From New York Times bestselling author Roxane Gay comes an unforgettable tale of nightmarish bureaucracy in which genetic profiling has redefined the "unfit mother."
A trip to the library prompts one woman to question her fate in this galvanizing short story. For a woman like Hadley, deemed not acceptable to procreate, there's only one recourse. Unlicensed for motherhood, she can alleviate her grief and frustration at a "baby library," where a curiously endless supply of infants is available for a two-week loan. But the borrowed life that serves as a temporary balm leads to a journey of self-discovery that will forever change the direction of Hadley's future.
Roxane Gay's Graceful Burdens is part of Out of Line, an incisive collection of funny, enraging, and hopeful stories of women's empowerment and escape. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.
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The librarians never asked why their patrons needed to check out a baby.
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(Amazon Original Stories, 1 September 2020, 21 pages, ebook, borrowed from @AmazonKindle, #PrimeReading)
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This is my first time reading the author. Graceful Burdens is a great little tale, very like The Handmaid's Tale and the like. I will definitely read something full length form the author. So much happens in this story, I felt like I read something much, much longer. Gay does a great job of creating a harsh world in the story, where women with good genes are granted licences to have a baby and mother's with less than perfect genes are refused and can borrow babies from a library for up to two weeks to feel better about their shitty lot in life. This world comes fully to live in just a few pages. I was sad when the story ended as I was enjoying it so much.
