Atul Gawande, Jerome Groopman, Oliver Sacks, Abraham Verghese—all these authors cut their teeth in the field of medicine. Fewer are the female physicians who’ve become prominent writers. That might well change with the arrival of Mary Fariba Afsari, the author of a debut book, Labor: One Woman’s Work (Avid Reader Press, April 7). Chronicling her vital contribution to her community in Portland, Oregon, as an OB-GYN, as well as her upbringing as the daughter of Iranian immigrants, the book, says our starred review, “joins the best medical memoirs with a moving personal story and a passion for the work.” Afsari told us more about the book by email.

Is there a book or an author that influenced your decision to write—one that caused you to say, I want to do that?

I have been devouring literature for nearly 50 years. Poets and authors like e.e. cummings, Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath in my younger years. I read Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies on repeat, finally hearing some of my family stories in hers. Beloved, by Toni Morrison, served as a moral guiding force behind my book. Dr. Atul Gawande’s books, especially Complications, and Dr. Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air, have sat at the table with me like supportive brothers through the entirety of my medical writing the past 20 years.

What inspired you during the writing of the book? What were you reading, listening to, watching?

I carried my (now worn) copy of Hafiz: The Gift with me everywhere. I read mostly literary fiction like Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous several times. I also binged well-written, funny TV shows like Fleabag, Better Things, Schitt’s Creek. In my quieter moments, it was always Chopin nocturnes in my ears.

Where and when did you write the book? Describe the scene, the time of day, the necessary accoutrements or talismans.

I wrote this book in the cracks of my life like the breath between labor contractions. Every morning between 6 and 7 a.m. at the Albina Press coffee shop in Portland, Oregon, I started my day writing at a back corner table. I spent afternoons drafting phrases in my head on my paddleboard in the middle of alpine lakes. I escaped to Yelapa, Mexico, only accessible by boat, and watched giant iguanas battle in trees overhead while typing on my laptop in a hammock. I spent nearly a year on the island of Mallorca through Covid lockdown, writing. I wrote alone. I wrote in weekly groups. I wrote through ice storms and heat waves. And when I wrote the scene about my grandmother, Mehry, dying, I was seated on rocks in Shirley Canyon near Lake Tahoe, my toes dipped into the snow river water of my childhood.

Given that your book addresses abortion—a divisive subject in the United States—was it a challenge to find a publisher that would take you on?

It was not a challenge to find a publisher. In fact, my book proposal went to auction with multiple publishers and editors interested. I attribute this to the way that abortion is discussed in the book. First, it is only one topic that is addressed in the larger picture of reproductive justice. I speak to the nuance, the gray areas that bring us together more than set us apart. Women’s health is as complex as life itself. No one policy, no lawmaking body, has the ability to address the multitude of factors that each person’s life, story, and health require—this is the most basic of human rights. 

John McMurtrie is the nonfiction editor.