Wanting a Child: Twenty-Two Writers on their Difficult But Mostly Successful Quests for Parenthood in a High-Tech Age - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374286345 ISBN 13: 9780374286347

Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1998

Synopsis

Explores the alternative way in which people may become pregnant today and the humor, courage, pain, and joys of becoming a parent

About this title

Review:

This unique anthology features stories about an appetite as raw as any for sex or chocolate. It's about the sharp biological and emotional hunger for children: "A craving," writes contributor Rita Gabis, "hammered out of the bones of things, of winter, frozen groundwater, the sudden naked appearance of spring." In essays and short stories commissioned and republished from magazines such as Harper's and The New Yorker, authors including Kevin Canty and Lisa Shea write eloquently of the quest for children, of its derailments and its delights. Surprisingly often they tell of the pain endured in the search for a child of one's own. Lynn Lauber offers a heartbreaking piece on giving a daughter up for adoption at age 16, and finding her again as an adult. Bob Shacochis describes a grueling trip through the world of fertility treatments. "Between I'm not dead and I'm alive, the lesson to learn is fearless love," writes Jenifer Levin. "It isn't easy."

If there is one weakness in this collection, it is that it tells almost exclusively the stories of middle-class, middle-aged America--stories of remarkable privilege in which getting a child can involve months away from work, international travel, and expensive medical consultation. Nevertheless, Wanting a Child offers some dazzling writing and an often remarkable, openhearted honesty about parenthood that make it well worth reading. "Never have I felt such triumphs and inadequacies, such pleasure or such sorrow," writes Shea of her leap into single motherhood. "...And never have I relished so thoroughly the existence of another person in my life." --Maria Dolan

From the Back Cover:

With humor, courage, pain, and joy, the writers in this anthology share their complicated journeys to parenthood, whether they involve surrogacy, in vitro fertilization, or adoption. In cluded are inspiring accounts of families that defy the traditional definition, from homes with same-sex partners to those with single parents or stepparents. The first book of its kind, Wanting a Child finally gives voice to the heartbreak, hope, and elation experienced by the many who discover that parenthood cannot be taken for granted.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0374286345
• ISBN 13: 9780374286347
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 274
• Editor: Bialosky Jill, Schulman Helen