... isn’t constrained by the anticipated rise and fall of its plot ... Yet the path forward into first-time parenting is familiar, almost fated. I read breathlessly, feeling the magnetic pull of an author who allows deep thinking and a hunger for connection — with art, with the earth, with our mothers and our mother’s mothers — to guide the way ... Like parenthood, a translated text is often a co-creation. Through Christina MacSweeney’s translation, Barrera’s prose is clear-eyed and poetic ... Despite the minimalist form that the brain fog of pregnancy might necessitate, Barrera’s effect is expansive, foregrounding her identity as a person of color among predominantly white and middle-class narratives ... [a] generous, openhearted project inviting readers to discover what is often hidden away, unseen ... Barrera writes with a deep reverence for the matrilineal, for the body and mind that bore her ... Barrera veers toward optimism in the face of crushing darkness — a stance that I find refreshing and admirable.
... takes maternal creativity to surprising and rewarding places ... Thanks to Christina MacSweeney’s deft translation from the Spanish, Linea Nigra expands the scope of Anglophone cultural conversations around motherhood and allows Barrera to stand alongside Galchen and Heti as the genre’s foremost thinkers in the 21st century ... Where Barrera diverges from her predecessors is in her visceral descriptions of childbearing as a form of writing and reading. The title foregrounds how ruptures of the mother’s body can spark new, and yet timeless, modes of storytelling ... By way of linea nigra—the book and the line—Barrera ultimately gestures towards the poetics of writing as a mother. The demands on the maternal body and the wonders it yields in the white-milk months inform this poetics ... This language beyond words leads Barrera to consider what embodied knowledge is transferred from mother to daughter and, in turn, from one literary generation to the next. In the honestly rendered birth and breastfeeding scenes grounding Barrera’s essay, conceiving and bearing a child is not merely an instinctual process: a text writing itself. It is the product of communal support: a text written by multiple bodies over generations ... Barrera lets the story write itself, like the child in her womb, and she points to the ways she, too, has been written by the mothers who came before her ... If writing about motherhood is, as Barrera claims, destined to be unoriginal, she has nonetheless conceived a book which pushes cultural conversations about motherhood forward.
... a refreshingly different take on traditional what-to-expect titles for mothers-to-be ... Barrera shares wise, often witty, insights into what it feels like to be going through the 'fruit bowl' that is pregnancy as apps tell women the fetus resembles a blueberry one week and a lemon another ... Prepare to feel in awe of the female body and of Barrera’s way with words.
A moving study of pregnancy, family, art, and loss ... Barrera interweaves her grandmother’s history as a doula and her mother’s career as an artist with the changes wrought on her own body. Barrera powerfully captures the spectrum of feelings childbearing provokes ... Barrera’s voice is meditative, bolstered by poetic turns of phrase, precise language, and fresh metaphors. 'It’s impossible to be original when you write about being a mother,' Barrera reflects, though her own originality is striking. This beautiful meditation is thick with profound insights.
Barrera communicates her trenchant observations in gorgeous, highly efficient prose that sharply reflects the fragmented reality of pregnancy and early parenthood. Rather than adhering to a traditional narrative structure, the author follows her trains of thought wherever they take her, and readers will be happy to tag along ... A uniquely lyrical account of early motherhood.
