This beautiful story reminds me of the strange dreams I have while ovulating, the sense of something coming into being or falling apart. In the story, women must choose what material to make their children out of with whatever materials are within their means. When the protagonist Ogechi brings various babies of cotton and paper to her mother, her mother destroys them, saying they are not durable. When I first read it in my twenties, it was so exciting in its originality, and while it still is to me now, recent readings are tinged with sadness as I think of how my own desire to have children has been thwarted by my economic situation and my means.
First published in The New Yorker, October 2015, and available to read here; collected in What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky, Riverhead/Tinder, 2017
A Personal Anthology 