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gnswt_'s review against another edition
2.0
Deceptively dense and I struggled to take much in. Can’t remember the last time I was so elated to finish a book. Pays off in the beautifully written final chapter but definitely one for those who have studied social theory around reproductivity.
V solid bibliography which I will hopefully use to become marginally less ignorant about surrogacy, reproductive rights and discourse.
V solid bibliography which I will hopefully use to become marginally less ignorant about surrogacy, reproductive rights and discourse.
sanamun's review against another edition
4.0
I enjoyed the content of this book, but like... When I could understand what it was saying. Some of that is a target audience issue - Lewis is definitely writing for other academics - but even for theory, this is dense and awkwardly written.
Update: Changed to 4 stars after trying to read Judith Butler. By academia terms, this wasn't, in retrospect, so bad, I was just out of practice at this sort of reading.
Update: Changed to 4 stars after trying to read Judith Butler. By academia terms, this wasn't, in retrospect, so bad, I was just out of practice at this sort of reading.
mollyculhane's review against another edition
Whew—this book was theory-forward and a lot of it went over my head. At the same time, though, Lewis had so many interesting ideas about how surrogacy as it exists today (and labor militancy among surrogates) ought to influence how we think about families and kinship more broadly, especially as they relate to capitalism.
I think the cleanest summary of Lewis’s goals is stated near the end of the introduction: “Let’s bring about the conditions of possibility for open-source, fully collaborative gestation. Let’s prefigure a way of manufacturing one another noncompetitively. Let’s hold one another hospitably, explode notions of hereditary parentage, and multiply real, loving solidarities. Let us build a care commune based on comradeship, a world sustained by kith and kind more than by kin. Where pregnancy is concerned, let every pregnancy be for everyone. Let us overthrow, in short, the ‘family’” (26).
In getting to the point of why we need “full surrogacy,” how we might get there, and what stands in the way, Lewis covers an astonishing amount of theoretical ground, and draws from a delightful assortment of disciplines. She explains placental biology! She analyzes The Handmaid’s Tale! Most notably, she dives deeply into a set of ethnographies of Nayna Patel’s Akanksha Infertility Clinic, through which she explores the conflicting narratives around transnational surrogacy and uses these contradictions as openings for supporting surrogates as workers (in the short term) and communizing reproduction (in the long term).
Most excitingly to me, Lewis gives dozens of examples of nonpropertarian, not-necessarily-biological kinship practices, and explains what differentiates a communal, anticapitalist family/community structure from a nonnuclear family structure that nonetheless doesn’t meaningfully represent family abolition. (For the former, she gives the example of open adoptions and queer coparenting communities; for the latter, she gives the example of Dr. Patel’s for-profit, non-cooperativized surrogacy dormitories, which house women away from their husbands and children but under the complete control of their boss.) It raised a lot of helpful questions about what is useful about nonnuclear family structures and how to realize their radical potential.
I think the cleanest summary of Lewis’s goals is stated near the end of the introduction: “Let’s bring about the conditions of possibility for open-source, fully collaborative gestation. Let’s prefigure a way of manufacturing one another noncompetitively. Let’s hold one another hospitably, explode notions of hereditary parentage, and multiply real, loving solidarities. Let us build a care commune based on comradeship, a world sustained by kith and kind more than by kin. Where pregnancy is concerned, let every pregnancy be for everyone. Let us overthrow, in short, the ‘family’” (26).
In getting to the point of why we need “full surrogacy,” how we might get there, and what stands in the way, Lewis covers an astonishing amount of theoretical ground, and draws from a delightful assortment of disciplines. She explains placental biology! She analyzes The Handmaid’s Tale! Most notably, she dives deeply into a set of ethnographies of Nayna Patel’s Akanksha Infertility Clinic, through which she explores the conflicting narratives around transnational surrogacy and uses these contradictions as openings for supporting surrogates as workers (in the short term) and communizing reproduction (in the long term).
Most excitingly to me, Lewis gives dozens of examples of nonpropertarian, not-necessarily-biological kinship practices, and explains what differentiates a communal, anticapitalist family/community structure from a nonnuclear family structure that nonetheless doesn’t meaningfully represent family abolition. (For the former, she gives the example of open adoptions and queer coparenting communities; for the latter, she gives the example of Dr. Patel’s for-profit, non-cooperativized surrogacy dormitories, which house women away from their husbands and children but under the complete control of their boss.) It raised a lot of helpful questions about what is useful about nonnuclear family structures and how to realize their radical potential.
bxtskr's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Miscarriage and Pregnancy
maddierice's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
5.0