I Know You Rider
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A candid and philosophical memoir tackling abortion and the complex decision to reproduce
I Know You Rider is Leslie Stein’s rumination on the many complex questions surrounding the decision to reproduce. Opening in an abortion clinic, the book accompanies Stein through a year of her life, steeped in emotions she was not quite expecting while also looking far beyond her own experiences. She visits with a childhood friend who’s just had twins and is trying to raise them as environmentally as possible, chats with another who’s had a vasectomy to spare his wife a lifetime of birth control, and spends Christmas with her own mother, who aches for a grandchild.
Through these melodically rendered conversations with loved ones and strangers, Stein weaves one continuing conversation with herself. She presents a sometimes sweet, sometimes funny, and always powerfully empathetic account, asking what makes a life meaningful and where we find joy, amid other questions—most of which have no solid answers, much like real life.
Instead of focusing on trauma, I Know You Rider is a story about unpredictability, change, and adaptability, adding a much-needed new perspective to a topic often avoided or discussed through a black-and-white lens. People are ever changing, contradicting themselves, and having to deal with unforeseen circumstances: Stein holds this human condition with grace and humor, as she embraces the cosmic choreography and keeps walking, open to what life blows her way.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This brilliantly painted memoir by Stein (Present) explores her experience of abortion with clarity and tenderness. Beginning in the clinic prior to the procedure, Stein jumps back and forth in time to chronicle the liaison that resulted in the pregnancy, holidays with her mother who longs for grandchildren, and moments from her bartending gig (such as a wry moment where she dreams up a "Yelp for babies" to critique the stroller-moms she ushers out the door). Stein's graceful watercolors and whimsical lettering are used to tremendous effect: the cerulean tears she spills after the procedure and the jarringly jaunty conversation that overrides her inner monologue are all the more powerful for their literal brightness. Stein refuses to sand down the difficult edges and lets the choices she makes her abortion, her habit of cemetery sightseeing stand for themselves. She just keeps on tending bar and to the moods of her customers in the midst of private trauma, doesn't own a sofa, and finds solace in imagining the stages of the pregnancy she decided not to carry forward. In baring the details of her life without apology, Stein's multifaceted portrait of a life in progress gives due nuance to a complicated topic.
