Knocking Myself Up

January 1, 2022

The multi-award-winning author of cult classics like Valencia and most recently host of the Your Magic podcast in partnership with Spotify, Tea tells her story as a queer 40-year-old who was lacking in health insurance but not in the determination to give birth. When black-market fertility meds failed and she learned that her eggs weren't viable, she ended up carrying a baby for her decade-younger lover. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 23, 2022
In this frank and funny memoir, essayist Tea (How to Grow Up) spares no detail of her arduous odyssey of getting pregnant at 40. “I’m about to bring you into my inner world,” she promises readers, “during a period of time when that space was as wild, messy, hopeful, dizzy, tragic, terrifying, and openhearted as any era I’ve ever lived.” Despite the title, it takes a village to get the author pregnant, including an acupuncturist, a friendly witch, a number of friends to ferry fertility meds across the border, and a glamorous drag queen sperm donor. Every stage of Tea’s quest presents revelations devastating—like discovering uterine fibroids after months of failed insemination attempts—dazzling, and packed with information one may not expect when they’re expecting: ovulation (unexpectedly aggro), implantation (may cause bleeding), pregnancy (who knew it could change the shape of one’s eyes?). Taken as a whole, Tea’s unconventional “birth story” serves as a celebration of the human body, its hidden miracles, and, as she aptly puts it, “not just the dramatic climax of a last push and a first breath, but the story of a choice made, a dare accepted, a journey undertaken.” This heartfelt work embraces every facet of the human experience: heartache, hope, and—with a little luck—joy.

June 15, 2022
An award-winning writer chronicles her attempts to get pregnant. Guggenheim fellow and PEN/America Award winner Tea recounts in intimate, comic, and irreverent detail her four-year quest to get pregnant, beginning in 2011, when she was 40, a recovering alcoholic and addict who stabilized her mental state with antidepressants. Although happily independent, she felt firm in her decision to have a baby. Describing herself as "mostly gay," the author realized that getting pregnant through sex with a man was unlikely. Among her many gay friends, Quentin, a "virile, healthy 28-year-old" drag queen, happily agreed to be her sperm donor, coming to her service every time she ovulated. A close friend stood by to shoot semen into her vagina with a syringe; soon, Orson, Tea's new queer lover, took over the process. Tea's journey to motherhood involved tarot cards, astrology, and witches; a loving queer community; a caring partner; and medical practitioners sympathetic to a queer woman's desire for a baby. Though many anecdotes are amusing, she reveals the emotional and physical cost of the "baby-making/baby-failing roller coaster" that completely dominated her life. At first, she writes, she was "determined to graciously accept any inability to actually have a baby," but after months of failed attempts, both with her homemade insemination technique and in vitro fertilization, she admits that "the feelings that accompany the surge of blood in my underwear are not so mild." Tea shares the particular challenges that queer and trans individuals encounter when seeking medical help, and she records the bodily changes, mood swings, fears, and anxieties that she experienced, including worries about her response to her baby's gender. "Folks in my world have separated sex from gender so wholly that there is no way to comfortably relax into the idea of a baby girl being like this, or a baby boy being like that." Nevertheless, "whatever potential the baby expresses," she felt ready. A refreshingly entertaining, lighthearted memoir about a serious topic.

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May 1, 2022

Tea (How To Grow Up) takes readers on a whirlwind ride of a complicated conception and pregnancy. While there is no shortage of information about pregnancy available to twenty-first century readers, Tea's experience is a uniquely queer and feminist one that is rarely at the forefront of these discussions. The journey takes the proverb "It takes a village to raise a child" very seriously with the addendum that it takes a village to conceive one, too. Tea's decision to be a mom reverberates through so many lives as they gather around to love and support her through the process. Never the one to mince words, Tea's prose is florid with personal descriptions of each part of the process: from the initial decision, the complications, a dozen of life pivots, to the eventual birth of her son. For readers learning about the more technical (and sometimes grisly) side effects of fertility treatments and pregnancy for the first time, Tea's exuberance and zest for the experience will hopefully offer solace. VERDICT Recommended to round-out parenting collections with a new perspective on family.--Halie Kearns

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.