Expecting, Chitra Ramaswamy
Expecting, Chitra Ramaswamy
List: $21.99 | Sale: $15.39
Club: $10.99

Expecting
The inner life of pregnancy

Author: Chitra Ramaswamy

Narrator: Chitra Ramaswamy

Unabridged: 7 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Saraband

Published: 05/16/2024


Synopsis

From the author of Homelands, a Guardian memoir of the year 2022
"A cartoon fried egg. An eye. The tiniest of black holes. It needed a professional eye to be seen, but once pointed out it was undeniable. My own little Big Bang. The beginning of it all." When Chitra Ramaswamy discovered she was pregnant for the first time, she longed to read something that went above and beyond a biology book or prescriptive manual; something that, instead, got to the heart of the overwhelming, thrilling, and often misrepresented experience she was embarking on. She couldn’t find one.So, she wrote Expecting.Expecting is a creative memoir. Through nine chapters exploring the nine months of gestation and birth, Ramaswamy takes the reader on a physical, intellectual, emotional, literary, and philosophical journey through the landscape of pregnancy. Childbearing and childbirth are experiences defined both by the measurable monthly changes to one's life and body, and by those immeasurable, often obscured and neglected changes in perspective that are accessed through metaphor, art, and emotion.Ramaswamy bears witness to the experience of pregnancy in an intimate yet expansive book of lyrical essays, paying tribute to this most extraordinary and ordinary of experiences.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Anwen on February 17, 2020

Ramaswamy wrote this memoir of her pregnancy in the style of nature writing, following Nan Shepherd's The Living Mountain, as she views pregnancy as being somewhat akin to scaling a metaphorical mountain, and it makes for a really close view of the human body as topography. As an Indian woman in a le......more

Goodreads review by Gabe on May 10, 2020

2.5/5 I picked this up after reading Chitra Ramaswamy's essay in 'Nasty Women' and while I loved the essay, this book was very disappointing. I wanted the real, authentic and sometimes negative perspective on pregnancy instead of the picture-perfect miracle it is painted to be, however she spoke so m......more

Goodreads review by Tineke on January 02, 2020

I am really grateful I read this. Although my own pregnancy was completely unexpected, there were moments I felt almost as though the book were a friend I didn't know I needed. It made me feel sane as another woman experiencing pregnancy as a writer. I spent the first half of my pregnancy in Edinbur......more

Goodreads review by Rebecca on May 28, 2017

My Mum got me this as a gift as I embark on my own pregnancy journey. I experienced many of the same thoughts and feelings and indeed the exact same 12-week scan as the author and felt like this book was so much more revealing than a non-fiction practical guide as it addresses the inner-most thought......more