Knocking Myself Up
A Memoir of My (In)Fertility
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
From PEN/America Award winner, 2021 Guggenheim fellow, and beloved literary and tarot icon Michelle Tea, the hilarious, powerfully written, taboo-breaking story of her journey to pregnancy and motherhood as a 40 year-old, queer, uninsured woman
Written in intimate, gleefully TMI prose, Knocking Myself Up is the irreverent account of Tea’s route to parenthood—with a group of ride-or-die friends, a generous drag queen, and a whole lot of can-do pluck. Along the way she falls in love with a wholesome genderqueer a decade her junior, attempts biohacking herself a baby with black market fertility meds (and magicking herself an offspring with witch-enchanted honey), learns her eggs are busted, and enters the Fertility Industrial Complex in order to carry her younger lover’s baby.
With the signature sharp wit and wild heart that have made her a favorite to so many readers, Tea guides us through the maze of medical procedures, frustrations and astonishments on the path to getting pregnant, wryly critiquing some of the systems that facilitate that choice (“a great, punk, daredevil thing to do”). In Knocking Myself Up, Tea has crafted a deeply entertaining and profound memoir, a testament to the power of love and family-making, however complex our lives may be, to transform and enrich us.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this frank and funny memoir, essayist Tea (How to Grow Up) spares no detail of her arduous odyssey of getting pregnant at 40. "I'm about to bring you into my inner world," she promises readers, "during a period of time when that space was as wild, messy, hopeful, dizzy, tragic, terrifying, and openhearted as any era I've ever lived." Despite the title, it takes a village to get the author pregnant, including an acupuncturist, a friendly witch, a number of friends to ferry fertility meds across the border, and a glamorous drag queen sperm donor. Every stage of Tea's quest presents revelations devastating—like discovering uterine fibroids after months of failed insemination attempts—dazzling, and packed with information one may not expect when they're expecting: ovulation (unexpectedly aggro), implantation (may cause bleeding), pregnancy (who knew it could change the shape of one's eyes?). Taken as a whole, Tea's unconventional "birth story" serves as a celebration of the human body, its hidden miracles, and, as she aptly puts it, "not just the dramatic climax of a last push and a first breath, but the story of a choice made, a dare accepted, a journey undertaken." This heartfelt work embraces every facet of the human experience: heartache, hope, and—with a little luck—joy.
