13 Ways of Looking at Reproductive Lives

This review essay places The Myth of the Perfect Pregnancy (2019), which historicizes miscarriage, in conversation with What God is Honored Here? (2019), a collection of essays by Native women and women of color about miscarriage and infant loss, to show how the history and current experience of miscarriage is complicated by the cultural forces that tell us how to feel about our reproductive experiences. However, it also argues that even if we are to contextualize miscarriage as a common, normal part of reproduction, as Lara Freidenfelds argues we should do, there is still an imperative to understand how, for Native women and women of color, the experience of miscarriage and infant loss can often be shaped by the racism of medical institutions and by a historical exclusion from health care that values their pregnancies and reproductive bodies.