My Baby First Birthday by Jenny Zhang

My Baby First Birthday by Jenny Zhang

My Baby First Birthday is about existence and non-existence. It's about being born--without consent. Jenny Zhang writes about accepting pain, about the way we fetishize womanhood and motherhood, and reduce women to their violations, traumas, and body parts. She questions the way we feminize and racialize nurturing, and live in service of other people's dreams. How we idealize birth and being baby, how it's only in our mothers' wombs that we're still considered innocent, blameless, and undamaged, because it's only then that we don't have to earn love. Her poems explore the obscenity of patriarchy, whiteness, and capitalism, the violence of rescue and heroism. The magic trick in this book is that despite all these themes, the book never feels like some jeremiad. Zhang uses friendship as a lyric. She seeks tenderness, radiant beauty, and having love for your mistakes. Through all this, she writes about being alone--really alone, like why was I ever born alone--and trying, despite everything, to reach out and touch something--skin to skin, animal to animal.

Zhang, Jenny: - Jenny Zhang was born in Shanghai and grew up in New York. She is the author of the poetry collection Dear Jenny, We Are All Find and the story collection Sour Heart.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781947793811
ISBN 10	1947793810
Title	My Baby First Birthday
Author	Jenny Zhang
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Tin House Books
Year published	2020-05-12
Number of pages	208
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable