NINE MOONS

A Peruvian journalist’s vibrant musings on pregnancy and childbirth.

In this whip-smart follow-up to Sexographies (2018), the author details her nine months of pregnancy as anything but pastel. Wiener interweaves facts on embryonic development and other scientific elements with visceral experience and accounts of her rabbit-hole internet searches to reveal the anxiety of her first full-term pregnancy. The author examines a host of commonplace markers, such as sonograms, weight gain, baby showers, and choosing a name, but also taboos—e.g., pornography featuring pregnant women ("future mothers were seen as literal sex bombs") and mythological cannibalism. Such dark, fertile forays signal Wiener's original take on the simultaneously common and unique experience of pregnancy. Whether contemplating sex and abortions in her youth, the portrayal of murders in the media, or the “terrifying mother-daughter dialectic” that prompted her to wish for a boy instead of a girl—to avoid a "bad residual copy" of herself—the author's ruminations are consistently provocative, digging into areas many are not willing to go. When Wiener turns to the Lima of her childhood or Barcelona, where she and her husband navigated life as undocumented immigrants looking for work and a decent apartment, the evident love and passion serve as effective counterweights to the nightmarish moments recounted elsewhere. References to pregnancy guides, which Wiener read with some disbelief, and pop culture further enrich the author's investigations. Wiener's reflections on her relationship with her mother, which included microaggressions and tense exchanges, are also illuminating. When Wiener gave birth to a girl, it didn't happen as she’d imagined (when does it ever?), but it's a natural conclusion. "They show her to me like a waiter shows you a bottle of wine," she writes, "as if I could say that I don't want her. They lay her on top of me. She's no longer an extension of me. She's another."

Refreshingly literary and offbeat—a mother-to-be book for firebrands.