Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #306404 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 241 pages

Review
"Andrea Askowitz brilliant debut memoir is the exact kind of thing I'm always looking for at the bookstore--something that reads like an intimate yet super funny, painfully true letter from my very best friend. Andrea is like a girl version of David Sedaris or Augusten Burroughs, mining perfect comedic moments from the very worst of life's offerings. You don't have to be miserable, lonely or a lesbian to completely relate to the hilarious journey that is Andrea's life." -- Jill Soloway author of Tiny Women In Shiny Pants and writer on Six Feet Under.

"Funny, sad, unblinkingly honest--I would give this one to any pregnant friend and a few who aren't."-Joyce Maynard author of At Home in the World, The Usual Rules and To Die For

"Andrea is the lesbian Annie Lamott. Her book makes me want not to donate sperm."-Taylor Negron, actor -- More Praise for Andrea Askowitz

"Hilarious and all too true. After my own miserable lesbian pregnancy, Andrea Askowitz's confessions cheered me up immeasurably."-Ariel Gore author of The Hip Mama Survival Guide

"Andrea Askowitz, is warm, funny and filthy"--Slate.com -- Praise for Andrea Askowitz

"This is one whiny, bitchy pregnant lady--and you can't help but love her. Askowitz is funny and fearless." -- Louise Sloan author of Knock Yourself Up: A Tell-All Guide to Becoming a Single Mom

"You don't have to be a miserable, lonely, pregnant lesbian to adore Andrea Askowitz's awfully funny story. Anyone who enjoys schadenfreude, laugh-out-loud asides, and frank depictions of biological horrors will love this wonderful book. You will read it dog-eared and quote the most outrageous parts at length to all your friends. An awfully funny story." -- Jennifer Traig author of Devil In the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood

From the Back Cover
Andrea Askowitz has the best life in the world. She's pregnant and healthy. She has friends and family who love her. She has money and meaningful work. And all she can do is obsess about the one thing she doesn't have: Kate, her ex-girlfriend. My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy is a funny, whiny, all-too-real account of one girl's true adventure in maternity. From finding a great donor who turns out to be shooting blanks ("I was a lesbian with male fertility problems.") through all-day morning sickness and graduation into "fat-girl underwear," Andrea's life reads like an antidote to sugar-sweet pregnancy guides and memoirs. In week 8, her sense of smell becomes so strong that she can tell what deodorant people are wearing. In week 28, she plans a pity party, complete with black-only dress code and a violin player: "It isn't an attempt to make fun of myself, because that would be too joyous." Irreverent and whip-smart, My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy is potent therapy for ill-timed break-ups, leg cramps, constipation, and every other downside to a dream come true.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
CONCEPTION At 11 A.M. I rush past my office mates and out the door. I have a 12:30 appointment at the Kaiser Infertility Clinic. I say, "See you later, I'm going to get pregnant." First, I drive to the California Cryobank. I walk down a long, dark hallway to the pickup window and look around for men to try to get a glimpse of the kind of guy who donates here, but the donors seem to use a separate entrance. I consider the possibility of bumping into someone I know, but the hall is empty. There is no waiting room, just a glass window that slides open when I ring the bell. A woman in a lab coat charges my credit card $320 and hands over my baby's daddy--a vial half the size of my pinkie, encased in a freezing tank inside a three-foot-high box with arrows and the words "This Way Up." I tuck the sperm behind the passenger seat and head to the clinic. The day is bright and blue and mild. A fine day to get pregnant. I take Sunset, which is tree-lined for miles, and I'm thinking it's one of the prettiest streets in Los Angeles, until I get farther east and then Sunset becomes as ugly as any other strip-mall stretch of LA. The music this morning is my favorite, classic hits from the '70s and '80s. I haven't moved on. At 34, I'm still listening to ABBA and Fleetwood Mac. The windows are open, and I'm singing, "Oh Oh, dream weavah, I believe you can get me through the niiiihhiiight." I carry the sperm box inside, which is unwieldy but not heavy, and hand it over to the nurse for defrosting. This is my second attempt, so I know the routine. The first time, I brought my best friend Stephanie, a professional photographer who took pictures like she was the proud dad: me walking in with the loot, me in the waiting room eating a peach Danish, me on the table with my feet in the stirrups, and even some crotch shots of the sperm going in. I'm lucky: most people don't get good photos of conception. The last time, Kate wanted to come, but we agreed it would be too hard. We ate Thai food the night before, and she cried over the tom ka gai, our favorite soup--chicken with coconut milk, medium spicy. Damn her for not getting her shit together in time to be my co-mom. Kate is so pretty and gentle, and I dreamed of her holding our baby. And holding me. I waited six years for her to grow up. We broke up several months ago. A divorce, really. We weren't legally married, but we were family. We shared a health insurance policy. Another woman's in the clinic waiting room, apparently alone, but wearing a wedding band, and a man and a woman are sitting together. We smile and nod at each other. I wonder if we're all waiting for our sperm to defrost. Although I'm by myself this time, I don't feel lonely. I feel cool and confident, like I'm doing my part. The war in Iraq started a few weeks ago, and I have been feeling powerless. I want to be more effective in creating peace in the world, and this war seems beyond my control, no matter how many peace rallies I go to. But today, as I sit looking up at the Matisse print, the one of the big-hipped woman dancing with no feet, I think: Maybe this is my contribution. No pressure on the kid, but maybe the kid will be a peacemaker--a sort of modern day Jesus Christ, as this Jew understands Jesus--someone who can speak the language of those in power and at the same time befriend those who are disempowered. And if this doesn't resemble the Immaculate Conception, I don't know what does.

Customer Reviews

painfully funny!
I really enjoyed this book, it had me laughing and crying at the same time!

Misery Can Be Fun!
A sure testament to a writer's talent is her ability to draw and hold a reader for whom the subject matter is congenitally unfamiliar. Andrea Askowitz has lots of talent: her comic tale of the hormonal trainwreck that was her Left Coast pregnancy without a partner kept me - a homosexual, non-Jewish man from the East Coast with no intention of raising children -- in stitches from start to finish. Never has schadenfreude been so sweet.

After breaking up with her girlfriend of five years, Askowitz decides to try pregnancy alone. She goes to the sperm bank, sifts through donors, falls in love with her OB/GYN, becomes deeply depressed, disses her brother, obsesses over everything that could go wrong, self-diagnoses non-existent cancer, gets "fat," learns what "doula" and a thousand other strange words mean, and ultimately gives birth to a child. Some of the fun along the way is certainly born of her self-absorption and misery and malcontentedness, but Askowitz is looking for witness as much as laughs. She imagines a party in which she invites her closest friends, insists they wear black and listen to her recite her top ten complaints about her life. "Thank you for coming," she writes. "Do not have fun."

Askowitz writes in a manner so immediate that the emotional surges, flashes of envy and of fury, and instant judgments as to people's worth are visceral. I didn't like those people Askowitz didn't like, and for those who complained about Askowitz's uncensored mouth, I stood by her in saying, Get used to it! I even winced when her nether parts ripped from stem to stern during birth.

A selection of some of Askowitz's choice humor:

* Days before Askowitz gives birth, "Nurse Jones ... shoves her finers into my vagina like she's digging for a pickle at the bottom of the jar. I say, `That hurts!' and she looks at me like, Girl, this is nothing. If you can't handle this, you're in big trouble [when the baby comes].
* Askowitz keels over on the sidewalk with pregnancy-induced dry heaves. A neighbor passes. Explaining why she did not stop, the neighbor says, "I thought you were praying."
* When her would-be sperm donor proves to be shooting blanks, Askowitz bemoans her fate: "I was a lesbian with male fertility problems."
* Askowitzs friend says, "think of your body not as the athlete's body it used to be, but as a life creator." Askowitz's reaction: "I take that to mean I'm fat."

The sheer crankiness of at least eight of her nine months pregnancy proves a perfect foil to the almost speechless (well, not quite, this is Askowitz after all: she does get in a few gripes about the grape-sized hemorrhoids that result from her child's birth) awe with which Askowitz regards the miracle of her newborn child. "I have a crush like no other I've ever experienced. It's one-sided, pure and egoless. ... " Hell, after reading this memoir, I was ready to go get knocked up myself.

Pregnancy is Not for the Weak of Heart or Stomach!
My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy is author, Andrea Askowitz's brutally honest memoir recounting the months she spent trying to get pregnant, actually pregnant, and as a new mother. As can be easily discerned from the title, Andrea did not enjoy being pregnant and she makes no effort to sugarcoat her experience. Askowitz is frank and extremely open in describing the messy and oftentimes unpleasant experiences involved with pregnancy and child birth.

What makes My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy work as a memoir is the balance that Askowitz manages to maintain between candid description of her opinions and admission that those opinions might have been skewed by her own gloom. Askowitz pulls no punches in describing her bitter disappoint with her friends, her ex-girlfriend, and her family; however, her harsh judgments are tempered by her acknowledgment that her estimations were not always fair and that she was a big pain in the neck. Askowitz's ability to call herself out on her own issues makes her endearing and likeable.

Askowitz's ability to be so unguarded in her writing oftentimes results in uproarious hilarity. Her recounting of her arguments and passive-aggressive altercations with her therapist will leave readers in stitches. She is candid, annoying, funny, loving, infuriating, and a whole host of other contradicting descriptions that make a person complicated and interesting.

Overall, this is a thoroughly enjoyable memoir that lifts the curtain on the rosy, glowing pregnancy façade that is usually presented to reveal the difficult, hard, and ugly side of pregnancy.

I do, however, feel a responsibility to future readers to mention that this might not be the book for those who consider themselves exceptionally squeamish, prudish, or easily offended.