Eleanor Henderson
Author of Ten Thousand Saints
About the Author
Eleanor Henderson is an author who was born in Greece and raised in Florida. She later attended Middlebury College amd the University of Virginia, where she graduated with her MFA. She has written two novels: The Twelve-Mile Straight and Ten Thousand Saints. Her works have appeared in several show more publications including Ninth Letter, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Best American Short Stories. She is also the co-editor of Labor Day: True Birth Stories by Today's Best Writers. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Eleanor Henderson/Photo by Nina Subin
Works by Eleanor Henderson
The Farms 1 copy
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1979-07-16
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Greece
- Places of residence
- Florida, USA
Ithaca, New York, USA - Education
- University of Virginia (MFA|Creative Writing|2005)
Middlebury College (BA|American Literature summa cum laude|2001) - Occupations
- professor
- Organizations
- Ithaca College
Ithaca Writers Institute (founding director)
New Voices Literary Festival (co-director)
James Madison University
Members
Reviews
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 8
- Also by
- 1
- Members
- 974
- Popularity
- #26,441
- Rating
- 3.6
- Reviews
- 41
- ISBNs
- 44
- Languages
- 2
- Favorited
- 2
Now, I liked this book for the quality of the writing, but I'm going to say that I sort of regret reading it. If you're a pregnant lady trying to prepare for an unmedicated home birth (as I am), this is not the book for you. Many of the stories are horrifying. My last midwife appointment was full of me relating stories from this book and Shari assuring me, "That's very rare." It's almost impossible to shelter yourself from negative birth stories nowadays, but you certainly don't have to read this book and freak yourself out. So many of the stories start with some version of, "I really wanted to have an unmedicated birth," and end with epidurals, c-sections, and various traumas. Even though Ina May Gaskin's books are hardly poetry, they are meant to get to you to a place where you believe you can have an awesome birth.
To be fair, I know that these stories are all true and they are not all scary. Still, if you were about to take your first trip on an airplane, would you want to read a bunch of stories describing traumatic airplane trips that didn't go as planned? Probably not. Better to read it after safely landing at your destination.
I may alter my three-star rating after giving birth. There are some really great essays in here. I particularly liked Cheryl Strayed's, Gina Zucker's and Susan Burton's, but they are all worthwhile.… (more)