What is your ripple effect?
This week I'm joined by bookstagrammer and journalist Ashley Kritzer (@ashleykrtizer on instagram!) to talk about LABOR by Dr. Mary Afsari, a memoir Ashley championed hard-- and once I read it, I understood exactly why. In under 200 pages, Mary tells two intertwined stories: her own path as an OBGYN pushed to the edge by burnout, policy, and the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and her search for the truth about her grandmother's death in Iran. The result is a book that is medically intense without ever being gratuitous, and that manages to be both deeply personal and urgently political.
Ashley and I dig into what makes the memoir work: its restraint, its refusal to wander into subplots that don't serve the story, and the dual timeline that lets Mary's family history illuminate her present-day fight for women's healthcare. We talk about the hardest case in the book, a child patient whose story exposes how broken the systems meant to protect her really are. We talk about Mary's decision to build a mobile OBGYN practice out of an RV, entirely self-funded, because the traditional system wasn't serving the women who needed her most. And we talk about the eerie, direct line she draws between the crackdown on women's rights in 1979 Iran and what's happening in America right now. We land, as we always seem to, on the same idea: women taking care of women is one of the most beautiful things.
Grab a copy of LABOR by Dr. Mary Fariba Afsari, then come back and listen. Share this conversation with someone who needs the reminder that women taking care of women is still one of the most powerful things in the world.
\"My belief that we were doing the right thing as the right time is what kept me going.\" - Dr. Mary Fariba Asfari
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Books Referenced:
LABOR by Dr. Mary Fariba Asfari
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This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me.
Xx, Alex
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