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These days, the popularity of rocker-mom lit
is growing like mold on undone laundry. Everywhere you
look, truth-baring tomes by artists who became mothers are
being snapped up by readers who crave a warts-and-all guide
to the rocky journey from free-wheeling egotist to bewildered
infant-slave, and How My Breasts Saved The World is
a hilarious addition to this genre. From the moment
Lisa Wood Shapiro, a successful writer and television producer,
decides to become pregnant, things no longer conform to her
perfect Type A plans. She accumulates books about childbirth
but skips over the parts that make her uncomfortable. Unfortunately,
the subject she avoids most assiduously is the one that becomes
the basis of her memoir, subtitled Misadventures of a Nursing
Mother . Shapiro has a deliciously dry, self-deprecating
wit that makes her nightmare attempts at nursing with no other
instruction than the Brooke Shields film The Blue Lagoon refreshingly
hysterical. Any woman can benefit from Shapiro's hard-won
education, even if it's just to be able to give calm encouragement
to the next mother you see struggling to keep her modesty on
the subway as she stuffs a leaking nipple into her baby's screaming
maw. In that way, Shapiro's breasts really are saving
the world.
-- Alyson Palmer
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