Hatching, Jenni Quilter
Hatching, Jenni Quilter
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Hatching
Experiments in Motherhood and Technology

Author: Jenni Quilter

Narrator: Jenni Quilter

Unabridged: 9 hr 15 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 12/06/2022

Synopsis

A provocative examination of reproductive technologies that questions our understanding of fertility, motherhood, and the female body

Since the world’s first test-tube baby was born in 1978, in vitro fertilization has made the unimaginable possible for millions of people, but its revolutionary potential remains unrealized. Today, fertility centers continue to reinforce conservative norms of motherhood and family, and infertility remains a deeply emotional experience many women are reluctant to discuss.
 
In this vivid and incisive personal and cultural history, Jenni Quilter explores what it is like to be one of those women, both the site of a bold experiment and a potential mother caught between fearing and yearning. Quilter observes her own experience with the eye of a critic, recounting the pleasures and pains of objectification: how medicine mediates between women and their bodies, how marketing redefines pregnancy and early parenthood as a set of products, how we celebrate the “natural” and denigrate the artificial. 
 
With nuance, empathy, and a fierce intellect, Quilter asks urgent questions about what it means to desire a child and how much freedom reproductive technologies actually offer. Her writing embraces the complexities of motherhood and the humanity of IVF: the waiting rooms, the message boards, and the genetic permutations of what a thoroughly modern family might mean.

About The Author

Jenni Quilter teaches at New York University. Her most recent book is New York School Painters & Poets: Neon in Daylight, for which she was a finalist for the 2014 AICA Award for Best Criticism. She has written for the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement (London), Poetry Review, and the London Review of Books.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Mihiret on November 30, 2022

This is a deeply thoughtful exploration of how we do or don't get pregnant and the role of science in getting there. It is a topic the author is personally invested in, as it begins with her struggles with infertility and her story provides a human framework, but she is not only recording and proces......more

Goodreads review by Nidhi on December 06, 2022

Releasing today, Jenni Quilter’s immersive and thought provoking, Hatching’s memoir explores Quilter’s personal and often difficult experiences with modern reproductive technologies, fertility, motherhood, and the female body. Through the memoir, Quilter explores the choices we have as a humanity wh......more

Goodreads review by Becky on November 09, 2022

I thought this book was amazing. I learned so much about IVF. It was so interesting to learn everything its taken for IVF to even be in the realm of possibility and how this path to motherhood has come to be. When I went to the hospital for routine prenatle care I never thought about all the sacrifi......more

Goodreads review by L on March 04, 2023

This book is an informative and interdisciplinary examination of reproductive technologies with a focus on IVF. Quilter observes that in the assisted reproductive literature, there is little cross over between the medical technical literature, cultural and feminist theory and analysis, and the perso......more

Goodreads review by Big Fat Bear Living on March 22, 2023

3.5 starts, not quite 4 for me. hesitant to rate this, but what the heck. contrary to other reviews, i loved the in depth history of ob/gyn science and how it was led by men who exploited women -- which, yes, was the norm for the time but doesn't mean that it was condoned by all in the field or that......more

Quotes

Praise for Hatching:

“Quilter’s memoir of conceiving a child through I.V.F. provides a history of the treatment and a sharp interrogation of her experiences.” —The New Yorker

“A stunningly personal and cultural history of fertility, from the first test-tube baby in 1978 to the anxious message boards of parents-to-be today.” —Book Riot

“Melding intimate memoir and enlightening medical history. . . . A sensitive, politically astute examination of reproduction.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Profound. . . . This is a must-read for anyone considering IVF.” —Publishers Weekly

“Sometimes books show up just when we need them to. Quilter accomplishes the rare feat of being both introspective and unflinching as she considers exactly what it means to become human.” —Juli Berwald, author of Spineless and Life on the Rocks
 
“Quilter's brilliant searchlight lays bare all the ways a person assigned femaleness will find herself, in our late moment, dancing with questions of reproduction, technology, dominion. A timely intellectual, social, personal, and philosophical history, Hatching encompasses both the most intimate and far reaches, allowing us to see terrain anew and slightly defamiliarized.” —Edie Meidav, author of Another Love Discourse
 
“As expert at reading the faces in a doctor’s waiting room as she is at appraising a moment or era in wider human history, Jenni Quilter is an illuminating and intellectually dexterous tour-guide through the relatively uncharted field of fertility technology. Hatching is as multi-minded and heartfelt as it is genre-crossing and expansive.” —Gregory O'Brien, author of Always Song in the Water
 
“Quilter’s personal story of motherhood, woven with impressive scholarly rigor, produces a remarkable book. Her expansive use of archival documents, pop culture, and biography is unique and thrilling.” —Lisa Jean Moore, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies, State University of New York, Purchase College

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