Infertility in a Crowded Country

This beautifully rendered ethnography makes visible the haunting social challenge of infertility for Indian women, and especially Muslim minority women, whose reproduction is always suspect. Stories of women's secret but valiant attempts to conceive animate the pages of this book, which is essential reading for scholars of gender, kinship, and religion in South Asia, as well as those interested in reproductive justice in the Global South. -- Marcia C. Inhorn, author of Cosmopolitan Conceptions: IVF Sojourns in Global Dubai By focusing on infertility, this book fills a huge gap in the study of reproduction in India. Bringing together material from Indian films, literature, extensive ethnography, and her own experiences as a daughter-in-law in India, Holly Donahue Singh weaves an anthropologically informed and fascinating account of people's reproductive desires framed by the real world of inequalities and lack of reproductive justice. Yet, it is not all doom and gloom as people forge their way out of difficulties or find new paths outside of reproductive mandates. -- Ravinder Kaur, Professor of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi While the story of female reproductive systems has multiple dimensions, Holly Donahue Singh's narrative introduces us to a fascinating picture of how such dimensions find expressions in everyday life and popular cultures. With an in-depth understanding of vernacular symbols, metaphorization, and narrative strategies, this book moves the reader closer to a setting where the ordinariness of life emerges as an intriguing space to rethink various complex processes. In addition, this book provides a gendered lens to translate multilayered theoretical aspects. Singh's sensibilities and careful observations make this work more accessible as well. -- Afsar Mohammad, author of The Festival of Pirs: Popular Islam and Shared Devotion in South India