Borrowed Babies

Apprenticing for Motherhood

De: Jill Christman

Narrado por: Angela Starling

Until the 1960s infants were plucked from orphanages and maternity wards and used as "practice babies" in college home economics department across the country. Award-winning writer Jill Christman was determined to find out what happened to them. Along the way, five months pregnant herself, with her hormones (and anxiety) raging, she also hoped to discover what it means to be a mother.

Jill Christman's memoir, Darkroom: A Family Exposure, won the AWP Award Series in Creative Nonfiction. Recent essays have appeared in Barrelhouse, Brevity, Fourth Genre, Iron Horse Literary Review, and other journals, magazines, and anthologies. She teaches creative nonfiction writing in Ashland University's low-residency MFA program and at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, where she lives with her husband, writer Mark Neely, and their two children.

This is a short audiobook published by Shebooks - high-quality fiction, memoir, and journalism for women, by women.

©2014 Jill Christman (P)2015 Audible, Inc.

Less of main topic in book than expected

I definitely expected the book to be solely focused on the borrowed babies and more of a documentary-style of book. However, a large portion of the book focuses/ties in the author and her own pregnancy. I feel like this would be fine for a longer book, but for an audiobook that is only an hour long, it was a bit disappointing to not have more of the topic in the book.

I am so glad she wrote this book

This book was fascinating. It is unthinkable when you first hear that babies were borrowed for teaching motherhood.

Misleading Subject

Thankfully this audiobook was only an hour! I almost gave up at 20 mins, as it was clear the author - except for the intro - was more interested in telling the minute details of her first pregnancy and trip to Ithaca and her own childhood than delving into the subject of “Borrowed Babies.”

In total, there was MAYBE 1/4 of the subject incorporated into the book.

As well, the sideline story (except the fact that she was pregnant) had NO RELEVANCE to the topic and it was extremely boring, despite her attempts at describing her coffee cup, her wandering thoughts, and on and on.

At one point, she offers the line, “Me, me, me!” All I can say is, “Obviously.”