Narrating Infertility in Spain

Catherine Bourland Ross

2025
190 pages
$39.95
ISBN 9781684485734
Campos Ibéricos

The drop in Spanish birth rates in 1998 to their lowest level of 1.1 births per woman was accompanied by a boom in publishing about motherhood. New narrative forms, ranging from blogs to diaries to comics, expressed women's experiences, including ambivalence about motherhood in the face of societal pressures. Narrating Infertility in Spain, the first study of infertility in post-2008 female-authored texts, analyzes discussions of adoption, assisted reproduction, egg and sperm donation, and the decision not to have children due to economic or social instability. By examining the work of writers and vocal activists Silvia Nanclares, Raquel Sánchez-Silva, Samanta Villar, Laura Freixas, and Diana López Varela, Ross situates infertility in Spain within the cultural context of the Great Recession, while considering it as a business, a crisis, a stigma, and a class issue, and offering broader understandings of contemporary fertility challenges in Spain and beyond.

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Reviews
"Narrating Infertility in Spain weaves intimate stories of motherhood's elusive, often painful truths, where identity, desire, and stigma collide. Ross maps a terrain of resilience and longing - inviting us to listen closely to women's voices that challenge, unsettle, and transform the very meaning of fertility and the female body." -Ana I. Simón-Alegre, coauthor of Queer Women in Modern Spanish Literature: Activism, Sexuality, and the Otherness of the 'Chicas Raras'

"An invigorating exploration of how reproduction and motherhood intersect with issues important to middle-class Western women: infertility and childlessness. Ross's accessible prose allows readers to navigate complex social matters with ease, leaving us with a multifaceted view of these urgent debates." -Olga Albarrán Caselles, author of (Pro)creación: Escritura y maternidad en la España contemporánea

"By means of five carefully chosen case studies, Narrating Infertility in Spain offers a clearly articulated account of women's complex relationship to involuntary as well as voluntary childlessness. A must-read to understand the intricacies of desire entangled in neoliberal social conditioning." -Marina Bettaglio, coeditor of Maternidades imaginadas: Representaciones y disidencias en el siglo XXI

About the author:

CATHERINE BOURLAND ROSS is a professor of Spanish at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas.

Distributed by Rutgers University Press

Cloth: $150, 9781684485741; EPUB: $39.95, 9781684485758