Review by Choice Review
Anthropologist Wilson (Cabrillo College) stresses that most previous studies of infertile, or "involuntarily childless," women have concentrated on women who actively employ a wide range of medical techniques for assisted reproduction; have tended to focus on white, straight, relatively privileged women; and have constructed a narrative of infertility as a crisis around which desperate women center their lives. By contrast, the 25 women Wilson interviewed--many of whom are women of color and virtually all of whom Wilson terms "marginal" by virtue of their race/ethnicity, economic status, and/or sexuality--present more complex, upbeat, and pragmatic understandings of the meanings of childlessness in their lives. These women are fully aware of the range of technologies available, but most eschew them, and many express revulsion toward medicalization of their childless state. Ultimately, Wilson is "left to wonder whether infertility as a concept only applies to white, middle- to upper-class, able-bodied, straight women," and she suggests that "[m]arginalized women--in a sense, the original feminists--provide some likely tools" for challenging normative and restrictive notions of what womanhood, femininity, motherhood, and fulfillment mean. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students/faculty/practitioners. --Ann Hibner Koblitz, Arizona State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
