Loved and Wanted, Christa Parravani
Loved and Wanted, Christa Parravani
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Loved and Wanted
A Memoir of Choice, Children, and Womanhood

Author: Christa Parravani

Narrator: Christa Parravani

Unabridged: 5 hr 9 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/10/2020


Synopsis

This program is read by the author.

“Haunting, wild, and quiet at once. A shimmering look at motherhood, in all its gothic pain and glory. I could not stop reading.” —Lisa Taddeo, #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Three Women

A stressed family, an unplanned pregnancy, and a painful, if liberating, awakening from the author of the lauded memoir Her

Christa Parravani was forty years old, in a troubled marriage, and in bad financial straits when she learned she was pregnant with her third child. She and her family were living in Morgantown, West Virginia, where she had taken a professorial position at the local university.

Haunted by a childhood steeped in poverty and violence and by young adult years rocked by the tragic death of her identical twin sister, Christa hoped her professor’s salary and healthcare might set her and her young family on a safe and steady path. Instead, one year after the birth of her second child, Christa found herself pregnant again. Six weeks into the pregnancy, she requested an abortion. And in the weeks, then months, that followed, nurses obfuscated and doctors refused outright or feared being found out to the point of, ultimately, becoming unavailable to provide Christa with reproductive choice.

By the time Christa understood that she would need to leave West Virginia to obtain a safe, legal abortion, she’d run out of time. She had failed to imagine that she might not have access to reproductive choice in the United States until it was too late for her, her pregnancy too far along.

So she gave birth to a beautiful baby boy named Keats. And another frightening education began: available healthcare was dangerously inadequate to her newborn son’s needs; indeed, environmental degradations and poor healthcare endangered Christa’s older children as well.

Loved and Wanted is the passionate story of a woman’s love for her children, and a poignant and bracing look at the difficult choices women in America are forced to make every day, in a nation where policies and a cultural war on women leave them without sufficient agency over their bodies, their futures, and even their hopes for their children’s lives.

A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company

About Christa Parravani

Christa Parravani is the bestselling author of Her: A Memoir. She has taught at Dartmouth College, UMass Amherst, SUNY Purchase, and West Virginia University, where she served as an Assistant Professor of Creative Nonfiction. She earned her MFA in Visual Art from Columbia University and her MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers-Newark.


Reviews

Goodreads review by 8stitches 9lives on November 09, 2020

Loved and Wanted is both a moving and brutally honest memoir of motherhood and the sacrifices we make for our children as well as the story of a stressed family, an unplanned pregnancy, and a painful, if liberating, awakening. Christa Parravani was forty years old, in a troubled marriage, and in bad......more

Goodreads review by Carolyn on January 07, 2021

Loved and Wanted by Christa Parravani is her memoir of her time when she found herself pregnant with her third child in West Virginia, where abortion, although legal is not really a choice for many women. I found this book to be difficult to read because it seemed to be more about her difficult marri......more

Goodreads review by Rachel on March 19, 2021

I commend Parravani for "voicing the unspeakable." Touching and emotional memoir that was beautifully written. Loved the author's incredible honesty and her admirable abandon of conformity.......more

Goodreads review by Jules on March 07, 2021

Parravani begins her story by discussing her desire to terminate a pregnancy and coming up against huge barriers to do so. Parravani eventually chooses to continue the pregnancy (without really discussing this turning point at all), then goes back and forward and around in time to discuss all her ot......more

Goodreads review by Elite on November 12, 2020

A searing look at women’s rights in conservative states in the USA. When did women give men, religion or anyone else the right to dictate what they can do if they find themselves pregnant with an unwanted, unplanned baby? Christa Parravani raises this question and points out the pitfalls on wanting t......more