It’s been a minute since I read a motherhood memoir (when I first became a mother, I devoured them), but this one truly exemplifies all the best qualities of the genre. It demonstrates so beautifully how the experience of parenting, though it so often feels tremendously isolating, also seems to connect you, intellectually, to the entire world and the long history of humanity. Here, more specifically, to histories of medicine and technology (via diabetes and hearing loss), Deaf communities, social understandings of disability, ideas of fate, artistic representations of motherhood, institutions and rituals of academia. It is such a fascinating book, exploring connections between assorted ideas, guiding you down idiosyncratic rabbit holes of the did you know… variety but meanwhile, it is also a beautiful book, a lyrical account of love and connection.
Admittedly, I related to it all the more as an academic, and marveled at Bloom’s ability to speak forthrightly about the cruelty of the profession without giving over entirely to bitterness. The book vividly demonstrates her incredible talents as a teacher, thinker, and writer, and while one is tempted to say that it attests to the idiocy of a system that doesn’t award her the traditional accolades she so clearly deserves, I think it also testifies to something more important: that those institutional metrics aren’t the only, or most important, ones for valuing this kind of work (something academics often forget…). That is, Bloom’s experiences in academia are of course a fundamental part of this memoir, it is about so much more than that, and speaks to a far broader audience.
It’s a wonderful book, and one that I know will be living in my head for a long while yet.
Kasia Reads 
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