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Irene Vilar

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Impossible Motherhood MP3 CD – Unabridged, April 5, 2016

by Irene Vilar (Author), Susannah Jones (Reader)

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Irene Vilar was just a pliant young college undergraduate in thrall to her professor when they embarked on a relationship that led to marriage—a union of impossible odds—and 15 abortions in 15 years. Vilar knows that she is destined to be misunderstood, that many will see her nightmare as an instance of abusing a right, of using abortion as a means of birth control. But it isn't that. The real story is part of an awful secret, shrouded in shame, colonialism, self-mutilation, and a family legacy that features a heroic grandmother, a suicidal mother, and two heroin-addicted brothers. It is a story that looks back on her traumatic childhood growing up in the shadow of her mother's death and the footsteps of her famed grandmother, the political activist Lolita Lebrón, and a history that touches on American exploitation and reproductive repression in Puerto Rico. Vilar seamlessly weaves together past, present, and future, channeling a narrative that is at once dramatic and subtle.

Impossible Motherhood is a heartrending and ultimately triumphant testimonial told by a writer looking back on her history of addiction. Abortion has never offered any honest person easy answers. Vilar's dark journey through self-inflicted wounds, compulsive patterns, and historical hauntings is a powerful story of loss and mourning that bravely delves into selfhood, national identity, reproductive freedom, family responsibility, and finally motherhood itself—today, Vilar is the mother of two beautiful children.

Language

English
Publisher

Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio
Publication date

April 5, 2016
Dimensions

6.5 x 0.63 x 5.5 inches
ISBN-10

1511383895
ISBN-13

978-1511383899
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio; Unabridged edition (April 5, 2016)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1511383895
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1511383899
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.5 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 0.63 x 5.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #10,983,313 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #10,590 in Journalist Biographies
- #36,094 in Author Biographies
- #127,276 in Books on CD

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Irene Vilar

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www.irenevilar.com

Irene was born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. Her memoir The Ladies’ Gallery (Other Press, 2009, originally published by Random House in 1996) was a Philadelphia Inquirer and Detroit Free Press Notable Book of the Year and was a finalist for Mind Book of the Year (UK) and the Latino Book Award. Her latest memoir, Impossible Motherhood (Other Press, 2009) won the 2010 IPPY gold medal for best memoir/autobiography and the Latino Book Award for women issues. Both memoirs explore generational and national trauma. Irene's work has been featured on NPR's Fresh Air, CBS-NYC, PBS-Boston, Vogue magazine, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Times Magazine, and on the cover of the New York Times art section. Her books have been translated to German (Aufbau Verlag 1998 & Hoffmann und Campe 2011), French (Balland 2010), Italian (Corbaccio 2010) and Spanish (Lengua de Trapo, Madrid/Buenos Aires 2012). Abroad Irene's work has been featured in Elle (UK) Vanity Fair (Italy), Liberation (France), Grazia (France, UK, Australia), Marie Claire (Italy), Madison (Australia), Republica/Tempo/Gazzetta del Sud/ (Italy) and on the covers of Tempi Magazine (Italy) and Irish Independent Sunday Magazine (Ireland). See: http://www.irenevilar.com/media/

Vilar was book series editor editor for Women and Jewish Studies at Syracuse University Press and from 2002 to 2005 served as founder and series editor of The Americas book series published by the University of Wisconsin Press. Currently she is series editor of The Americas at Texas Tech University Press. The series has published over forty books in translation in the last ten years being among the most important initiatives of this kind in the US (along with Dalkey, New Directions, Archipielago).

Vilar is literary agent for Vilar Creative Agency, and co-agent in the U.S. for Ray-Gude Mertin Literary Agency, an agency specializing in Spanish, Latin American, and Portuguese authors representing such notable writers as Nobel Prize-winner Jose Saramago.

A 2010 Guggenheim Fellow Vilar is also a participant of the Oxford Union Debate Society, being the first Puerto Rican to be invited to the prestigious union.

http://www.gf.org/fellows/16883-irene-vilar

http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/members/irvilar/

http://vilarcreativeagency.com/about/

http://www.irenevilar.com/about/

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4.2 out of 5

28 global ratings

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Hiwaystar

Great Book

Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2013

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I really liked this book. The content and stories were interesting, and the protagonist is incredibly easy to relate to, even if you've never had an abortion, lived in Puerto Rico, etc.
This book isn't really about abortion. It is about a woman's struggle with herself and the people in her life.

9/10 would read again.

2 people found this helpful

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E. Bentz

A new perspective...

Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2009

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I was not let down by this book - I am pro-life, but this book offered a new perspective that gave me more understanding on what a woman can go through when dealing with the hard decision of abortion.

8 people found this helpful

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Daniel

It's a fairly good book, but I think the abortion story is ...

Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2018

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It's a fairly good book, but I think the abortion story is secondary to the main coming of age tale of Irene.

One person found this helpful

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SoCalGirl

Beautifully written...

Reviewed in the United States on August 26, 2012

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For such a dark and controversial subject, Ms. Vilar writes with dignity and beauty. I believe the author is a courageous woman for writing about her experiences and to let us in on feeling her pain. It is impossible to not feel something as you read Ms. Vilar's words, whether it's sadness, anger, sympathy, love, hate, etc. And isn't that the point of reading others' stories? To feel and to learn, as long as you open your mind and open your heart. The book is beautifully written and I appreciate the author's honesty.

3 people found this helpful

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Phoebe Rose-Rae

five stars

Reviewed in the United States on December 25, 2016

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brave lady for sharing this story. it had me hooked

Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2012

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A haunting yet brilliant book! I could not put it down. Vilar offers a beautifully written work of her life's enormous challenges.

Reviewed in the United States on March 14, 2016

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Kept my attention. This is a good read.

Reviewed in the United States on August 23, 2011

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Ok so explain this to me as if I am a two year old. The grandmother tries to shoot people in the congress under the misguided belief that this
will somehow free puerto rico of the colonial control of the united states. Killing people always gets you what you want. Ask Macbeth how well that plan worked for him. Shakespeare has a whole gallery of characters that are demented.
Then later her own mother, who apparently was a wonderful person and very loving, commits suicide.
She leaves behind the author and her brothers who both become drug addicts and definitely aren't coping well with life.
So while this memoir or testimony as the author refers to it is honest, it is also scary and at times so illogical to read that one is left to wonder.
Beckett says that writing is a sin against silence( or words to that effect). Anyone who feels the need to write and is talented should do it.
While this memoir was honest it also wasn't helpful in explaining the behavior. Other than he said one thing and she did another and there was control going on here. She was under a spell. Intoxicated with man who was already in love with someone: Himself. The relationship was crowded from the beginning. And I wonder how these stories actually help women move away from men who treat them like slaves.
Do these stories make other women feel like it is hopeless or worse inevitable.
There is a book titled Love and Limerance. Love as a form of madness and obsession that produces illogical and destructive behavior.
She kept destroying the children and when she spoke about waiting until the second trimester it made me wonder why she had never succeeded in
killing herself. This story is obscene and sad and also at times boring. When she is quoting what other people said to her or what she was taught by
her lover those are some of the best lines. The rest was just pathetic noise that made me understand that abusing choice is utterly wrong. Not even the doctor asking her to consider his position and the risks he was taking to perform the abortions, not even that plea got her to stop. She could've had something implanted that wouldn't require her to remember to take a pill. Too complicated when you are consumed with what exactly. Distracted by the lover, she takes another lover. What was going on!!
I wish her well and the irony is that she has two daughters now. Oh how strange life can be. This story while true and well written didn't really instruct so much as serve as a what a cautionary tale. I hope it does something positive rather than reinforce the belief that women somehow are at the mercy of the unworthy men they love.

14 people found this helpful

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Jenster

Every woman should read this, its raises some very important points about our bodies & 'the State'.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 23, 2016

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I think this is a very important story, which raises issues that are long overdue for an orderly discussion in our so-called enlightened, so-called first-world, society. I'm only a few chapters in, but I wanted to write my review now, in case I become paralysed as it unfolds.

Firstly, I'd never heard of this book, or the author - but I've recently been introduced to Gloria Steinem, who mentioned them.

There's an utterly brilliant foreward, where the main issues of Vilar's personal story - her grandmother was a revolutionary, her mother killed herself when she was eight, she was raised in Puerto Rico (but went away for periods to school in Spain the US), she was passed around the family and basically felt abandoned - are set out, in the context of the U.S.A's colonial treatment of Puerto Rico.

It sets the potential for a discussion in the context of international policies on birth control and sex education (in particular, abortion statistics for women in Eastern Europe vs. the US & UK, vs. Puerto Rico).

It is sobering, frightening stuff - and it should make a lot of women angry that around the world, other women's bodies (and therefore, the courses and potential of their lives) are being controlled by the state.

It also means that their lives are being put at risk, because they're in a position where multiple abortions (including back street, of course) - instead of the 'luxury' of proper birth control - is the only effective 'family planning' open to them.

In many ways, it reminds me of how I felt while reading 'Wild Swans' - you feel so much for the characters and the horrors they're enduring. Puts my 'first world problems' well into perspective.

Here's a thought: how long do we have to wait for some benevolent ga-zillionaire to set up a (non-partisan, non-religious, non-political) foundation and just pump some money and resources into giving women a fair chance in life; through education and availability of a full range of family planning support?

After all, they say that a happy world starts with "healthy women, happy kids". If Bill Gates can see far enough with his anthropological eye (let's not talk about the tax breaks!) to vaccinate kids in Africa, then who's gonna step up to the plate for their/our mothers, daughters, sisters, friends? We live in hope...

PS: In the introduction to Gloria Steinem's autobiography, she dedicates it to a British doctor who performed an abortion for her when she was a student, about to travel to India. And she didn't turn out too bad, did she...? Go, the ladies!

Magda Arqueros

Esta bien

Reviewed in Spain on February 17, 2013

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Creo que Esta bien por la relación de calidad preció para los interesados en leer esta obra en su versión original......

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WBF Kitchener

Sad Story

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 22, 2012

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This really is a sad book. It makes you wonder at some points how a mother carrying her child can be so cold and block her emotions. Also that she can continuously allow herself to become pregnant, knowing she will terminate the life. This does have a happy ending, this woman comes through this madness and is now happy.

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