The Doula Dialectic

<JATS1:p>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.</JATS1:p> <JATS1:p>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.</JATS1:p> <JATS1:p>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.</JATS1:p>