Bearing Life: Women's Writings on Childlessness

Rochelle Ratner

Feminist Press at CUNY, 2001 - Fiction - 248 pages

A wall of silence surrounds the experience of women who are childless, whether by choice or by circumstance. Bearing Life is the first anthology to marshal the power of literature to break this silence.

Here, more than forty contemporary writers reflect candidly and movingly on what it means to live as women without children. These stories, poems, and personal essays speak directly from--and to--the conflicting, often painful, and sometimes liberating emotions of childless women. The selections move through the ambivalence and denial childless women confront within themselves, to the misunderstanding and hostility they confront in the outside world, toward a space where an acceptance and even celebration of childlessness can begin to take place.

Bearing Life includes work by Julia Alvarez, Margaret Atwood, Rita Mae Brown, Ana Castillo, Sandra Cisneros, Diane diPrima, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Janice Eidus, Daniela Gioseffi, Amy Hempel, Linda Hogan, bell hooks, Hettie Jones, Irena Klepfisz, Joy Kogawa, Valerie Miner, Kathleen Norris, Naomi Shihab Nye, Joyce Carol Oates, Grace Paley, Molly Peacock, Marge Piercy, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Evelyn C. Rosser, Jane Rule, May Sarton, Sandra Scofield, Amy Tan, Luci Tapahonso, and many others.

Contents

• January 1953: 15
• Reminded of My Biological Clock While Looking at Georgia OKeeffes Pelvis One Pelvis With Blue 1944: 16
• Women Without Children Women Without Families Women Alone: 19
• This Is a Question I Do Not Answer: 29
• From Rita Will: 31
• Old Maids: 36
• The daughter of fur: 38
• The Vow: 40
• Tie Me Up Tie Me Off: 48
• Minor Surgery: 51
• From The Joy Luck Club: 60
• Antisocial Baby Notes: 64
• Pretty Story: 67
• Something I Forgot to Tell You: 69
• Meditations on Childlessness: 70
• The Case Against Babies: 77
• The Arm Baby: 84
• A Meditation on Childlessness: 92
• KNOWING LOSS: 103
• I Get My Period September 1964: 105
• From Crossing the Moon: 106
• Forty Trembling: 112
• The Wash House: 113
• Outside Pisa: 120
• The Deferred Dream: 122
• The Childless Woman Poems: 131
• The Mother: 134
• Notes Toward a Novel: 136
• The Weremother: 140
• Stork Talk: 144
• Mother and Two Daughters: 147
• Taking the Train to Harmon: 155
• Norton 59900: 157
• The Child Taken from the Mother: 163
• In the Garden: 165
• All the Colors of Sunset: 168
• Nothing: 172
• Mother of Nothing: 173
• BEARING LIFE: 175
• Land of the Living: 177
• Liferower: 179
• You Remember Sophia: 182
• From Obasan: 185
• A Lifetime: 188
• Hairball: 190
• The Latest Celebrity Interview: 200
• CherryShiree: 204
• Parent as a Verb: 209
• The Question of Children: 211
• All My Kids: 213
• Imagining Motherhood: 218
• From Black Woman Artist Becoming: 222
• From Journal of a Solitude: 226
• Upbringing: 231
• About the Authors: 233
• Further Reading: 242
• Credits: 245

About the author

Rochelle Ratner (1949-2008) is the author of the novels Bobby's Girl and The Lion's Share, as well as several volumes of poetry. She was the executive editor of the American Book Review and a widely published reviewer.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Bearing Life: Women's Writings on Childlessness; G - Reference,Information and Interdisciplinary Subjects Series
• Editor: Rochelle Ratner
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: Feminist Press at CUNY, 2001
• ISBN: 1558612750, 9781558612754
• Length: 248 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Anthologies (multiple authors); Health & Fitness / Fertility & Infertility; Literary Collections / American / General; Literary Collections / Women Authors; Social Science / Women's Studies