The Natural Mother of the Child
A Memoir of Nonbinary Parenthood
by Krys Malcolm Belc
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Pub Date Jun 15 2021 | Archive Date Jun 15 2021
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Description
Krys Malcolm Belc has thought a lot about the interplay between parenthood and gender. As a nonbinary, transmasculine parent, giving birth to his son Samson clarified his gender identity. And yet, when his partner Anna adopted Samson, the legal documents listed Belc as "the natural mother of the child."
By considering how the experiences contained under the umbrella of "motherhood" don't fully align with Belc's own experience, The Natural Mother of the Child journeys both toward and through common perceptions of what it means to have a body and how that body can influence the perception of a family. With this visual memoir-in-essays, Belc has created a new kind of life record, one that engages directly with the documentation often thought to constitute a record of one's life—childhood photos, birth certificates—and addresses his deep ambivalence about the "before" and "after" so prevalent in trans stories, which feels apart from his own experience.
The Natural Mother of the Child is the story of a person moving past societal expectations to take control of his own narrative, with prose that delights in the intimate dailiness of family life and explores how much we can ever really know when we enter into parenting.
Advance Praise
A Rumpus Most Anticipated Book of Next Year
A Millions Most Anticipated Book of the Year
"The Natural Mother of the Child is a captivating memoir of family, identity, and experience." —K.W Colyard, Bustle
"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.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"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." —Dustin Parsons, author of Exploded View: Essays on Fatherhood, with Diagrams
"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!" —Andrea Lawlor, author of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
"This is a beautiful memoir of parenthood and selfhood that promises to expand the canon of literary writing on caregiving and identity. Belc is a nonbinary, transmasculine parent whose family story is here interwoven with revelations of the bureaucratic processes that are inharmoniously bound up with people’s real lives." —The Millions, One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Year
"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." —Melissa Febos, author of Abandon Me & Girlhood
"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." —Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House
"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." —Dustin Parsons, author of Exploded View: Essays on Fatherhood, with Diagrams
"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!" —Andrea Lawlor, author of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
"This is a beautiful memoir of parenthood and selfhood that promises to expand the canon of literary writing on caregiving and identity. Belc is a nonbinary, transmasculine parent whose family story is here interwoven with revelations of the bureaucratic processes that are inharmoniously bound up with people’s real lives." —The Millions, One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Year
"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." —Melissa Febos, author of Abandon Me & Girlhood
"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." —Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House
"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." —Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9781640094383 |
| PRICE | $26.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 304 |
Links
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Larissa C, Reviewer
I started this memoir and couldn't stop reading. I'm so thankful that this will be out in the world soon so I can share it. Krys does an excellent job depicting new partnerhood and the messiness of gender.
Jenna L, Reviewer
Beautifully written and heart-wrenchingly honest, Krys Belc details the story of carrying his child as a transmasc parent in the mid 2010s. Though we have progressed far in our understanding and mainstream acceptance of many facets of LGBT life, our society still struggles with rampant transphobia both in and out of the medical realm. Belc details his struggles with his own gender identity while carrying his own child as he watched his partner take care of their oldest son. His prose is gorgeous in the way that too many memoirs are not, and this was the book that finally made me understand why people love memoirs.
He is honest and raw when detailing the transphobia he faced both growing up and as a full adult, married with children and trying to navigate a world still callous to him, whether intentionally or not. His reflections on being called the natural mother of the child in all legal documents and struggle with doctors and everyday people alike struggling with the picture of someone visibly pregnant while transmasculine is exactly the kind of look into the pervasive and insidious ways transphobia infects every facet of life. For those who are gender nonconforming, you will resonate with much and some parts you'll find entirely foreign, just as every gender journey is unique. For cis people, particularly those that do not know and love trans people in close ways, this is a great way to become aware of the microaggressions we perpetuate and the impact of words that we take entirely for granted all too often.
Though Belc is absolutely not responsible for teaching cis people what it's like to be nonbinary and transmasc gestational parent in today's world, his poetic prose and honesty are a snapshot into his life that I am deeply honored to have experienced. Buy this for your nurse and doctor friends, the doulas and midwives you know, your book club that needs a bit of bubble-bursting. Tell your libraries to get this book. It'll make you more empathetic person, I hope. It'll stick with you and remind you that family is complicated, love is messy, and parents don't always know the right thing to do.
Reviewer 566608
This book is engaging, vulnerable, and gorgeously written. I've been a fan of Belc's for years, but this memoir is raw, powerful, and moving. I love how Belc doesn't shy away from the conflicting feelings and powerful/difficult/joyful moments of non-binary parenting. Belc is an autobuy author for me!
Shana A, Reviewer
This raw, vulnerable memoir explores Krys Malcolm Belc's experience of pregnancy, parenthood, queerness, gender identity, and more. While growing his child, Belc is bombarded with our society's limited understanding around gender and pregnancy, as well as the medical system's failure to support all pregnant people. Apart from exploring the impact of this experience on his gender identity, Belc also utilizes things like old photos and court documents to further expand on his queerness. He writes about his relationship and marriage, about his upbringing, and what it's like to now be the parent of three young sons. Given the format of this book, I could see him adding on more and more as his children grow up and the conversation continues with them. Among the many parenting memoirs that exist, this one stands out as a valuable voice that I hope we'll keep hearing from in the future.
Veronica F, Educator
At the end of "The Natural Mother of the Child," Belc reflects on the fact that he "should have used the word uncommon when talking to [his son] about [their] relationship, instead of rare" because "Everyone came from someone." Nevertheless, Belc's chronicle of his experience as a transmasculine gestational parent is like nothing I've read before. Through an accumulation of clear-eyed, unsparing stories that span the past, present, and imagined future, Belc picks apart the normative knot that tangles the physical capacity for pregnancy with a range of cultural beliefs about gender and motherhood.
I came to this memoir expecting a critique of the way that medical establishments and government institutions interact with nonbinary parents, and that critique is certainly present, but for me the strength of "The Natural Mother of the Child" lies in Belc's reflections on his own changing internal landscape before, during, and after pregnancy. Indeed, adaptation and transformation define Belc's experience. His ambivalence about his pregnant body intersects with an appreciation for the close bond it creates with his son Samson; when he begins testosterone and people no longer see the contours of that bond written on his body, it feels like something of a loss. After Belc finds out Samson's sex during an ultrasound, he is jealous of the boyhood that he never got to have and the identity that he assumes Samson will easily inhabit. Later, this jealousy morphs into something more complicated as he watches Samson grow into a person that is softer and gentler than his two brothers (both carried by Belc's partner)—binary gender doesn't seem a good match for parent or son. I found myself continually surprised by the way the nuance of Belc's analysis exposed and undermined assumptions about gender and families that I didn't even know I was holding.
The stories that make up "The Natural Mother of the Child" are interspersed with institutional ephemera that chart Belc's changing identity, as well as baby pictures of Belc and his three sons. The sheer number of documents required by the state to legally acknowledge the reality of Belc's family is overwhelming; while I was initially unsure what the legal documents added to the narrative, by the end I was grateful for even this small glimpse of the time and resources required to build a family outside of society's rigid expectations. The structure of the memoir links Belc's internal experience to the demands of the public world, aptly illustrating the challenge of crafting an authentic identity in a society designed to keep people in boxes.
"The Natural Mother of the Child" is beautiful and thought-provoking, and I'm grateful for Belc's generosity in sharing his story. It's changed the way that I think about pregnancy and parenthood, but also gender more generally. Thank you to NetGalley and Counterpoint Press for the ARC!
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