“India is our Twins’ Motherland:” Transnational Cross-Racial Gestational Surrogacy and the Maternal Body in “IP Memoirs”

Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics

Eva-Sabine Zehelein¹ 

[1] Goethe University Frankfurt, GERMANY / Brandeis WSRC, US;

关键词: India;    gestational surrogacy;    IP memoir;    autopathography;    matriography;   

DOI  :  10.20897/femenc/5917

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Memoirs by women (from the Global North) who have employed a gestational host (from the Global South) to become mothers are situated in a force field of intersecting discourses about gender, race and class. The article sheds light on the characteristic dynamics of this special sub-genre of ‘mommy lit’ (Hewett), labelled ‘IP memoirs,’ with a special emphasis on memoirs featuring transnational cross-racial gestational surrogacy arrangements in India. These texts do not only present narratives of painful infertility experiences, autopathographic self-blame, and scriptotherapeutic quests towards happiness, i.e. (a) child(ren), but also speak back to knotty issues such as potential exploitation, commodification, colonisation and disenfranchisement, as well as genetic essentialism in the context of systemic inequities.

【 授权许可】

Unknown