Audiobook8 hours
The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine, and Motherhood
Written by Belle Boggs
Narrated by C. S. E. Cooney
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
()
About this audiobook
When Belle Boggs' quot;The Art of Waitingquot; 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.
Author
Belle Boggs
BELLE BOGGS has published work in Glimmer Train, Oxford American, and Best New American Voices 2003. She received an MA in fiction from the University of California at Irvine and grew up in King William County, Virginia.
Related to The Art of Waiting
Related audiobooks
Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selfish, Shallow, and Self-absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Birth: Three Mothers, Nine Months, and Pregnancy in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5But You Seemed So Happy: A Marriage, in Pieces and Bits Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mother Daughter Me Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Amateur Hour: Motherhood in Essays and Swear Words Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everything Below the Waist: Why Health Care Needs a Feminist Revolution Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5All At Sea: A Memoir Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Things That Helped: On Postpartum Depression Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5My Body Is A Big Fat Temple: An Ordinary Story of Pregnancy and Early Motherhood Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Worst Girl Gang Ever: A Survival Guide for Navigating Miscarriage and Pregnancy Loss Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Why Have Kids?: A New Mom Explores the Truth About Parenting and Happiness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina-Separating the Myth from the Medicine Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Invisible Man Got the Whole World Watching: A Young Black Man's Education Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Joy Enough: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Glass Eye: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Motherhood So White: A Memoir of Race, Gender, and Parenting in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Some of My Best Friends: Essays on Lip Service Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cinderella Ate My Daughter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Be Loved: A Memoir of Lifesaving Friendship Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOlive Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Your Guide to Miscarriage and Pregnancy Loss: Hope and Healing When You're No Longer Expecting Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCutting Teeth Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Woman Is a Woman Until She Is a Mother: Essays Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What to Eat When You Want to Get Pregnant: A Science-Based 4-Week Nutrition Program to Boost Your Fertility Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Barbara the Slut and Other People Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Personal Memoirs For You
Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'm Glad My Mom Died Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pageboy: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Woman in Me Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Own It All: How to Stop Waiting for Change and Start Creating It. Because Your Life Belongs to You. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Yes Please Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love, Lucy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5All My Knotted-Up Life: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Counting the Cost Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Year of Magical Thinking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Stay Married Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Night: New translation by Marion Wiesel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love, Pamela: A Memoir of Prose, Poetry, and Truth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finding Me: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5While Time Remains: A North Korean Girl's Search for Freedom in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Stolen Life: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Roxane Gay & Everand Originals: My Year of Psychedelics: Lessons on Better Living Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Good Girls Don't Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Glass Castle: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Not My Father's Son: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Making It So: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How Y'all Doing?: Misadventures and Mischief from a Life Well Lived Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Enough Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Art of Waiting
Rating: 3.5833333333333335 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
18 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beautifully written. A candid look at the painful and sometimes agonizing "wait" of infertility.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I am a woman going through fertility testing. I read this book interested in connection and insights. I got none. This book felt pointless to me. Perhaps it was cathartic for her to write somehow, but there was so little by way of insight. I got nothing out of it. She wrote this but shared nearly nothing. Really too bad.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Read from August 01 to September 11, 2016An insightful exploration of the author's experiences with fertility that makes connections to literature, film, medicine, politics, health insurance, etc. It is definitely educational. My assumptions about infertility, the process and struggle associated with it, were demolished. I knew it was difficult and expensive, but I didn't realize the many different methods of assisted reproduction. It is far beyond take a pill or go through in vitro fertilization. I also had NO idea what IVF really was. Boggs also discusses adoption, health care disparities, LGBT rights, and discusses how infertility is viewed in film and literature.