Document Type
Poetry
Abstract
This narrative poem explores the embodied experience of childbirth in a foreign land. Set within the unfamiliar environment of a hospital far from the speaker’s linguistic roots, the poem traces the physical and emotional landscape of labor as one profoundly shaped by displacement and disconnection. Through sensory imagery and fragmented memory, it portrays how giving birth in an unfamiliar context amid the absence of familiar support systems and linguistic comfort creates a profound sense of bodily estrangement. The poem enters broader feminist conversations to reclaim the maternal body, marked by migration and displacement, as a definitive site of memory and agency.
Recommended Citation
Saleem, Sadhiya
(2026)
"Birthing in a Foreign Land,"
Journal of International Women's Studies: Vol. 28:
Iss.
4, Article 25.
Available at:
https://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol28/iss4/25