Alexandra Kimball

Praise for The Seed

“Kimball offers a brilliant semiotic analysis of infertile women throughout history, mythology and pop culture.” Zosia Bielski, The Globe and Mail

“Kimball is a virtuosic thinker, making nimble use of decades of feminist theory. At the same time, The Seed is highly readable. It’s one of those books that is delightful because you realize with each page you are learning so much.” Heather and Arizona O’Neill, CBC Books

“… An elegant combination of memoir, history and cultural critique…Kimball’s anger at a social movement that claims to speak for her experience as a woman while neglecting her infertility would be understandable, but The Seed is a much richer text for its author’s intellectual generosity.” Christina Turner, Rabble.ca

From the publisher

In pop culture as much as in policy advocacy, the feminist movement has historically left infertile women out in the cold. This book traverses the chilly landscape of miscarriage, and the particular grief that accompanies the longing to make a family. Framed by her own desire for a child, journalist Alexandra Kimball brilliantly reveals the pain and loneliness of infertility, especially as a lifelong feminist. Her experience of online infertility support groups – where women gather in forums to discuss IVF, surrogacy, and isolation – leaves her longing for a real life community of women working to break down the stigma of infertility. In the tradition of Eula Biss’s On Immunity and Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-sided, Kimball marries perceptive analysis with deep reportage – her findings show the lie behind the prevailing, and at times paradoxical, cultural attitudes regarding women’s right to actively choose to have children. Braiding together feminist history, memoir, and reporting from the front lines of the battle for reproductive rights and technology, The Seed plants in readers the desire for a world where no woman is made to feel that her biology is her destiny.

The Seed is available for purchase on Amazon, in select independent bookstores across Canada, and from Coach House Books.