Linea Nigra: An Essay on Pregnancy and Earthquakes

"My body is being covered in signs for someone else, signs that have to be explained to me since I don't know how to decipher them."

Simultaneously a work of collaboration between mother and child and a diary of discomfort, worry, and joy, Linea Nigra is an intimate exploration of childbearing. Drawing from a wide range of inspirations, from Louise Bourgeois to Ursula K. Le Guin to the influential indigenous Nahua model Luz Jim幯ez, Barrera's treatise is candid and philosophical. Linea Nigra is a book that clarifies motherhood, but also celebrates the mysteries of the body--like the indecipherable black line itself.

Writing over the course of her first pregnancy, birthing, breastfeeding, and young motherhood, Barrera embraces her subject fully. And as she writes, she calls out for a great proliferation of pregnancy books: for more writing by the expectant, whether "good, bad or indifferent"; for a canon and a counter-canon of motherhood prose; for the creation of new literary genres rooted in all of these radical acts.