The Art of Waiting, Belle Boggs
The Art of Waiting, Belle Boggs
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The Art of Waiting
On Fertility, Medicine, and Motherhood

Author: Belle Boggs

Narrator: C.S.E. Cooney

Unabridged: 8 hr 33 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/06/2016


Synopsis

When Belle Boggs' "The Art of Waiting" was published in Orion in 2012, it went viral, leading to republication in Harper's Magazine and an interview on NPR's The Diane Rehm Show.

In that heartbreaking essay, Boggs eloquently recounts her realization that she might never be able to conceive. She searches the apparently fertile world around her—the emergence of thirteen-year cicadas, the birth of eaglets near her rural home, and an unusual gorilla pregnancy at a local zoo—for signs that she is not alone. Boggs also explores other aspects of fertility and infertility: the way longing for a child plays out in the classic Coen brothers film Raising Arizona; the depiction of childlessness in literature, from Macbeth to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; the financial and legal complications that accompany alternative means of family making; the private and public expressions of iconic writers grappling with motherhood and fertility. She reports, with great empathy, complex stories of couples who adopted domestically and from overseas, LGBT couples considering assisted reproduction and surrogacy, and women and men reflecting on childless or child-free lives.

About Belle Boggs

Belle Boggs is the author of The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine, and Motherhood and Mattaponi Queen. Her stories and essays have appeared in the Paris Review, Harper's Magazine, Slate, and elsewhere. She teaches at North Carolina State University.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Thomas on October 09, 2016

A lucid and wise exploration of infertility. Belle Boggs uses her own struggle to get pregnant as a launching pad to further discuss the psychological, sociological, and financial implications of fertility and motherhood. She draws from a wide range of literature, scientific research, and current ev......more

Goodreads review by Lynn on September 14, 2016

This is a courageous book written by Belle Boggs who unexpectedly found herself unable to get pregnant. She explores infertility from a variety of perspectives: biological, feministic, sociological, medical, financial, political, and psychological. The book's descriptions of the frustration, pain, i......more

Goodreads review by Karen on October 07, 2016

This was an interesting book on a subject about which I know shamefully little. As a person in a same-sex marriage the possibility of dealing with some of the same issues as those struggling with infertility is more than a little daunting. This book is certainly more geared towards those in heterose......more

Goodreads review by Brian on March 21, 2018

(4.0) Well done weaving her personal story with those of others. May not want to read this if you've been trying for a long time I've had trouble with narratives like this in the past when there are too many jumps around in time and place and characters. But she does well here. Her personal story is......more

Goodreads review by Shelly on September 16, 2017

Such a great and well researched book on infertility, adoption, IUI & IVF, surrogacy, forced sterilization, gay rights, child-free, racism & classism and probably a couple of other things that I'm forgetting. And all written in a very readable way. At the end of the book is also a listing of many re......more