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A review by servemethesky
I Know What's Best for You: Stories on Reproductive Freedom by Yael R. Shinar, Alison Espach, Mary Jo Bang, Deborah Landau, Kate Novotny, Sarah Gerard, Riva Lehrer, Ama Codjoe, Onnesha Roychoudhuri, Carrie Bornstein, Tiphanie Yanique, Donnetta Lavinia Grays, Hannah Lillith Assadi, R.O. Kwon, Said Sayrafiezadeh, Deb Olin Unferth, Sally Wen Mao, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Kate Tarker, Kristen Arnett, Erin Williams, Cade Leebron, Shelly Oria, Tommy Orange, Kirstin Valdez Quade, Desiree Cooper, Khadijah Queen, Kim Gek Lin Short, Georgina Escobar
4.0
Such an intense read, but a very well done anthology! You’d think it would get repetitive or boring to read reproductive justice stories for 455 pages, but there’s so much variety in genre, form, style, and life experiences that it truly doesn’t. It’s certainly heavy though, so I’d recommend taking breaks or interspersing it with something lighter. I really appreciated the way this anthology mixes fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction—it helps with pacing and makes it much more engaging as a text.
Some of my favorites were:
-Let’s Just Be Normal and Have a Baby by Alison Espach (fiction) — husband who never wanted kids and is dying of cancer suddenly starts demanding they have a baby
-Maheov by Tommy Orange (fiction) — features a native character talking about how his mom was sterilized and somehow, he was born, a miracle
-Not Anyone’s Hero by Khadijah Queen (creative nonfic) — about a woman in the military who got pregnant and kept the baby, and how she was treated for doing so
-The Babies by Kristen Arnett (fiction) — love Arnett’s work. This was about a queer couple getting pregnant and losing the baby (there’s a heart-stabbing twisty moment in the final pages).
Some of my favorites were:
-Let’s Just Be Normal and Have a Baby by Alison Espach (fiction) — husband who never wanted kids and is dying of cancer suddenly starts demanding they have a baby
-Maheov by Tommy Orange (fiction) — features a native character talking about how his mom was sterilized and somehow, he was born, a miracle
-Not Anyone’s Hero by Khadijah Queen (creative nonfic) — about a woman in the military who got pregnant and kept the baby, and how she was treated for doing so
-The Babies by Kristen Arnett (fiction) — love Arnett’s work. This was about a queer couple getting pregnant and losing the baby (there’s a heart-stabbing twisty moment in the final pages).