The Doula Dialectic - by Sheri Rysdam (Hardcover)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

Offering firsthand insight into the world of doula work, Sheri Rysdam shows how doulas are well-positioned to engage as advocates, to employ rhetorical strategies to facilitate greater care and consent, and to connect birthing people to community-based care.

The author - who is both a trained doula and a rhetorician - uses feminist methodologies to bridge rhetorical strategies and theoretical discussions with personal experience and narrative accounts of childbirth. In doing so, readers get an experiential, embodied, and community-based practice and theory of childbirth and doula work that is situated at the intersection of feminist rhetorics and reproductive justice.

With a mix of theory, practice, and experience, this book is relevant to scholars and students of rhetoric, feminist theory, and reproductive justice advocates; childbirth attendants, such as doulas and other nonmedical support people; medical practitioners, including midwives, obstetricians, nurses and their students; pregnant people; and others interested in improving childbirth.

Review Quotes

"As a meticulous researcher and a rhetorician, Rysdam provides a detailed account of what is done - and what is said - in the medicalized space of childbirth in America. As a practicing doula, she brings personal experience, and a deeply human approach, to her subject. This is an important book about autonomy, consent, health equity, and reproductive justice." --Judy Z. Segal, Emeritus Professor, University of British Columbia, Canada

"Grounded in her personal experience as a volunteer doula, Sheri Rysdam's The Doula Dialectic offers a powerful blend of theory and praxis, equipping doulas and other advocates with rhetorical strategies and interventions for supporting those who may feel powerless - not by speaking for them, but by creating space for them to speak. Perceptive, compelling, and accessible, the book makes an important contribution to reproductive justice and rhetorical scholarship while offering actionable insights for both scholars and practitioners." --Marika Seigel, Dean of the Pavlis Honors College and Professor of Rhetoric and Technical Communication, Michigan Technological University, USA

"Based on her own deeply personal and highly political work as a doula, Rysdam's The Doula Dialectic combines her embodied experiences working with and advocating for birthing persons alongside her deep knowledge of rhetorical theories and feminist histories to provide readers with a fascinating exploration of the history of giving birth in the US and beyond. Using rhetorical frameworks to illuminate the injustices that have characterized birthing and other biomedical practices that complicate natural processes, she makes a strong argument for the vital work that doulas do to support people at their most vulnerable. Following this argument on the essential nature of doula work, she also puts her rhetorical training to work and provides readers with clear guidelines for how they might advocate for their own patients and clients in highly charged, time-sensitive, and complex communication contexts. This book will be an asset for those in feminist rhetorics, the rhetoric of health and medicine, and health communication, yet it also holds powerful messages for pre-service health sciences students as well as for working practitioners." --Cathryn Molloy, Professor of Writing Studies, University of Delaware, USA, and author of Rhetorical Ethos in Health and Medicine: Patient Credibility, Stigma, and Misdiagnosis (2020)

About the Author