The good, the REALLY good, and stuff related to fashion

The good:  I'm having an article published in this spring's issue of the journal Feminist Studies.  They're having a special issue on reproductive rights, and my piece, called "The Inadequacy of 'Choice':  Disability and What's Wrong with Feminist Framings of Reproduction," is apparently a good fit.  In the piece I use some of my interviews with parents of kids with Down syndrome to talk about the way that we make reproductive decisions--that the term "choice" doesn't begin to encompass the complexity of these sorts of decisions, particularly when prenatal testing is added into the mix.

The REALLY good:  This week I got a contract from NYU Press, which is going to publish my book, A Choice with No Story:  What Prenatal Testing and Down Syndrome Reveal about our Reproductive Decision-Making.*

!!!

This is the book I've been working on for eighteen months (and will continue working on for another nine months, probably), the book for which I'm interviewing parents of kids with Down syndrome, women who've terminated their pregnancies because the fetus was identified as having Down syndrome, and healthcare professionals.  I'm just thrilled that NYU Press is publishing it.  For one thing, they have an impressive list of books on disability studies.  For another thing, they do a great job with books that have crossover potential--smart academic books that thoughtful mainstream readers might like, too.  And more importantly, I get to work with Ilene Kalish, who edited Girl Zines and is in large part responsible for what's good about that book.  She is amazing.

More about that in the coming months, for sure.

Stuff related to fashion:  This isn't really bad news.  But it continues to complicate my already complicated fashion life.  I got an email from the Gap today happily informing me that my new black pants, 12L, with their exciting 36" inseam, will be arriving...Feb. 28.  Two days after the Yes! I'm a Feminist event that I bought them for.  So you know what this means?  It means I'll be wearing my old, old, familiar gray pants to the party.  I don't know for sure, but there's a chance I wore these very pants at my CofC job interview eight years ago.  They don't have any holes yet, and they still fit (remarkably--Old Navy uses spandex, folks!), so they're coming to the party.

I will also probably be wearing the beautiful silk shirt Claire loaned me.  The same shirt, in fact, that I wore to Bion and Gayley's wedding two summers ago.  Along with those gray pants.  So at the Yes! I'm a Feminist party, I will look exactly like I looked at their wedding reception:

Alright, then, that may not be such bad news after all.


*Remember what I said earlier about how bad I am with naming?  The title for this book is currently 17 words long.  That's too long, friends.  I'm going to need something a bit more concise and punchy.  Thank you, though, to fabulous scholar Rachel Adams for the essay that coined the phrase "a choice with no story"--I have no complaints about that part of the title.