Seven titles that weigh the choice of motherhood

Alexia Nader is the author of the The Meaning of Daughter. She was a 2023-2024 Steinbeck Fellow. Her work has been published in The Nation, Los Angeles Review of Books, and The New Yorker among other publications. She is from Miami, Florida and currently lives in San Francisco where she teaches creative writing to children and teens.

At Electric Lit Nader tagged seven novels that "have shown me that there are many variations to the questions I grappled with in my novel about what goes into reproductive decisions." One title on the list:

Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd

The heart of this novel lies in a complicated desire shared by two sisters, Natsuko and Makiko, who both want to exert control over their bodies in ways that don’t make sense to the other. In the first section of the novel, Natsuko, the narrator, hosts Makiko and Makiko’s daughter in her apartment in Tokyo, as Makiko looks into getting breast implants. Natsuko doesn’t understand Makiko’s obsession with changing her breasts and doesn’t make an effort to understand what’s driving her sister either. In the novel’s second section, the tables are turned. Natsuko wants to try to have a child on her own. Makiko wonders why Natsuko would choose to be a single mother—knowing from Makiko’s life as well as their shared childhood—how hard it can be. Natsuko ends up turning to friends, colleagues, and other people in her community to help her understand her desire to have a child. The novel not only explores the power of women fully owning their bodily desires, but also the psychic pain of not truly being accepted on your own terms by those closest to you.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue