PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Amrita Pande is a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Cape Town. Her research focuses on the intersection of new technologies and reproductive labor, and her writings have appeared in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Gender and Society, Critical Social Policy, International Migration Review, Qualitative Sociology, Feminist Studies, the Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Reproductive BioMedicine, and in several edited volumes. She is also an educator-performer and is currently involved in a multimedia theater performance, Made in India: Notes from a Baby Farm, which is based on her ethnographic work on surrogacy.
An invaluable work. Pande writes vividly, sensitively, and with critical intelligence about an incredibly complex modern phenomenon. Her attentiveness to the diverse situations and personalities of surrogate mothers is her book's greatest strength. A gripping read. -- Ann Grodzins Gold, Syracuse University In this brave and unique study, Amrita Pande takes us with empathy and grace into the world of the Indian surrogate, asking how she feels about carrying a baby she must give up. Highly perceptive, deeply thoughtful, and analytically nuanced, Pande proposes new answers to a new question. An important book and a great read. -- Arlie Hochschild, author of The Outsourced Self: What Happens When We Pay Others to Live Our Lives for Us A rich, nuanced analysis that recognizes these women's attempts to negotiate the challenges of class, gender, race, and citizenship. In analyzing both their actions and their accounts, Pande explores how Indian surrogates resist, reframe, and seek to build better lives for themselves and their families through their globalized labor. -- Joya Misra, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Wombs in Labor is an absorbing and meticulously researched work. Amrita Pande fruitfully scrutinises the minutiae of interactions among surrogates and the community of a clinic for their underlying meaning... recommended to anyone interested in the subject of surrogacy and will please all readers. London School of Economics and Political Science Wombs in Labor is an important book that sheds light on the workings of transnational commercial surrogacy in India... This book is a valuable read for anyone interested in commercial surrogacy, global inequality and women's labor. -- Koh Sin Yee Asian Review of Books
