Elisa Albert's "After Birth" in the NY Times

Elisa Albert shares the stage with Yelena Akhtiorskaya on Thursday, March 26.

More about their events:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/albert_akht15.html

Merritt Tierce reviews Elisa Albert's new novel After Birth in the New York Times Book Review:

"Albert has inherited the house Grace Paley built, with its narrow doorways just wide enough for wit and tragedy and blistering, exasperated love. And no one is better suited to manage that ­estate, to keep it unapologetically going, to keep its rooms of inquiry open. Paley found the seam where the important and the madcap are stitched together on the ­underside of life, and here is Albert working that same territory. Her Ari is bold enough to put motherhood up on a pedestal because its sanctity is as undeniable as it is dangerous. But she also wants to be sure you know the pedestal is made of ­excrement and tears and vomit and breast milk and the very selves of a billion unknown women."

"No doubt After Birth will be ­shunted into one of the lesser subcanons of ­contemporary literature, like 'women’s fiction,' but it ought to be as essential as The Red Badge of Courage. Just ­because so much of mothering happens inside a house doesn’t mean it’s not a war: a battle for sovereignty over your heart, your mind, your life — and one you can’t bear for the other side to lose."

More in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/books/review/after-birth-by-elisa-albert.html

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Celebrating Motherhood as a Choice-- Katha Pollitt

Connie Schultz of the Washington Post reviews Katha Pollitt's new book on abortion: Pro. Pollitt visits the Institute on Jan. 29th.

Schultz writes:  Katha Pollitt may not appreciate my starting this review with her description of her own experience of motherhood, but this is my attempt to broaden her audience beyond the predictable cast for her small, powerful book. “People think of pregnant women as weak and vulnerable, but when I was pregnant with my daughter I felt as if I could put my hand in fire and it would only glow,” she writes in “Pro.” “I never felt alone: There were two of us, right there. I didn’t think of my child as an embryo or fetus. . . . I thought of her first as a funny little sea creature of indeterminate sex, and later, yes, as a baby, even though she was only a baby in my thoughts.”

To state what should be obvious, Pollitt, like most other women who support abortion rights, celebrates motherhood as a choice. The poet and columnist for the Nation is also one of the most eloquent champions for women’s reproductive freedom, and her latest book is a manifesto.

More in the Washington Post:   http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-pro-reclaiming-abortion-rights-by-katha-pollitt/2014/11/21/ba6498f0-52fb-11e4-809b-8cc0a295c773_story.html

More about Pollitt's upcoming visit:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/pollitt_katha15.html

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