Birth stories, Della Pollock tells us, "are everywhere and
nowhere," permeating and haunting our everyday lives. In this
remarkable volume Pollock explores the myriad ways in which men and
women recount the ritual performance of giving birth.
Many of these stories, Pollock observes, rise out of the depths
of terror, flirting with disaster only to end with a profound sense
of relief at what medical discourse calls a "good outcome." Others
represent pain, make counterclaims on reproductive technologies,
and suggest complex associations between maternity, sexuality, and
body politics in the contemporary United States. Pollock retells
stories about some of the injustices that structure giving and
telling birth----finding there a reckoning with the unknown and
unknowable.
Focusing on the performances of birth stories, Pollock writes an
intimate ethnography: an account of listening "body to body" to
stories that press the borders of cultural critique with
virtuosity, possibility, desire, and risk. She draws on cultural
criticism, performance studies, and narrative theory to unpack this
long-ignored practice. Most striking, however, are the stories
presented here: unsanctioned, bold, fragmentary, and often furtive,
they both unnerve and inspire even as they realize and resist
cultural norms.
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