Bearing Life: Women's Writings on Childlessness

Touching on such themes as HIV, abortion, the lesbian/feminist movement and overpopulation, editor Ratner's (Someday Songs) collection of writings by 52 North American women illuminates the difficulties of being a childless female in our society. Grouped in three sections--""Facing Choice,"" ""Knowing Loss"" and ""Bearing Life""--the poems, essays and fiction of such well-known authors as Margaret Atwood and Grace Paley appear here alongside the works of lesser known and previously unpublished writers. Irena Klepfisz, a Jewish woman whose father was killed in the Holocaust, writes in a moving essay that, despite the pressure she feels to have children since she is the last of her family line, ""children are not a medicine or a vaccine which stamps out loneliness or isolation."" In Joy Williams's tongue-and-cheek ""The Case Against Babies,"" the author cites overpopulation and its devastating effects as a reason to remain childless. A poem by Diane di Prima, ""I Get My Period, September 1964,"" not only dates back farthest but is one of the most powerful selections, expressing the anguish some woman feel at being unable to conceive a child. In Nikki Dillon's fictional interview with a childless celebrity, ""Chick Without Children,"" the Chick echoes the theme so often repeated in the volume: ""It just got lodged in my head--a link between freedom and childlessness."" While a few entries are less memorable, the volume contains many well-written, thoughtful pieces, including contributions by Ratner herself, Denise Duhamel, Rita Mae Brown, Sandra Cisneros and Kathleen Norris. It is the editor's hope that, in reading it, ""perhaps the next childless woman might not feel so alone."" Agent, Shelley Roth. (Jan.)