A wall of silence surrounds the experience of women who are childless, whether by choice or by circumstance. Bearing Life is the first anthology to marshal the power of literature to break this silence.

Here, more than forty contemporary writers reflect candidly and movingly on what it means to live as women without children. These stories, poems, and personal essays speak directly from—and to—the conflicting, often painful, and sometimes liberating emotions of childless women. The selections move through the ambivalence and denial childless women confront within themselves, to the misunderstanding and hostility they confront in the outside world, toward a space where an acceptance and even celebration of childlessness can begin to take place.

Bearing Life includes work by Julia Alvarez, Margaret Atwood, Rita Mae Brown, Ana Castillo, Sandra Cisneros, Diane diPrima, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Janice Eidus, Daniela Gioseffi, Amy Hempel, Linda Hogan, bell hooks, Hettie Jones, Irena Klepfisz, Joy Kogawa, Valerie Miner, Kathleen Norris, Naomi Shihab Nye, Joyce Carol Oates, Grace Paley, Molly Peacock, Marge Piercy, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Evelyn C. Rosser, Jane Rule, May Sarton, Sandra Scofield, Amy Tan, Luci Tapahonso, and many others.