A meditation on in vitro fertilization that expands and
complicates the stories we tell about pregnancy.
Medical
interventions become an exercise in patience, desire, and delirium in
this intimate account of bodily transformation and disruption. In
candid, graceful prose, Isabel Zapata gives voice to the strangeness
and complexities of conception and motherhood that are rarely
discussed publicly. Zapata frankly addresses the misogyny she
experienced during fertility treatments, explores the force of grief
in imagining possible futures, and confronts the societal
expectations around maternity. In the tradition of Rivka Galchen's
Little Labors and
Sarah Manguso's Ongoingness,
In Vitro
draws from diary and essay forms to create a new kind of literary
companion and open up space for nuanced conversations about
pregnancy.
