THE NATURAL MOTHER OF THE CHILD

It's hard to think of an endeavor more traditionally gendered than parenting, which makes Krys Malcolm Belc's memoir of giving birth and raising children as a nonbinary, transmasculine parent all the more necessary. Hopefully, The Natural Mother of the Child will soon be part of a wide array of books encouraging us to appreciate family bonds outside the confines of gender norms. Read more...

Harper's Bazaar calls it one of the best LGBT books of 2021: "Krys Malcolm Belc's singular memoir-in-essays traces how his experiences conceiving, birthing, and breastfeeding a child helped to clarify his gender identity... "motherhood" doesn't describe Belc's own experience of pregnancy and parenting. The Natural Mother of the Child attempts to bridge that gap, offering an alternative interpretation of what it means to grow a family." Read more...

A wholly unique memoir that will speak to readers navigating nonbinary parenthood, as well as those who seek to understand the limitations of the U.S. legal system when it comes to nonbinary and trans parenthood. Read more...

This is a gorgeous memoir about families, raising children, and figuring out how to live in a world where intimate matters are both inscribed by individual history and entangled with the workings of the State. A work of solace and communion, this book is destined to be a major addition to the literature of parenthood and selfhood, one that will be read for years to come.

A formally daring queer memoir about parenthood and inheritance and the way our bodies resist the binaries of the state; The Natural Mother of the Child is brilliant.

Q&A: In exploring these archives and creating his own, Belc renders a brilliant exploration of personal and cultural expectations, where our bodies meet emotion, and what bodies carry, both literally and figuratively. Belc is a gifted storyteller whose personal narrative is engrossing and tender even as he delves into areas of violence and grief, ultimately revealing how his experience with parenthood informed his gender identity. Read more...

A must-read book for June: "Krys Malcolm Belc has long been a frank and warm presence on social media, and in this memoir he invites readers into his experiences of conceiving, birthing, and breastfeeding his son as a nonbinary, transmasculine parent with a similar generosity of spirit. Supplemented with photographs, documents, and illustrations, Belc's impressionistic and vulnerable book proves that there is no one way to make a family, or be a caregiver, bringing nuance to a conversation that can feel too rigidly formed." Read more...

The book is the #1 new release on Amazon in Pregnancy and Childbirth and is in the top 50 books for both the LBTQ Demographic Studies and Biographies categories (June 18, 2021)

In six long essays, most adorned by fuzzy photographs and court material, ultrasounds and birth certificates, plays on and with margin settings (think W.G. Sebald, think Susanna Kaysen), Belc tells the story of being who he has become, of who he is still becoming. He is neither prescriptive nor defensive; rather, he is at work on understanding himself... If Belc still has questions about his body and what it carries, if he wonders how the world sees him, if he wishes the past could be both more present and somehow more distant, no one will wonder, in reading this book, if Belc is an authentically gifted writer. Read more...

Belc develops a candid, gritty, tender story that should garner empathy and understanding regardless of a reader's background. In this multilayered narrative, augmented with black-and-white photos, the author successfully holds readers' attention all the way through the last poignant line. With vivid rawness, Belc paints an impressionist mural of what it means to be a parent while also birthing his true self.

Poignant... Reminiscent of Maggie Nelson's Argonauts, Belc's memoir is both personal and philosophical, resisting mainstream notions of gender and family while exploring the interplay between the body and the self.

When his partner, Anna, adopted his son, Samson, the paperwork listed Krys Malcolm Belc - a nonbinary, transmasculine person - as 'the natural mother of the child.' Belc spins out from that moment in this insightful memoir, which examines the ways in which gender and the body are codified and documented at the institutional level.

Krys Malcolm Belc's lyrical memoir brings much-needed nuance to all these old conversations about baby-making, families, parenting, and gender. Belc's narrative of his conscious creation of self and family is generous, resonant, and powerful - I will be pressing this lovely book into the hands of all the parents and parents-to-be I know!

...It's about parenthood and motherhood and gender and how those things are all wrapped up...I think it's a really important untold or underexplored topic... Read more...

The Natural Mother of the Child refuses easy stories or pat answers. Instead, Belc tells a counterstory that resists hegemonic narratives and pushes toward something messier and truer. Belc's devotion to his son - and especially his bodily devotion - comes through powerfully, a clear signal. By comparison, some of the other signs that supposedly tell us who we are - birth certificates, marriage certificates, adoption certificates - seem desperately incomplete.

In this candid and captivating memoir-in-essays, Krys Malcolm Belc shares his experience of gestational parenthood as a nonbinary, transmasculine person. Funny, gritty and brave, this is a story of self-affirmation unlike any other, but one in which many will see themselves. Read more...

Korea: OrangeD

This book rocketed to the top of my Best of 2021 list as soon as I read it. It's one of those books that I have trouble talking about because I love it so much. In a series of interconnected essays, Belc tells a moving, multi-layered story about trans parenthood and queer partnership. It's about queer family making, transformation, and the many truths and lives that bodies hold. He weaves photos, court and legal documents, and other ephemera into the text, creating a memoir that feels distinctly new and distinctly queer a book that's as much about the possibilities of storytelling as it is about the possibilities of parenthood.

BITCH media features it in a feminist book roundup for June: "Belc's illustrated memoir-in-essays delves into what the experience of giving birth taught him about the rigidness of medical and legal systems and the deftness of those determined to exist beyond binaries. It's a powerful, necessary book - one that every single obstetrician should be assigned in medical school." Read more...

The Natural Mother of the Child is a scorching and propulsive memoir, a love story to all families built outside the status quo. This book is an ode, a reckoning, an education and an emancipation. A tapestry of forms, of narrative and artifact - and perhaps, most remarkable of all, is the poetry made of the words themselves.

All memoirs offer a study of a body through time, but my favorites make this fact transparent, refuse to separate the self from its tangible form. This memoir is an embodied story - of non-binary parenthood, of true partnership and the challenge of navigating systems which were not designed with us in mind, but on which our most intimate decisions sometimes depend. Above all, this is a love story, one which tracks the evolution of self through the relationships that define it. I loved this portrait of a queer family's making, its proof that the ways we love and are loved create us.

Parenthood is full of the questions we don't always know the answers to, and in Krys Malcolm Belc's The Natural Mother of the Child, Belc's courage to ask his questions frankly and unflinchingly is riveting. These beautiful moments of intimacy, many written to loved ones, help us explore the history of a family, a community, and the expectations of who we call mom and who we call dad.

Legitimate Experiences: PW talks with Krys Malcolm Belc Read more...