Unbecoming by Seema Yasmin

[profiterole_reads]

Unbecoming by Seema Yasmin was awesome! Two Muslim girls decide to write The Texas Teen's Guide to Safe Abortion. Then, one of them discovers that she's pregnant. Even with all this information, it's going to be a tough road getting the illegal pills she needs.

When the author started working on this book, it was speculative fiction, but the end of the US constitutional right to abortion in 2022 suddenly made this story very real.

There's also a chapter about something I hadn't heard of before: the forced sterilisation in India during the Emergency (1975-1977).

Layla is an Indian American hijabi girl with a dissociative disorder. Noor is a Palestinian American pansexual girl in an f/f relationship. Adam, Layla's little brother, has Down syndrome.

Comments

[ragnarok_08]

That sounds like a neat and very timely book! I'll have to read that one soon.

[profiterole_reads]

Yes, sadly very timely!

[justphoenix]

I'd never heard of the Emergency until today. Holy shit.

[profiterole_reads]

The things that we are not taught... At least, I remember learning about the partition of India and Pakistan in school (and revising it in Ms Marvel). But the Emergency, never.

[tabular_rasa]

Have you seen the movie Plan B? It's less speculative but has a similar premise about a (in this case, Indian-American) girl in the rural US going on a roundabout quest to seek the morning-after pill after her first sexual encounter. (I expect this, rather than a full abortion procedure, made it more "palatable" to those funding the film). I think what struck me most about it was that while played with the same tone as a typical teen adventure comedy, it really IS that hard and fraught seeking reproductive care without parental involvement in the US.

[profiterole_reads]

I hadn't heard of it, but the trailer looks great.