Invisible Earthquake, new book by Malika Ndlovu goes to print today
Earthquake has been a long time incubating, but today the book goes to print. The day a book goes to print is a happy day for me the publisher, the last few weeks have been full of nit-picking and finalising details, seemingly endless back and forth between me and Natascha Mostert, our book designer. When I went over the proofs this morning, I was deeply moved, it is a beautiful book, and it has been worth all the hard work and difficult decision-making of getting it to this point.
Malika Ndlovu has written a book in which she shares her journeying through the grief of losing her third baby, a girl, Iman Bongiwe, to stillbirth. The reader is allowed to enter the intimate dark space that a grief stricken mother goes into as she tries to come to terms with her loss. Stillbirth, like miscarriage, statistically happens much more frequently than is widely known, and yet it has not been written about much in literature. It is something women are asked to get over without much ado or attention paid to their grief. Malika bravely pays attention to her experience through writing and thus opens up a space for others who have experienced similar losses to be mirrored in their grief, to have their anguish acknowledged.
Invisible Earthquake - a mother’s journal through stillbirth - is framed with an essay by Sue Fawcus, a specialist obstetrician at a public maternity hospital who writes of stillbirth from a medical perspective, she writes of statistics, causes, and of her experience as a medical practitioner in dealing with stillbirth and neo-natal death. Two social workers from the same hospital, Muriel Johnstone and Zubeida Bassadien, write about how they accompany women who grieve for their babies.
The book also contains a resource list of books and helpful organisations. Colleen Crawford Cousins is the cover artist as well as the co-editor with me, and Hannah Morris did the hand-lettering on the cover. Charley Pollard took the photograph of Malika that appears in the book. Making the book has been a collaborative effort. Enormous thanks are due to all who contributed to the book.
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