Refresh Your Reading Goals + Exploring the Hidden History of Adoption pre-Roe v. Wade

It’s a two part episode! We’re about halfway through the year and we want to know: how’s your reading life going? Are you on track to hit your reading goals, or is it time to switch things up? Sally goes through some of her reading goals and shares what she’s focusing on for the rest of the year to make it the best reading year yet.

Then Mariquita talks with Ann Fessler about her 2006 book, The Girls Who Went Away, the impact of compulsory relinquishment of children born to unwed parents on those individuals, the children, and families in the decades before Roe v. Wade, and how society continues to fail people in areas of sex education, reproductive rights, and child rearing.

Book Mentioned: 

Wicked Beauty by Katee Robert

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler

Resources Mentioned:

The StoryGraph – create your own private reading challenge to track your goals for the year

Concerned United Birthparents

Support and follow our hosts and guest!

Follow Sally: Instagram // The StoryGraph

Follow Mariquita: Instagram 

Follow Ann Fesser: Website

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This episode was edited and produced by Renee Powers on the ancestral land of the Dakota people.

Original music by @iam.onyxrose

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Renee Powers

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Renee Powers founded Feminist Book Club in 2018 to provide a space for intersectional feminists to learn, grow, and connect. When not reading or running the biz, you can find her drinking coffee and trying unsuccessfully to teach her retired racing greyhound how to fetch. Favorite genres: feminist thrillers, contemporary literary fiction, short stories, and anything that might be described as "irreverent"