Michelle Tea is best known for her witty, gritty memoirs about lesbian relationships and community. Knocking Myself Up: A Memoir of My (In)Fertility is the latest installment in the story of her life, following Tea’s journey to motherhood. Class, gender, sexuality – as usual, no subject is off limits. There is no fade to black, which is what makes Knocking Myself Up so powerful. It feels as if we’re along for the ride on Tea’s quest to find sperm, there at the bedside for her incredibly wholesome insemination parties.
Though Knocking Myself Up is about marriage and motherhood, it’s anything but conventional. Tea bases her decision to try for a baby on the outcome of a tarot reading. Her sperm donor is a flamboyant drag queen. Tea begins dating her future spouse and co-parent while trying to conceive. With how she lives her life and how she tells her story, Tea gleefully subverts the standards set by patriarchy. This book is chaotic, wholehearted, and utterly charming.
Everyone loves to root for an underdog. And – as Tea discovers – any woman over 40 trying to conceive is an underdog. Her path to motherhood is far from straightforward. The punishing cycles of fertility drugs, invasive medical procedures, and crushing disappointments Tea endures are all testament to her heartfelt longing for a child.
While Knocking Myself Up can deal with deeply painful subjects, it’s never difficult to read. Not once does the book lag. The energetic pacing and Tea’s whip-smart commentary both make this an intensely readable memoir. And Tea’s openness serves an important purpose, beyond entertaining the reader.
In breaking the taboos surrounding the cultural ideal of motherhood, in speaking honestly about how physically grueling fertility treatments are, Tea imparts valuable wisdom. Any woman who reads this book will be better equipped to make an informed decision about whether fertility treatments are the right choice for her.
Like all of Tea’s writing, Knocking Myself Up is proudly political. That being said, those politics sometimes get messy. For years Tea described herself as lesbian. She has written repeatedly about her “lesbian feminist nervous breakdown”, and was even co-founder of Sister Spit – a lesbian feminist spoken-word and performance art collective. But in this latest memoir Tea has shifted to describing herself as “queer” or “lesbian-ish.” Though in her own words Tea is strictly interested in female people:
“I began to lament the impossibility of getting accidentally knocked up. When I was younger, I was relieved the people I dated – women, trans men, and gender nonconforming people assigned female at birth – could not get me pregnant. What a great thing not to have to worry about. Now I was regretful that I couldn’t allow a broken condom to make the decision for me.”
Though Knocking Myself Up steers well clear of ongoing debates around sex and gender, Tea inadvertently hits upon why this conversation has become so contentious for many lesbians. In changing how she describes her own sexuality – that of a female person attracted to other female people – Tea aims for inclusiveness. But the main drawback of inclusive language is that it narrows the scope for Tea, and other women without her platform or influence, to proudly claim the label of lesbian.
Also, a big creative decision behind Knocking Myself Up doesn’t entirely make sense. Throughout the book, Tea uses the pseudonym of Orson for her partner. But she also writes with great gusto about placing their wedding announcement in the New York Times. Her partner and co-parent is clearly identifiable and even named in two of Tea’s previous books (How to Grow Up, and Against Memoir). The pseudonym is pointless when she has already been so public about their life together.
That being said, Knocking Myself Up is well worth reading. The scrappy DIY ethos that has defined Tea’s career is something lesbians around the world will be able to connect with, because it’s exactly what goes into building our own communities and families.
Nobody does memoir quite like Michelle Tea. Her conversational style and fearless honesty, her insight and playfulness, all make Tea an extraordinary narrator. Over the course of several books, she has perfected the art of biographical writing. And it’s impossible not to become invested in her high-stakes gamble of trying to start a family.
