LINEA NIGRA

A Mexican writer describes her pregnancy and the first months of her son’s life.

When Barrera first found out she was pregnant with her son, Silvestre, her husband suggested that she keep a pregnancy diary. Although she thought the idea of a pregnancy diary was “a little hackneyed,” she admitted that she was writing about her experience, albeit mostly in fragments. As she was adjusting to her changing body, Barrera and her family lived through an earthquake that destroyed the home of the patron who owned a collection of Barrera’s mother’s paintings. The author intertwines her experiences of pregnancy and motherhood—from labor and delivery to breastfeeding to discovering her doctor’s dishonesty—with a catalog of the condition of her mother’s paintings. Throughout the narrative, Barrera includes historical anecdotes and quotes from other women who have written about motherhood, childbirth, and pregnancy—from Mary Shelley and Natalia Ginzburg to Rivka Galchen and Maggie Nelson—and she argues that pregnancy is a fundamentally literary experience. “Pregnancy is transformation in time, it’s a retrospective account and—whether you like it not—there’s a plot, a story,” she writes. At the same time, she laments the fact that women are warned that having children signals the end of their literary careers. Here, she quotes Ursula K. Le Guin: Women “have been told that they ought not to try to be both a mother and a writer because both the kids and the books will pay—because it can’t be done—because it is unnatural.” The story ends in the early months of Silvestre’s life, which coincided with her mother’s treatment for ovarian cancer; this leads the author to examine the cyclical nature of motherhood. Barrera communicates her trenchant observations in gorgeous, highly efficient prose that sharply reflects the fragmented reality of pregnancy and early parenthood. Rather than adhering to a traditional narrative structure, the author follows her trains of thought wherever they take her, and readers will be happy to tag along.

A uniquely lyrical account of early motherhood.