Scandalize My Name: Black Feminist Practice and the Making of Black Social Life
Book
From sapphire, mammy, and jezebel, to the angry black woman, baby mama, and nappy-headed ho, black...
Why Perinatal Depression Matters
Book
You have probably heard of postnatal depression, but did you know that most cases of postnatal...
Jennifer Fox recommended Roma (2018) in Movies (curated)
Fetal Doppler UnbornHeart
Health & Fitness
App
The app is used together with the Fetal Doppler device sold by UnbornHeart. Share the joy of...
Flo Period & Ovulation Tracker
Health & Fitness and Medical
App
Flo Period Tracker is a smart and simple way to track your cycle. Flo makes accurate and reliable...
This Common Secret
Susan Wicklund and Alex Kesselheim
Book Watch
In This Common Secret Dr. Susan Wicklund chronicles her emotional and dramatic twenty-year career on...
abortion women's rights healthcare reproductive rights
When Love Returns (The Zimmerman Restoration Trilogy #3)
Book
Riddled with doubt and lingering regrets, will Suzanne and Paul find strength in God to explore a...
Jane (a Filipino immigrant to the USA) has been persuaded by her aunt, that the easiest way to provide for her infant daughter is to become a surrogate for someone else’s baby. Mae runs Golden Oaks (nicknamed The Farm by Lisa, another of the surrogates), a luxury resort set in woodland, far from prying residents of Golden Oaks are all young women. And they’re all pregnant with the babies of wealthy parents. It came as no surprise to me that the vast majority of these women were immigrants from The Philippines or Eastern Europe. Mae has just started to look at a more ‘luxury’ host: women who have very good educations. The future parents are willing to pay a premium rate for women like Reagan. Not that it could make any difference, because all of the surrogates are merely incubators (referred to by their numbers, not their names, when staff are talking about them out of earshot), and carry embryos made from their parents sperm and eggs. These are mainly people who don’t want to waste their time with pregnancy, childbirth and recovery. This part really didn’t sit well with me: pregnant women reduced to numbers, and parents who didn’t have time to be pregnant (how could they have time to be parents? Would their babies be like a new designer handbag?). The other thing, was that they largely speaking didn’t have time to even visit the women who were carrying their children. At one point in the book, an ultrasound technician doesn’t even acknowledge the pregnant woman that she’s seeing (or isn’t!), angles the screen away from her as she shows the picture of the baby to its parent who isn’t even in the room. The pregnant woman is a non-person - merely a walking incubator.
Make no mistake, this is a pretty damning insight in to class and race. I felt so sorry for Jane. She is cut off from her daughter. None of the women have regular contact with friends or family on the outside. And seeing foetuses and babies being used as commodities and benchmarks of profit really made me uncomfortable.
I did really enjoy this though. I liked the women who were the main characters - they all had valid reasons for their choices. And I liked that this wasn’t written as an alternative dystopian novel à la Handmaids Tale. It’s all so frighteningly plausible.
Kyera (8 KP) rated The Last Star in Books
Feb 1, 2018
Halfway through the book and the action heats up. Some characters die and others must make their first kills. Ringer drops a bomb, figuratively, and I have no idea where the storyline is going with it. It's not immediately explained, but it should have been. It just seems like a strange plot point to add. <spoiler> When you read the end, the reason for a pregnancy is apparent - but it still doesn't flow in the story (in my opinion). </spoiler>
Even three books in and I'm still constantly second guessing my conclusions. What is actually happening? Who or what is the villain? How will it all end? Beautiful and devastating. After all of the terror and death, the conclusion of the book was satisfying. Of course, there was no "and they lived happily ever after" but some of humanity survived and that's important. The lives and their stories matter.