What God is Honored Here? is an anthology of 20+ essays and poems about miscarriage and infant loss, written by women of color and Native American women. Editors Shannon Gibney and Kao Kalia Yang aimed to collect and highlight the experiences of grieving indigenous mothers and mothers of color, whose stories have previously been misrepresented or missing entirely from societal narratives. I appreciated the wide variety of voices in this book, including women of many different ethnicities and religious backgrounds. Miscarriage and infant loss is an incredibly somber topic, and I could feel how hard it was for some of these women to talk about their experiences. Hearing so many similar stories back-to-back made this book more emotionally challenging, but it also highlighted each author’s unique perspectives, including differences in support systems, approaches towards grief and guilt, and methods of honoring their children. Some essays felt like they ended quite suddenly, mirroring the authors’ pregnancy stories. Other essays include future pregnancies and live births.

The infant and maternal mortality rates in America are extremely high, especially for women of color. One continuous theme throughout the book is the dismissive attitudes of healthcare providers, often causing these women to become more dangerously ill than they would have been if they had been appropriately treated at the time of their initial concerns.

There were many nuances within these narratives. In Binding Signs, Dania Rajendra talks about the confusion of being pro-choice while mourning a miscarriage and fallopian tube removal. I really loved her passage about the internal conflict of believing that embryos are not people, yet missing the people those embryos never became. Elsa Valmidiano talked about her experiences volunteering in the Philippines with an organization that medically assisted women who attempted self-induced abortions, and the different types of stigma and shame of abortion versus medically-induced miscarriage.

This book is a necessary step in narrowing the gap in the societal narrative around miscarriage and infant loss. What a gift to contribute during National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. The only downside of this book is that, as far as I can recall, this collection only included cis women in heterosexual relationships. I would have liked to see some representation from the LGBTQ+ community, as miscarriages and infant loss can happen to individuals in many different types of relationships using a variety of assisted reproductive technologies.

Thank you, University of Minnesota Press and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

As a white transgender man, I'm pretty far from the target audience of this. That being said, I still felt very affected by this work. I believe that everyone should seek out or be exposed to different perspectives, and I think this collection of writings was highly effective in making me put myself in the shoes of a non-white woman suffering through the loss of a baby.

The format was highly readable, where different writers took turns pouring their pain into short narratives or, at times, poems. The writer bios at the end of the book were very helpful. The cover is gorgeous. The title is amazing, being the main reason I requested this ARC.

Most importantly, of course, the stories themselves were so brilliantly written that I was moved throughout. I can't imagine the actual pain and grief that these women and women like them go through in times like these, but these narratives were written in a way that allowed me to try. I still can't imagine how challenging it is to go through our healthcare system as a woman of color and, beyond that, I can't imagine having a miscarriage or losing a child and I hope I never experience it. On a different note, I did learn a lot about the process of childbirth and pregnancy that I had never heard before. I'm sure that's a negligible side effect of the writings, but I'm also glad to have read it for that.

I can't imagine why anyone would still need reasons to pick up this book, but remember that there is power in at least trying to understand the perspectives and struggles of others. If you are a woman of color or native woman who has had a miscarriage, this book was literally written and titled for you. Many of the book's writers felt they were on an island of suffering because they had trouble finding women like them who had gone through similar struggles of miscarriage or infant loss. There was at least one mention of how some white women will blog and take one day to share the story of a miscarriage and, on the next day, get back to blogging about home renovation and how these writers can't relate to that on a number of levels. Through this book, they hope to bring a sense of community to other women who struggle with these same things, and I hope this book will be that comfort and community for those women.

From the foreword to the last story I couldn’t stop telling myself how much this book was needed, and how helpful it is going to be to so many people. Apart from on the baby boards and on some blogs, we don’t really talk about miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant loss, even though statistics tell us that we should. And the blogs that do contain stories that we can easily find are usually written by middle class white women. (There is actually one story in the collection that discusses exactly this, and my head was nodding along in agreement as I was reading it). It’s so important that we let everyone tell their story, and that every woman’s story be available to all to read. This is why What God Is Honored Here? is such an important book: it is a collection of stories of infant loss and miscarriage by women of color and native women.

These stories are going to rip you apart. I was in tears through most of the book, and found the courage and strength of all of these women just incredible. Each and every story is beautifully written, heartbreaking, and provides us with an image of how grief and loss are handled in so many different ways. I also think that this collection provides those who are on the sidelines with ways to react and help when a loved one is going through the horrors of miscarriage and/or stillbirth. Sometimes we try too hard to find things to say that we think may comfort someone, when in the end an “I’m sorry” and a hug are better than words that hurt rather than comfort.

A huge thanks to the editors Shannon Gibney and Kao Kalia Yang for compiling these stories, and for all of the writers for making themselves vulnerable and telling their stories.

Thanks also to Netgalley and the publisher for sharing an advance copy of the beautiful book with me!

I received a copy of this ARC from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review. As a Perinatal Social Worker I was drawn to this book from the first time I saw it. Thank you to all of the brave mothers who made themselves vulnerable and shared their heartbreaking stories in honor of their babies. I truly believe this will change the way providers interact with their patients for any who read this. I have recommended this book to many colleagues including our Perinatal and Pediatric Bereavement Council. This book provided insight from the patient perspective and will stay with me throughout my practice. Thank you for the opportunity to read and review this impactful book!

As a woman who has had a miscarriage, and who is a birth doula, I appreciated this book even though I am not a woman of color. I am so grateful that the contributors gave their words to the world and to grieving mothers in typically underrepresented communities. It's a difficult read but it will be very helpful for its intended audience.

Disclaimer: I received this as an eARC via NetGalley in partnership with the publisher, for a fair and unbiased review.

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This book is not for the faint of heart or those with weak stomachs. It is graphic and it is telling. Telling of strength, resilience, fortitude, medical miracles, medical mishaps, and medical mistreatment. Depending on the mindset of the person, or how they grieve and handle difficult decisions, this could be an amazing source of healing. I can see it providing a source of comfort in not being alone with fertility and miscarriage experiences; the ability to consume the text on their own, at their own pace, alone, without *feeling* alone.

There are not cut cards in the beginning, as book of compilations starts with some of the most explicit, and eases into the lesser so. It is heart warming to know that woman of color who rarely/never share their pain, have found refuge in pen, paper, and reflection. What God is Honored here? is so solemn, but something about it also offers a strange peace. After reading, some mothers may find the strength it recounting their own stories.


Posted on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2945739011
Will post to Amazon when it allows for reviews!

What God Is Honored Here? is a beautiful body of work that's time has surely come. It's great that the work gave voice to women of color that usually don't get an audience or a platform to share their grief around losing a child. This book is especially timely and brings a need voice amidst the current anti/pro-abortion dialogue currently going on in the country. It also speaks to the solidarity that is needed for melinated women in this era. Great job!

This is a book about which it is difficult to say, "I loved it," because the subject matter is so serious and heartbreaking. But, I did love the book, which is a compilation of writings about grief and loss. Who knew there were so many variations of grief possible for the death of a child? I lost my way every now and then in the poetry, but it may have been the Kindle formatting. Otherwise, I have nothing but praise to offer for the writing and the editing, which combined to make for a beautiful and unforgettable collection.

Thank you NetGalley and University of Minnesota Press for the opportunity to read and give an honest review of this book.

The birth and infant death experiences have been thoughtfully collected into one book by these authors. The thread of loss runs through the entire book. Women of color express their thoughts and feelings about not only the their experiences of miscarriage, stillbirth and SIDS but how they were treated or mistreated as patients.

This book would be useful to health care professionals and it should be required reading for anyone working OB-GYN and/ or Labor and Delivery.

This is an important book about a silent epidemic that is especially hard for communities of color that start with a baseline of trauma because of racial inequity. As part of an infertile couple, I understand some of the pain these women have endured but there is more here than possibly be lived except by those that have experienced these losses first hand, raw and visceral.

A book that gives voice to the unimaginable, validating the often dismissed feelings of women of color around devastating infant loss and miscarriage. Hurrah to the editors and brave women who shared their stories in this profoundly moving anthology.

Lovely writing here—lyrical, heartfelt, true. Much pain shared with beauty, grace, and a strong dose of honesty—the longer I read, the more my stomach cramped for no reason other than complete empathy for the writers.

I chose to review this title because I had a miscarriage many years ago and felt that few people comprehended the loss I felt—still feel. I'm a white woman and I felt dismissed. So when I saw that this book looked at miscarriage and infant loss with the added layer of race, I was intrigued. The essays in the book confirmed and affirmed my feelings but educated me on how the issue of white supremacy hurts women when they are most vulnerable. It's maddening that women of color have to be so strong. All. The. Time!

I would have liked, perhaps, fewer and longer essays, which would have helped me see the women a bit more fully. I felt like I was just getting to understand their story and it was over. Having so many stories ultimately overwhelmed me. I liked when the authors broke up the text with a poem, or with a mini-essay, which gave me time to breathe. The issue, though, is that these stories are hard. Hearing them is hard, but important. Kudos for those who wrote them, and thanks.