Claire L. Wendland is professor in the Departments of Anthropology and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is the author of A Heart for the Work: Journeys through an African Medical School, the first ethnography of a medical school in the Global South, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
"“A well-written, compelling, dynamic narrative that broadens and complicates readers’ understanding of the contributing causes and impacts of maternal mortality. . . . Highly recommended.” * Choice * “I really enjoyed reading this book. . . . It’s a book that, to me, speaks to the reader’s humanity at least as much as it speaks to their intellect.” * New Books Network * ""Written by an ethnographer and obstetrician, this wide-ranging and comprehensive book offers a much more nuanced picture of maternal deaths and maternal health than much of the literature on critical global health can do—and it does so out of a commitment and an expertise, yet also a humility and curiosity that is often lacking in critical global health scholarship. It fills an important gap."" -- Ruth Jane Prince, University of Oslo ""At last maternal mortality, that raging topic in obstetric, global health, and epidemiology circles, receives the sophisticated, complex, qualitative, and nuanced treatment it has long deserved. By emphasizing partialities and sharing stories, this anthropology offers up an important set of diagnostics about why so many poor, black, African women still die in pregnancy and childbirth, and how these death scenes unfold and what they conceal."" -- Nancy Rose Hunt, author of A Colonial Lexicon: Of Birth Ritual, Medicalization, and Mobility in the Congo"