves to a long line of excellent memoirs, and they are now joined by Afsari’s gripping debut. In addition to the hair-raising stories you would expect, two elements make her version stand out. One is that she runs her practice out of an RV in order to bring care to patients who fear traditional medical environments, and the other is the role of her Iranian heritage in her career choice. In a powerful moment, we see how these two come together. A transgender patient arrives at the mobile clinic with a list of questions; one is whether Afsari has a personal motivation for providing transgender care. Afsari explains that her parents left their country to give her life where her autonomy would be protected, where she would not risk “being shot and killed in the street for daring to show her hair.” Furthermore, her Iranian grandmother died, leaving four small children, while attempting an illegal abortion. For her, this work has become “the honor and duty” of her life. The personal history woven through the narrative begins with her grandmother, Mehry, whose tragic story is beautifully imagined, and includes a loving portrait of her father, who urged her to follow him into medicine, using both carrot and stick. “If you had some big talent,” he comments, that would be one thing. But since she’s no Picasso, she might as well go to med school. Well, thank heaven she did, most readers will conclude. Her nuanced defense of women’s right to choose, written from the perspective of a person who has been by the bedside in many life-or-death situations, is the next best thing to the way of understanding that she often recommends to legislators, which is that they “put on a pair of scrubs and spend twenty-four hours in the hospital with me.”

Joins the best medical memoirs with a moving personal story and a passion for the work.