Belabored: A Vindication of the Rights of Pregnant Women

by Lyz Lenz Narrated by Natalie Peyser

Overview

In Belabored, Lyz Lenz will "make you cry in one paragraph and snort-laugh in the next" (Chloe Angyal, contributing editor at MarieClaire.com).

Written with a blend of wit, snark, and raw intimacy, Belabored is an impassioned and irreverent defense of the autonomy, rights, and dignity of pregnant people. Lenz shows how religious, historical, and cultural myths about pregnancy have warped the way we treat pregnant people: when our representatives enact laws criminalizing abortion and miscarriage, when doctors prioritize the health of the fetus over the life of the pregnant patient in front of them, when baristas refuse to serve visibly pregnant women caffeine. She also reflects on her own experiences of carrying her two children and seeing how the sacrifices demanded during pregnancy carry over seamlessly into the cult of motherhood, where women are expected to play the narrowly defined roles of "wife" and "mother" rather than be themselves.

Belabored is an urgent call for us to trust women and let them choose what happens to their own bodies, from a writer who "is on a roll" (Bitch Magazine).

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"A thoughtful, impassioned look at mothers and mothering."
—Kirkus

"With wit and deadly seriousness, Lenz draws attention to the rising rate of maternal mortality in the U.S. and calls for an update to the way people view pregnancy in America."
—Time Magazine

"In a voice full of humor, passion and urgency, Lenz asks that women be the ones making decisions about their bodies."
—Time Magazine

"Lenz deftly skewers all of the stereotypes around pregnancy and motherhood in her wonderful, must-read."
—New York Journal of Books

"Lyz Lenz is brilliant, and if you haven't ordered her book yet, what are you even doing with your life?"—Jessica Valenti, author of Sex Object

"In Belabored, Lyz Lenz burrows inside our culture's myths and fantasies about motherhood, mining her own deeply personal experiences to reveal a far uglier and more complex truth. Lenz is that smart, acid-tongued friend who entertains you with jaw-dropping stories while daring you to think more deeply. Belabored is riveting, riotous, and bracingly honest."
—Pamela Colloff, senior reporter at ProPublica and staff writer at the New York Times Magazine

"This book is just wonderful, a pure distillation of righteous fury that is always timely, but especially now."—Sarah Weinman, author of The Real Lolita

"Deeply researched, infinitely inclusive, and a scorching page-turner, Belabored is required reading for anyone interested in the human goddamn race."—Megan Stielstra, author of The Wrong Way to Save Your Life

"I regularly turn to Lyz Lenz for writing that is incisive, funny, and compellingly furious."
—Rebecca Traister, author of Good and Mad

Library Journal

07/01/2020

Cedar Rapids Gazette columnist Lenz (God Land) has written a book that lives up to her intention of uncovering idealizations of motherhood and maternal bodies, beginning with her laugh-out-loud dedication to her children. Her visceral writing contains both strength and directness, sounding much like a friend sharing details about everything from blood to breast milk to weight gain as a polemicist, clearly influenced in tone and rhetoric style by Mary Wollstonecraft, whose language she borrows for her subtitle. With attention paid to the racial, socioeconomic, and gendered structures that limit the "rights of pregnant women," Lenz spotlights the ways in which society treats women as disposable, especially when they are taking on the literal and figurative weight of maternity. She also relates topics such as the high number of maternal deaths in the United States and the continued assault on reproductive rights. VERDICT By using her experiences to explore wide-ranging questions relating to motherhood, Lenz has joined the ranks of Jessica Valenti and others as a reframer (and hopefully reformer) of the politics of motherhood. A strong addition to courses in women's, gender, and sexuality studies.—Emily Bowles, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison

Kirkus Reviews

2020-05-30
How the reality of motherhood contrasts sharply with our culture's prevailing creation myth.

In America, writes Lenz, “to be a mother is to become a myth”—a white woman of purity and perfection, placed atop a pedestal, selflessly devoted to procreation and child care. Absent from this myth are obese, incarcerated, black, brown, Native, or queer mothers, whose images do not fit with “the canonization of a certain type of femininity.” Drawing on stories by and about a diversity of mothers, medical and sociological research, women’s history, feminist theory, and her own vividly rendered experiences, Lenz offers a shrewd debunking of the myth of motherhood and a perceptive examination of “the violence of the term mother.” Raised in an Evangelical family and, until recently, married to a religious spouse, Lenz had imbibed the message that pregnancy offered “the promise of fulfillment.” No one intimated that if she miscarried, she would be deemed culpable; that while pregnant, everything she did, ate, or drank would be scrutinized; that she might feel depressed during and after pregnancy; that the birth itself would be highly medicalized. To be a mother, she came to realize, “is to occupy a political space where your body is fought over and you feel powerless to control the conversation that rages around you.” That conversation has been dominated by men—politicians who make laws regulating abortion and family leave and doctors who outlawed midwives, urging women to give birth in hospitals, where, in the early 20th century, “infections raged” and doctors ruled. “The history of birth,” writes the author, “is the story of men and medicine slowly taking over control of the female body” with episiotomies, sedatives, forceps, and C-sections. Working on this book, Lenz admits, changed how she sees herself as a mother and made her realize “how alone we all are.”

A thoughtful, impassioned look at mothers and mothering.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940177649597
Publisher:	Hachette Audio
Publication date:	08/11/2020
Edition description:	Unabridged

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