Birthing Stories:  Silence, Trauma, and The Power of Narratives in Clinical Care

                                                                              Devaleena Das and Jessica Gildersleeve

when we speak we are afraid

our words will not be heard

nor welcomed

but when we are silent

we are still afraid

So it is better to speak

remembering

we were never meant to survive.— Audre Lorde

Birth is not only about making babies. Birth is about making mothers—strong, competent, capable mothers who trust themselves and believe in their inner strength.— Barbara Katz Rothman

What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open. — Muriel Rukeyser

     Whose voices are heard in the stories of birth? What happens to the stories that are too painful, too fragmented, or too deeply embedded in silences to be spoken? How can clinicians and healthcare providers learn to listen not just to words, but to the quiet hesitations, the shifts in body language, the stories etched beyond medical charts and test results? Can narratives, in their many forms, foster healing and transformation? To investigate these questions, Birthing Stories: Silence, Trauma, and The Power of Narratives in Clinical Care seeks to explore the layered and complex ways in which birthing experiences are narrated, silenced, and received within medical spaces.

      The medicalization of birth has long been a site of both control and liberation, where bodies of color, Indigeneity, disability, queer, and economically poor bodies are subject to forms of biopolitical violence and trauma (be it personal, social and political) that rupture any simple narrative of maternal agency or autonomy. How does the medical gaze, steeped in histories of colonialism, racism, and ableism, continue to shape the psychic, physical, and intergenerational impacts of obstetric trauma? How can we theorize the simultaneous presence of empowerment and oppression within the birth experience?  This anthology aims to reflect at the intersection of perinatal health, trauma, violence, grief, and joy with an emphasis on how social and structural determinants of health shape the experience of birthing. In Birthing Stories, we seek to create a space where critical scholarship, creative expression, and community lived experience of birthing  converge to challenge the entrenched inequities of current healthcare systems in a transnational context while imagining alternatives.

      Feminist scholarship has long engaged with birthing justice, illuminating the structural inequalities that shape reproductive experiences. Works such as Killing the Black Body by Dorothy Roberts (1997), Revolutionary Mothering edited by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, China Martens, and Mai’a Williams (2016), and Birthing Justice: Black Women, Pregnancy, and Childbirth edited by Julia Chinyere Oparah and Alicia D. Bonaparte (2015) have foregrounded the racial, economic, and political dimensions of birth, advocating for reproductive justice and equity. However, this volume stands apart in three crucial ways:

a)    First, it centers the power of storytelling, narrative, and deep listening as transformative tools in the clinical birthing encounter. Unlike other feminist works that emphasize policy, activism, and structural critiques, this collection highlights how birth narratives, spoken and unspoken, shape perinatal care. It underscores the importance of attending to the silences, gestures, and embodied experiences that carry meaning beyond medical charts and how these stories can endow clinicians’ skills to provide a more holistic, justice-oriented, and narrative-driven approach to care.

b)    Second, this volume offers a critical bridge between feminist biology, medicine, and the humanities, integrating perspectives from sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and literature. Feminist scholarship has historically approached birth through the lens of social constructionism, often critiquing biological essentialism (Martin, The Woman in the Body, 1987; Jordan, Birth in Four Cultures, 1993). However, this collection resists the binary between biology and social construction, recognizing the need to engage with feminist biology (Subramaniam, Ghost Stories for Darwin, 2014) and the material realities of birthing bodies within clinical and cultural frameworks.

c)     Finally, this work foregrounds body studies, embodied writing, and mind-body healing in birthing. It moves beyond institutional critiques to explore the phenomenological and affective dimensions of birth—how trauma, memory, and healing are inscribed in the body. Drawing from embodied feminist methodologies, this collection embraces creative, multisensory, and multigenre approaches, making space for writing, art, and hybrid forms that honor birth’s lived complexities.

This volume is intended for an interdisciplinary audience, including  healthcare practitioners, medical sociologists, medical anthropologists, public health experts, artists, policymakers, and anyone committed to reproductive justice. We welcome multi-genre submissions that offer diverse, intersectional, and global perspectives including but not limited to:

• Scholarly essays (7000 words)
• Autoethnographies or personal narratives (7000 words)
• Poetry, short fiction, or storytelling (1,000–3,000 words)
• Visual art, photography, or graphic essays (with accompanying text or narrative explanation)
• Conversations, dialogues, or interviews between activists, scholars, clinicians, practitioners, doulas, midwives, patients, and advocates (6000 words)

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Storytelling, and deep listening in clinical birthing encounters and advocacy
• Silence, trauma, and the politics of the unsaid in birth narratives
• Birthing stories as sites of resistance, agency, and reclamation
• Case studies of narrative-based interventions in maternal healthcare
• Doulas, midwives, and birth companions as narrative keepers
• Narratives of reimagining  feminist engagements with biology in perinatal health
• Integrating feminist biology and medical knowledge in birth studies
• The politics of evidence: whose knowledge counts in clinical birthing spaces?
• Maternal-fetal medicine and feminist critiques of personhood debates
• Intersectionality and birthing stories
• Embodied writing on birth, pain and sensation
• Mind-body approaches to perinatal care and trauma healing
• Rituals, spirituality, and ancestral knowledge in birthing practices
• Postpartum bodies: narratives of transformation, rupture, and recovery
• Disability, neurodiversity, and birthing experiences

Abstract Submission
 Please submit an abstract (300–500 words) outlining your proposed contribution, specifying the format, genre, and its relevance to the volume. Include a brief bio (150 words) highlighting your expertise, relevant work, or lived experience.

Full Chapter Timeline

• Abstract Deadline:  June 20, 2025
• Notification of Acceptance: July 20, 2025
• Full Submission Deadline: November 28, 2025
• Final Revisions Due: January 30, 2026

Send your abstract and bio to birthingstoriesanthology@gmail.com

For any questions or clarifications, please contact the editors

dasd@d.umn.edu and Jessica.Gildersleeve@unisq.edu.au