Curator's Note
This zine was curated by Alexandra Alberda, Dr. Anna Feigenbaum, and Katy Lindemann. A big thank you to the Sarah Glidden, Cara Gormally, Sheila Alexander, Jenell Johnson, and Emily Steinberg for contributing to the zine. Permissions to use images was granted by the artists included; if you would like to use the images please reach out to them via the links provided in the zine.
To access a pdf version of the zine please use the following link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y30NTOM7xK38p8U_Bxm16EQgvzlleHlA/view?usp=sharing.
For more from these artists please see the following works:
Sarah Glidden: https://thenib.com/barren
Cara Gormally: https://www.caragormally.com/ivf
Sheila Alexander: https://www.sheilaalexanderart.com/embryo-talk.html
Jenell Johnson (referenced in the zine): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fTcXqxnUrbcmu0SGYVoGv3kez-ok7E0Z/view?usp=sharing
Emily Steinberg: https://emilysteinberg.com/artwork/3522562-Broken-Eggs.html
Comments
This is wonderful
This zine is really great, thanks so much for putting it together. I have downloaded it for later perusing.
The first thing that jumped out at me was the "persistent patient who refuses to give up on her dreams of becoming a mother".
This idea of persistence and following dreams is one that dominates popular culture. Having a "dream" and pursuing that dream against any odds is presented often as a moral good.
Accepting limitations is so often perceived as a moral failure.
This goes to the heart of what is wrong with our politics (certainly for those of us in the UK) at the moment.
Stoicism is out. Epictetus would weep to watch us strive pointlessly for things that are entirely out of reach.
Infertility is depicted, as so many things are, as an individual struggle that can be overcome with sufficient wanting it enough. (With the corollary that if you don't succeed, it's because you didn't want it enough.)
It has become a default that if you can't conceive naturally that you will submit yourself to invasive and costly procedure in the pursuit of parenthood. People who choose otherwise find themselves having to defend that decision, as though it proves they didn't really want to be parents.
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