Article: A People's History, One Child's Future; As a politically aware black woman, the author came to believe the struggle, however necessary, could mean death. She chose to have a child in the face of that knowledge.

I WAS 20 YEARS OLD WHEN MY DAUGHter was born in 1972. Like mothers of any age, I was ill-prepared for the responsibilities of parenthood. I wanted to have a baby, but had no idea what that entailed. The absoluteness of motherhood. The knowledge that for the rest of my life I will be inextricably linked to another person. That I will hear her footsteps when she is hundreds of miles away in summer camp, walk more carefully in the world because I know she needs me, think of someone before myself. At the time she was born, I was caught up in the style of life more than in its substance. I enjoyed being pregnant the way I enjoyed having an Afro. I gloried in natural childbirth as I gloried in ...

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