Our Q&A with Chris Bohjalian, author of Midwives
Chris Bohjalian, author of our book club pick, Midwives, was in Portland, OR on a book tour with his 16th novel and newest release, The Light in the Ruins.
He sat down with our writer, Jeanne Faulkner for cappuccinos and a look back on Midwives, which was published in 1998.
Jeanne: It’s been a while since you’ve spent time on this book. Have you followed the birth industry since you wrote Midwives?
Chris: A little, yes. When Midwives came out I’d done such voluminous amounts of research I might have been able to deliver a breech in a bedroom, but since then I’ve written novels about homeopathy, the transgendered, foster children, domestic violence, the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, sexual assault, PTSD, and the new book is a reimagining of Romeo and Juliet set in war-torn Tuscany. So the fact is, I do move on.
Did you have a big following among midwives after the book came out
Before the book came out, most midwives, certainly most lay-midwives thought I was the antichrist, because here is what the Hollywood flyover [synopsis] said: “There’s a new book coming from Random House about a mother who dies in a home birth, a midwife on trial for manslaughter and her daughter who becomes an Ob-Gyn.” I had an appearance for the hard cover and the American College of Nurse Midwives happened to be having a conference nearby. Easily two-dozen showed up to express their frustration with me.
By the time Oprah picked Midwives for her book club a year later enough midwives had read the novel that most no longer viewed it as a book about an incompetent midwife. Rather they viewed it is a book about a vastly competent midwife who is beleaguered by a medical and judicial system beyond her ken. Prior to the book’s publication Ina May Gaskin was encouraging midwives to not read the book. After it was published, she actually linked the Midwife’s Alliance of North America to the book on Amazon so they could get a few pennies from every book sold.
There was a lot of prejudice based on that title and flyover.
There was a lot of concern I was making birth scary for women. What’s interesting in hindsight is that when I was envisioning this book it wasn’t about a bad outcome. When I started to write in November of 1995 I thought it was going to be a gently comic coming-of-age novel about a midwife’s daughter and her peace, love and tie-dye mother in the early eighties. But then my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer and was clearly going to die and the book took one of those interesting left turns. Suddenly it’s about a mother who dies in childbirth birth and then of course later Sybil, the midwife will die of lung cancer just as my mother did
Why did you choose to write about a practical midwife rather than a licensed midwife? A lot of people are confused by the different types of midwives and think if you aren’t a certified nurse midwife then you don’t know what you’re doing.
I interviewed many lay midwives, nurse midwives and Ob-Gyn’s. When I started writing the book choosing my character wasn’t an issue of training, legislation or models of birth. I chose a lay midwife because I wanted a hippie.
Do you have opinions about home birth vs. hospital birth?
No. I don’t think home birth is dangerous if it’s handled by a good midwife and everyone knows the situation. A really good midwife is usually pretty good about saying: You aren’t a great candidate. This is going to be a spectacularly, wonderfully, beautiful birth, but here is why I don’t want to do it at home with you.
You did a very accurate job describing the medical/surgical elements in the book. Have you ever been in a medical emergency or c-section like that?
No, but I do a lot of homework and talk to a lot of experts before I describe situations like that.
In many of your books your characters and narrators are women. How do you go about representing women’s perspective so accurately in your writing?
One of my favorite reviews was from Library Journal for Midwives and the reviewer ends with this: An added benefit of this novel is the candor and honesty about which Chris Bohjalian writes about her experiences in labor and what it meant to her. They’ve since corrected it, but I’ve got a print copy and they thought I was a woman.
So how did you do it?
I love writing across gender. Your gender is way more interesting than mine. I begin with the universalities that link us as people, the commonalities and sensibilities that you and I share. Then I try to imagine what would be the gender specific idiosyncrasies. I’m also really comfortable sharing early drafts of my books with appropriate readers, which more often than not are women.
All roads lead back to global maternal health for EMC and I would love to hear your thoughts on that.
This is going to be real stream of consciousness thought founded on nothing. You remember Cliff the postman in that old show Cheers who pontificated on things he knew nothing about? I’ll give this my best “Cliff Clavin.” Among the things I love about the midwifery model of birth in developed nations such as the US is that it is more pleasant and beautiful and dramatically more cost efficient than the medical model for birth. I love the fact that it dials down dramatically the number of C-sections while improving dramatically the experience for mom and baby. When I think about my friends in NYC and the ridiculous commonalities of c-sections, my eyes widen. The wonderful thing about midwifery for less developed nations is the way it can dramatically increase safety and make outcomes better. I am a huge proponent of the midwifery model. That doesn’t mean I have a thing against Ob-Gyns. I don’t. I just love the idea we can dial down the medical madness in big cities with an increased emphasis on midwifery.
Well said, Cliff Clavin.
Thank you. I really applaud everything you have told me about what Every Mother Counts does and thank you for letting me be a tiny part of it this summer.
