Pagan Kennedy

Thu, 05 Oct 2000 19:00:00 +0000

Pop-culture critic Pagan Kennedy is the author of six books, including The Exes, Pagan Kennedy's Living: A Handbook for Maturing Hipsters, and Spinsters. She has written for publications as diverse as the Village Voice Literary Supplement, The Nation and Mademoiselle.

"Kennedy, a Boston 'zine editor, is brave to explore such literary moments of discovery; they're riskier than the Generation X literary staples of ennui and apathy." - Ms. Magazine

In this MP3Lit.com original recording, Kennedy reads her new short story "The Bald Spot".

No baby on board

Mon, 17 Aug 1998 19:00:00 +0000

"You might consider getting a hysterectomy," the surgeon said to me. We sat in his office on squeaky desk chairs, the smell of rubbing alcohol floating in from the hall. Several weeks before, the surgeon had cut out one of my ovaries, which had grown to the size of a grapefruit, and discovered a borderline malignancy. Now, I was healthy -- except in a sort of vague and statistical way. But I had become a woman "at risk." "Don't think of yourself as a 30-year-old," he said. "It's more like you're 40. You could lose your fertility at any time. I would suggest," the surgeon went on, "that you go ahead and complete your family."

Ever since I was about 10 years old I had questioned the idea of having children. It started when I saw a cartoon of the earth covered in people, crawling over each other like maggots. An adult explained that the cartoon had to do with the population crisis -- soon there'd be so many of us that we'd crowd each other into sickness and starvation. The idea took root in my mind. It was the early '70s, and I was just figuring out that grown-ups had no more clue than I did about solving problems like Vietnam, pollution and world hunger. This terrified me, so I often tried to fix things all by myself.

Salon.com > Pagan Kennedy

Pagan Kennedy

No baby on board