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rachelagain's review against another edition
3.0
I have such mixed feelings about this book. I think it could have been a fantastic read but its use of language makes it so inaccessible to almost anyone other than Lewis and her direct peers that it is genuinely difficult to read.
Lewis is a theoretician and this is certainly a theory text rather than general non-fiction book about surrogacy. I get the impression that Lewis is aiming this book at scholars (particularly Marxist family abolitionist feminists) rather than the general public.
I found myself reading and re-reading paragraphs two or three times to (a) understand the words being used and (b) determine the argument Lewis is making, and whether it is credible. It was frustrating that Lewis would frequently use niche terms and barely, if at all, define them (even to define the terms of the argument she makes) e.g. cyborg feminism.
A few times in the book, Lewis seemed to indulge in literal wordplay for a few paragraphs, tie it in to a single point of substance and then suggest that this example is what is meant by "full surrogacy now". This was most obvious and frustrating in the conclusion. At the end of the book I felt I was left with a very vague sense of Lewis's actual position on how full surrogacy would work and the conditions necessary to protect surrogates as workers. Lewis was much clearer in critiquing other scholars', clinicians' and writers' arguments than in articulating the parameters of her own.
Perhaps my expectations of this book were unrealistic - I was hoping for something that would be more accessible but still challenging. It felt as though the book was barely edited, or that the editor didn’t recognise that long, dense sentences with neologisms and unfamiliar theory terms would be offputting to non-scholars.
The book does have some excellent and compelling analysis so I am certain I will read and refer to it again (and hopefully find it easier to read a second time). However I will have to recommend it to others with the caveat that it is a book that will be laborious to read.
Lewis is a theoretician and this is certainly a theory text rather than general non-fiction book about surrogacy. I get the impression that Lewis is aiming this book at scholars (particularly Marxist family abolitionist feminists) rather than the general public.
I found myself reading and re-reading paragraphs two or three times to (a) understand the words being used and (b) determine the argument Lewis is making, and whether it is credible. It was frustrating that Lewis would frequently use niche terms and barely, if at all, define them (even to define the terms of the argument she makes) e.g. cyborg feminism.
A few times in the book, Lewis seemed to indulge in literal wordplay for a few paragraphs, tie it in to a single point of substance and then suggest that this example is what is meant by "full surrogacy now". This was most obvious and frustrating in the conclusion. At the end of the book I felt I was left with a very vague sense of Lewis's actual position on how full surrogacy would work and the conditions necessary to protect surrogates as workers. Lewis was much clearer in critiquing other scholars', clinicians' and writers' arguments than in articulating the parameters of her own.
Perhaps my expectations of this book were unrealistic - I was hoping for something that would be more accessible but still challenging. It felt as though the book was barely edited, or that the editor didn’t recognise that long, dense sentences with neologisms and unfamiliar theory terms would be offputting to non-scholars.
The book does have some excellent and compelling analysis so I am certain I will read and refer to it again (and hopefully find it easier to read a second time). However I will have to recommend it to others with the caveat that it is a book that will be laborious to read.
syd_prescott's review against another edition
5.0
Run, do not walk - best new feminist writing on reproduction in years.
sunjaybooks's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
slow-paced
4.0
Back in 2017, I read Kathryn Joyce's "The Child Catchers", which was an investigation into the adoption industry and the various harms it's done to children and parents and the various ideologies that underlay the marketing of adoption. At the time I declared that if my partner and I ever decided to have kids, I would not choose to adopt.
Since then, I have learned a lot about some of the other alternatives that queer families (or perhaps more honestly, homonormative families) have when thinking of having kids. I learned about the abuses of the foster care system and its close relationship with the criminalization and incarceration of parents, especially Black mothers. And when a YouTube video (by agender British-Indian video essayist Shonalika) cited Sophie Lewis, I discovered that she had apparently written a radical queer book that centers a discussion of the third option - that is, IVF-surrogacy.
I'll admit, it's pretty easy to get me sold on radical queer critiques of family, especially if those are spelled out in ways that not only include but center trans and queer people in the analysis. It's easy for me to cheer when a queer Marxist feminist tears down the reactionary "liberal feminist" (or "cultural feminist") mystification of the work that goes into pregnancy (or as Lewis calls it, "gestational labor"). I find it easy to agree many of the basic arguments here, that babies are already commodified and the labor of people who carry them is exploited, and the existence of paid surrogacy only draws more attention to that fact rather than creating it; that the call to control and prevent surrogacy is not championed by the people who do that labor and the organizations and advocates that come from that group; that the opposition to surrogacy is deeply intertwined with white supremacist, imperialist, and most of all capitalist ideologies.
I also find myself wanting Lewis' vision for a better society in which the work of social reproduction in all its forms could be divided equitably, in which all the parts of it are acknowledged as work and then from there communally shared, in which rather than the nuclear family structure or even an extended family structure bound together by genetic ancestry we instead imagine a queer, chosen, and non-exploitative society where family has been abolished. I want that for myself and the people I care about. I want to live on a queer poly commune where we all are collectively involved in the caretaking of both younger and older generations.
This is a vision she explicitly grounds in the histories of a number of different communities, from Black communities in the United States to working class (and lower-caste) communities in India.
Admittedly, this book did struggle with a readability problem, as a lot of theory books do. The citations are many and dense and the prose tends toward complex and frequently ambiguous sentences. I'm sure there was more here that I could learn with further study, such as her cyborg-inflected gestures toward "amniotechnics" and discussion of the biology of gestation. I found her much more clear when she did rhetorical and ethnographic analysis, both of anti-surrogacy liberal (and radical) feminists and of the advocates for the capitalist surrogacy industry, specifically focusing on the company founded by Dr. Nayna Patel, which I found fascinating and in-depth, and surprisingly nuanced coming from a non-South Asian feminist source. Rooting the struggle as a labor struggle, where the goal is for gestational laborers to have the power to advocate for themselves, is a clarifying intervention that helps hold together what often seemed rather abstract to me.
At the same time, I personally found this book made visible and uncomfortable both my oppression and my personal privilege. The demand for "full surrogacy", for reproductive and gestational labor, is a utopian vision, one that I both want desperately and that feels unattainable. I came into this asking "how can I ethically be a queer parent?", and I didn't really get an answer, just a blueprint for a better future that's only starting to become visible. In the end, I think that might be more valuable.
Since then, I have learned a lot about some of the other alternatives that queer families (or perhaps more honestly, homonormative families) have when thinking of having kids. I learned about the abuses of the foster care system and its close relationship with the criminalization and incarceration of parents, especially Black mothers. And when a YouTube video (by agender British-Indian video essayist Shonalika) cited Sophie Lewis, I discovered that she had apparently written a radical queer book that centers a discussion of the third option - that is, IVF-surrogacy.
I'll admit, it's pretty easy to get me sold on radical queer critiques of family, especially if those are spelled out in ways that not only include but center trans and queer people in the analysis. It's easy for me to cheer when a queer Marxist feminist tears down the reactionary "liberal feminist" (or "cultural feminist") mystification of the work that goes into pregnancy (or as Lewis calls it, "gestational labor"). I find it easy to agree many of the basic arguments here, that babies are already commodified and the labor of people who carry them is exploited, and the existence of paid surrogacy only draws more attention to that fact rather than creating it; that the call to control and prevent surrogacy is not championed by the people who do that labor and the organizations and advocates that come from that group; that the opposition to surrogacy is deeply intertwined with white supremacist, imperialist, and most of all capitalist ideologies.
I also find myself wanting Lewis' vision for a better society in which the work of social reproduction in all its forms could be divided equitably, in which all the parts of it are acknowledged as work and then from there communally shared, in which rather than the nuclear family structure or even an extended family structure bound together by genetic ancestry we instead imagine a queer, chosen, and non-exploitative society where family has been abolished. I want that for myself and the people I care about. I want to live on a queer poly commune where we all are collectively involved in the caretaking of both younger and older generations.
This is a vision she explicitly grounds in the histories of a number of different communities, from Black communities in the United States to working class (and lower-caste) communities in India.
Admittedly, this book did struggle with a readability problem, as a lot of theory books do. The citations are many and dense and the prose tends toward complex and frequently ambiguous sentences. I'm sure there was more here that I could learn with further study, such as her cyborg-inflected gestures toward "amniotechnics" and discussion of the biology of gestation. I found her much more clear when she did rhetorical and ethnographic analysis, both of anti-surrogacy liberal (and radical) feminists and of the advocates for the capitalist surrogacy industry, specifically focusing on the company founded by Dr. Nayna Patel, which I found fascinating and in-depth, and surprisingly nuanced coming from a non-South Asian feminist source. Rooting the struggle as a labor struggle, where the goal is for gestational laborers to have the power to advocate for themselves, is a clarifying intervention that helps hold together what often seemed rather abstract to me.
At the same time, I personally found this book made visible and uncomfortable both my oppression and my personal privilege. The demand for "full surrogacy", for reproductive and gestational labor, is a utopian vision, one that I both want desperately and that feels unattainable. I came into this asking "how can I ethically be a queer parent?", and I didn't really get an answer, just a blueprint for a better future that's only starting to become visible. In the end, I think that might be more valuable.
monukai's review against another edition
4.0
A book full of great thoughts, but it really needed an editor.
odoletskaya's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.25
As a surrogacy researcher, I found this book extremely enlightening. It challenges our ideas of what family, childbearing and surrogacy stand for and how capitalism alters our ideas of kinship. Would recommend to anyone who's interested in feminist and gender theory and particularly reproduction studies.
fredrikke's review against another edition
3.0
this book has left me quite ambivalent, i think a lot of what lewis was trying to convey got lost in the excessive use of labeling. for a person insisting on using the term "pregnant people" instead of mothers and women i found the use of other labels quite over the top.
the language used is too much a lot of the time, and i must admit i spent a lot of time looking up labels i did not understand. i have also learnt that i do not like the word gestate.
even though this book raised some interesting points and questions i do not feel like i understand lewis' view on surrogacy. i understand that the goal is to abolish families, because it takes a village to raise a child, however i do not understand how lewis has come to this conclusion. the last chapter; amniotechnics also left me quite confused.
what i did like about this book is that there are a lot of references to other films, books, lectures, essays etc. and i was quite excited to go through the resources lewis has used for this book. i did also enjoy the questions it raised, although some of them are quite far out.
the language used is too much a lot of the time, and i must admit i spent a lot of time looking up labels i did not understand. i have also learnt that i do not like the word gestate.
even though this book raised some interesting points and questions i do not feel like i understand lewis' view on surrogacy. i understand that the goal is to abolish families, because it takes a village to raise a child, however i do not understand how lewis has come to this conclusion. the last chapter; amniotechnics also left me quite confused.
what i did like about this book is that there are a lot of references to other films, books, lectures, essays etc. and i was quite excited to go through the resources lewis has used for this book. i did also enjoy the questions it raised, although some of them are quite far out.
michellehogmire's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0