What God Is Honored Here?: Writings on Miscarriage and Infant Loss by and for Native Women and Women of Color
What God Is Honored Here? is the first book of its kind--and urgently necessary. This is a literary collection of voices of Indigenous women and women of color who have undergone miscarriage and infant loss, experiences that disproportionately affect women who have often been cast toward the margins in the United States of America.
From the story of dashed cultural expectations in an interracial marriage to poems that speak of loss across generations, from harrowing accounts of misdiagnoses, ectopic pregnancies, and late-term stillbirths to the poignant chronicles of miscarriages and mysterious infant deaths, What God Is Honored Here? brings women together to speak to one another about the traumas and tragedies of womanhood. In its heartbreaking beauty, this book offers an integral perspective on how culture and religion, spirit and body, unite in the reproductive lives of women of color and Indigenous women as they bear witness to loss, search for what is not there, and claim for themselves and others their fundamental humanity. Powerfully and with brutal honesty, they write about what it means to reclaim life in the face of death.
Editors Shannon Gibney and Kao Kalia Yang acknowledge "who we had been could not have prepared us for who we would become in the wake of these words," yet the writings collected here offer insight, comfort, and, finally, hope for all those who, like the women gathered here, have found grief a lonely place.
Contributors: Jennifer Baker, Michelle Borok, Lucille Clifton, Sidney Clifton, Taiyon J. Coleman, Arfah Daud, Rona Fernandez, Sarah Agaton Howes, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Soniah Kamal, Diana Le-Cabrera, Janet Lee-Ortiz, Maria Elena Mahler, Chue Moua, Jami Nakamura Lin, Jen Palmares Meadows, Dania Rajendra, Marcie Rendon, Seema Reza, 신 선 영 Sun Yung Shin, Kari Smalkoski, Catherine R. Squires, Elsa Valmidiano.
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Shannon Gibney is a writer, educator, activist, and the author of See No Color, a young adult novel that won the Minnesota Book Award in Young People's Literature. She is faculty in English at Minneapolis College, where she teaches writing. She has been a Bush Artist and McKnight Writing Fellow. Her critically acclaimed novel Dream Country follows more than five generations of an African-descended family as they crisscross the Atlantic, both voluntarily and involuntarily.
Kao Kalia Yang is author of The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir, winner of two Minnesota Book Awards and a finalist for the PEN USA Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Asian Literary Award in Nonfiction. Her second book, The Song Poet, won a Minnesota Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Chautauqua Prize, the PEN USA Award in Nonfiction, and the Dayton's Literary Peace Prize."Pregnancy loss is a most enigmatic human sorrow, unique to every woman who suffers it. These stories of resilience, grief, and restoration are essential, for to understand is to heal."--Louise Erdrich
"What God is Honored Here? is the hardest and most important book I've read about parenting, loss, and imagination. It's also the most frightening book in my world, but not because it is horrific: it is about the terrifying possibilities of love."--Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy, winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal and finalist for the Kirkus Prize
"These writers have pierced the silence that too often surrounds miscarriage and infant loss, crafting hallowed stories from thoughtful, honest prose. As readers we are invited to witness the heart-mending love of mothers as they share memories of their lost babies, and in the telling offer solace in community."--Diane Wilson, author of Spirit Car and Beloved Child
"To remember is an act of will and courage, an affirmation of hope and a dreamed-for life. These stories and poems, heart-rending and often traumatic, reveal the resilience that transcends the pain of loss. What God Is Honored Here? consecrates personal and collective sacrifice and contributes to the validation that is essential to adapt to and heal from significant loss."--Susan Gibney, founder, University of Michigan NICU Hospitals Bereavement Program and Walk to Remember, MS, LLP, RN
"A profound collection reflecting the contributors' "claim on [their] lives as indigenous women and women of color who have experienced infant and fetal loss, in its many forms." Though each piece of this collection--edited by Gibney (See No Color, 2015) and Yang (The Song Poet: A Memoir of My Father, 2016, etc.)--shares the common theme of infant mortality, each woman's story grips readers with its individuality and its gut-wrenching pain and sorrow. These tales of loss--from miscarriage, stillbirth, misdiagnosis, ectopic pregnancies, and sudden infant death--all carry the weight of the woman's heartbreak. They also show abundant love and the honor they felt to be pregnant, regardless of the outcome."--Kirkus Reviews
"A compelling collection that encourages readers to hold writers and their stories, both told and untold, in their hearts with every page."--Library Journal (Starred Review)
"I've read a lot of creative nonfiction but this anthology is riveting. The essays are moving. They are also poignant, edgy, down to earth. I rarely if ever comment on writing, but the essays here--I had to."--Psychology Today "What God is Honored Here? is more than memories about the specifics of losing a child. It's also about the loved ones who surrounded the writers, their devotion to their living children, and their family backgrounds that informed how they would deal with their ache for a child that never drew breath."--Pioneer Press
