Nora E. Jaffary

Nora E. Jaffary, Reproduction and Its Discontents in Mexico: Childbirth and Contraception from 1750 to 1905.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016.

Nora Jaffary’s Reproduction and Its Discontents explores all aspects of women’s reproductive lives from virginity through contraception and conception, pregnancy, birth and obstetrics in Mexico from 1750 to 1905. Mexicans usually sought to keep these elements of life private, but Jaffary has diligently unearthed them and persuasively shows how reproduction figured into new discourses linking gender to colonialism and nationalism. Jaffary’s book thus bridges the assumed divide between the public and private lives of Mexican women from the late-colonial to early-national period. Through this particularly timely study, Jaffary shows how Mexicans’ historical relationship with these contentious topics evolved. Discrediting the notion that past Mexicans were entirely intolerant of women’s “moral failings,” she demonstrates no hardening of such positions. Building on an exhaustive archival research in a diverse body of sources, Jaffary shows how Mexicans debated over women’s bodies and personal issues such as virginity, abortion, and infanticide precisely because they were symbolic of the nation. Along the way, Jaffary’s valuable findings also document the particular knowledge and philosophies of Mexican medical specialists, professional and popular, with respect to the hymen, monstrous births, and public scandals associated with abortion and infanticide. In short, Jaffary’s exemplary and nuanced study is diligently researched, beautifully written, and exceptionally persuasive in seamlessly bringing together important themes that put women and babies at the very centre of Mexican history.

Shortlisted Books
Christian Berco,  From Body to Community: Venereal Disease and Society in Baroque Spain.  Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016.
Kevin Coleman,  A Camera in the Garden of Eden: The Self-Forging of a Banana Republic.  Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 2016.
Lucie Laumonier,  Solitudes et solidarités en ville : Montpellier, mi XIIIe-fin XVe siècles.  Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2015.