Crear o criar: Maternity and Choice Feminism in Meruane's Fruta podrida and Contra los hijos

Abstract

Scholars of Latin American literature have long studied the topic of motherhood, but the paucity of literary representations of pregnancy itself has resulted in a tradition of what we might call postpartum criticism. Moreover, in most of this critical work, pronatalism (a hegemonic belief that human reproduction is always desirable) remains largely unquestioned. In this study of the antinatalist views in two works by awardwinning Chilean author Lina Meruane—Contra los hijos (2014) and Fruta podrida (2007)—I show how Meruane joins a growing cohort of writers who object to "choice feminism," a popular feminist philosophy that validates all women's choices on the basis of liberated individualism. Meruane's provocative representations of women who choose to procreate displace the sentimentality of childrearing and foreground the economic stakes of childbearing. This shift requires readers to consider the praxis of gestation, its value, and the corporal cost of production borne, always, by mothers.