Necessary, thoughtful, and heartfelt.
Two journalists examine the meaning of pregnancy loss in American culture and their own lives.
Giving birth to stillborn babies taught authors Little and Long one very painful lesson: “America is bad at talking about pregnancy loss.” It also showed them that pregnancy loss silence concealed other interconnected issues like miscarriage, abortion, and grief that profoundly impacted maternal lives. In this book, Little and Long use their experiences—and those of the many individuals they interviewed—as launching points into a larger discussion about reproduction and reproductive care in the United States. They argue that the great wall of silence they and others encountered derives from language that does not adequately do justice to the multifaceted nature of pregnancy loss. Indeed, any words that do exist “are strictly clinical or infused with stark political baggage.” They further observe that the overwhelming sense of failure that often accompanies such loss can be attributed to a system that—even in the more liberal Roe v. Wade era—emphasized the idea that “all kept pregnancies were wanted.” Miscarriage, like abortion, was therefore and implicitly a mother’s fault, an idea that kept women from speaking out about both for fear of being stigmatized. Now, in a hyperpunitive post-Roe era, discussion of miscarriage and abortion as part of the same reproductive spectrum is especially fraught, even though one might look like the other and be treated by the same methods. The authors point out that people are still finding the courage to share their experiences and grief through social media, but post-loss mourning is still viewed as a “malady” rather than a natural process. Sobering and well researched, this book lays bare major fault lines in a maternal reproductive care system in dire need of radical transformation.
Necessary, thoughtful, and heartfelt.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781728292755
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Review Posted Online: July 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
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