Presence: A Hidden History of the Female Body
Regular price
$24.20 USD
Regular price
$40.34 USD
Sale price
$24.20 USD
Unit price
per
You save $16.14 USD (40%)
In stock — Ships within 1–2 business days
Format
Print Book
Currently viewing
Hardcover
$24.20 USD
$40.34 USD
Secure CheckoutYour data is protected
Fast U.S. ShippingShips within 1–2 business days
Authentic Titles100% Genuine Books
Book Overview "[A] soulful, moving, sometimes cacophonous account of European women's experiences and interior lives from about 1500 to 1800."--Mattie ...
"[A] soulful, moving, sometimes cacophonous account of European women's experiences and interior lives from about 1500 to 1800."--Mattie Kahn, The New York Times Book Review
A vibrant history of women's bodies, expertise, and work from a major new writer--stylish, revelatory, and liberating.
Today, we understand the mind and the body to be distinct; that the mind exercises control over the flesh. But as Erin Maglaque experienced the transformations of pregnancy, abortion, birth, and care-giving, she began to doubt the truth of that dichotomy. In an effort to better understand her experiences, she found herself reaching to the premodern past, a period when the strange rubbed up against the strikingly recognizable: when people accepted both levitation and the smallpox vaccine, witchcraft and universal gravitation; a time when understandings of the body and its capacity for thought were more expansive, and more unruly.
Structured as a biography of the author's own body, from girlhood and adolescence, to sex and abortion, to feeding and caring for an infant, to her experience caring for someone as they were dying, Erin places her personal history into a deep dialogue with the premodern past. She explores the relation between imagination and gender, between maternal and historical subjectivity; she positions female desire as a practice with a past, and offers gentler and more forgiving understandings of housekeeping, pregnancy, early miscarriage, abortion, birth, sleeplessness, and breastfeeding.
For readers of Amia Srinivasan's The Right to Sex, Cat Bohannon's Eve, and Olivia Laing's Everybody, Presence is a unique experiment in historical thinking and embodied knowledge; a thoroughly researched, vibrant history of women's bodies, expertise, and work from a major new writer.
Book Details Format: Hardcover | Publisher: ASTRA HOUSE | ISBN: 1662603347
FormatHardcover
ISBN1662603347
EAN9781662603341
PublisherASTRA HOUSE
Publication Date2026-06-16
AccessoriesNo Accessory
ConditionNew
Product TypeHARD COVER BOOKS
Weight1.65 Pounds
Length8.2 Inches
Width5.5 Inches
Height0.8 Inches
Shipping & Returns Fast, reliable shipping and easy returns on eligible items.
Most orders ship within 1–2 business days with fast, reliable U.S. delivery.
Eligible items can be returned within 30 days in line with our store return policy.
Why shop with AlbakiReads
Fresh Inventory from Major Publishers
Sourced through trusted book distributors, with fresh titles added regularly.
Secure Checkout
Your payment information is encrypted and protected every step of the way.
Fast U.S. Shipping
Most orders ship within 1–2 business days.
Books for Every Kind of Reader
From page-turners to timeless classics—find your next favorite read.
