From ‘personal’ to ‘public’: Translating birth-stories as counter-narratives

From ‘personal’ to ‘public’: Translating birth-stories as counter-narratives
By
Şebnem Susam-Saraeva (University of Edinburgh)
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24
5 p.m. – 6 p.m.
219 Glendon Hall (Glendon manor).

The talk will study the role of translated personal narratives in the production and dissemination of knowledge within maternal and neonatal health. Birth stories are noteworthy examples of such knowledge and experience being passed from one person to the next, one generation to the next, and one language and culture to another.
This presentation will discuss the importance of examining birth stories shared online and in print among parents as resources for birth preparation. Narrative theory will be adopted to examine how personal narratives are circulated with a view to challenge the deeply ingrained publicnarratives on women’s bodies and social position within agiven society. This presentation will then examine a key text within the natural/positive birth movement and itsTurkish translation: the American midwife Ina May Gaskin’sclassic work Guide to Childbirth (2003, translated into Turkish in 2014), which includes 126 pages of stories of births that took place at The Farm Midwifery Centre in Tennessee in the 1970s, dating back to a time when birth outside a hospital setting was regarded as unconventional in the United States.