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Birthing Justice: Black Women, Pregnancy and Childbirth edited by Julia Chinyere Oparah and Alicia D. Bonaparte

Now available in hard cover and paperback - SECOND EDITION COMING SOON!

BWBJ’s anthology shares deeply moving stories by black women about giving birth and childbirth activism. This book will transform forever the way you think about childbirth!

There is so much that we can learn from the wisdom of Black midwives, doulas and activist mamas. Disproportionate numbers of preterm babies, and infant and maternal mortality are not inevitable. Women can experience childbirth as a powerful, healing and sacred moment, rather than one of disappointment and even trauma.  But we need to take action to challenge the inequities in our maternal outcomes. Help us to take Birthing Justice on the road, so that together we can build a movement for Birth Justice!

Birthing Justice invites you to learn from black women birth warriors and to make change happen in your family, community and world.

Book reviews

“Birthing Justice: Black Women, Pregnancy and Childbirth is a truly original and innovative book — and an absolute necessity in the current field of research on reproduction. With an interdisciplinary range of authors that also includes activists both within and outside the academy, the book demonstrates the important relationship between feminist scholarship and feminist activism.”
— Christa Craven, Chair, Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program, Associate Professor of Anthropology, College of Wooster, author, Pushing for Midwives: Homebirth Mothers and the Reproductive Rights Movement.
“At last, a book that places the experiences of Black women at the center of the debates about childbirth. Mixing activist, scholarly and personal perspectives, this book reclaims the history of black women as active agents in their birthing experiences, and deftly critiques the unwanted and questionable interventions that women throughout the diaspora have been subjected to, while inspiring readers to push for social change.”
— Kimala Price, Associate Professor, Women’s Studies, Co-Director, The Bread and Roses Center for Feminist Research and Activism, San Diego State University
“Midwives value ‘going where the women are,’ and that is very much what this book has done – South Carolina and North, Zimbabwe, Canada, the South Bronx and Florida; Neonatal intensive care units, operating rooms, radiology suites and birth centers, HIV Clinics and bedrooms – this book takes us to all of them. And the women – they are mothers and midwives and doctors and nurses; they tell their story, a quilt square tells their death; they stand as women or as the still-rare pregnant transman. And the pain and the strength of what it means to be Black and pregnant is written on every page. A long-awaited, much needed book!”
— Barbara Katz Rothman, Professor of Sociology, City University of New York.
 

Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword, Shafia Monroe

Foreword, Jeanne Flavin

Introduction: Beyond Coercion and Malign Neglect: Black Women and the Struggle for Birth Justice

Julia Chinyere Oparah with Black Women Birthing Justice

I       Birthing Histories 

1      Queen Elizabeth Perry Turner: “Granny Midwife,” 1931–1956

Darline Turner

2      Regulating Childbirth: Physicians and Granny Midwives in South Carolina

Alicia D. Bonaparte

3      Between Traditional Knowledge and Western Medicine: Women Birthing in  Postcolonial Zimbabwe

Christina Mudokwenyu-Rawdon, Peggy Dube, Nester T. Moyo, and Stephen Munjanja

II     Beyond Medical versus Natural: Redefining Birth Injustice

4     An Abolitionist Mama Speaks: On Natural Birth and Miscarriage

Viviane Saleh-Hanna

5      Mothering: A Post-C-Section Journey

Jacinda Townsend

6      Confessions of a Black Pregnant Dad

Syrus Marcus Ware

7      Birth Justice and Population Control

Loretta J. Ross

8      Beyond Silence and Stigma: Pregnancy and HIV for African Diasporic Women in Canada

Marvelous Muchenje and Victoria Logan Kennedy

9      What I Carry: A Story of Love and Loss

Iris Jacob

10    Images from the Safe Motherhood Quilt

Ina May Gaskin and Laura Gilkey

III    Changing Lives, One Birth at a Time

11    Birthing Sexual Freedom and Healing: A Survivor Mother’s Birth Story

Biany Pérez

12    Birth as Battle Cry: A Doula’s Journey from Home to Hospital

Gina Mariela Rodríguez

13    Sister Midwife: Nurturing and Reflecting Black Womanhood in an Urban Hospital

Stephanie Etienne

14    A Love Letter for My Daughter: Love as a Political Act

Haile Eshe Cole

15    New Visions in Birth, Intimacy, Kinship, and Sisterly Partnerships

Shannon Gibney and Valerie Deus

16    I Am My Hermana’s Keeper: Reclaiming Afro-indigenous Ancestral Wisdom as a Doula

Griselda Rodriguez

17    The First Cut Is the Deepest: A Mother-Daughter Conversation about Birth, Justice, Healing, and Love

Pauline Ann McKenzie-Day and Alexis Pauline Gumbs

IV    Taking Back Our Power: Organizing for Birth Justice

18    Unexpected Allies: Obstetrician Activism, VBACs, and the Birth Justice Movement

Christ-Ann Magloire and Julia Chinyere Oparah

19    Birthing Freedom: Black American Midwifery and Liberation Struggles

Ruth Hays

20    Becoming an Outsider-Within: Jennie Joseph and Florida Midwifery

Alicia D. Bonaparte and Jennie Joseph

21    Beyond Shackling: Prisons, Pregnancy, and the Struggle for Birth Justice

Priscilla A. Ocen and Julia Chinyere Oparah