Alana Apfel

DIESEL, A Bookstore in Oakland welcomes Alana Apfel to the store to discuss and sign Birth Work as Care Work: Stories from Activist Birth Communities, on Sunday, April 17th at 3:00pm. Joining her in conversation will be Bay Area doula, Jewel Buchanan-Boone and local birth activist, Ariel Gore.

Birth Work as Care Work presents a vibrant collection of stories and insights from the front lines of birth activist communities. The personal has once more becomes political, and birth workers, supporters, and doulas now find themselves at the fore of collective struggles for freedom and dignity. Articulating a politics of care work in and through the reproductive process, the book brings diverse voices into conversation to explore multiple possibilities and avenues for change. At a moment when agency over our childbirth experiences is increasingly centralized in the hands of professional elites, Birth Work as Care Work presents creative new ways to reimagine the trajectory of our reproductive processes. Most importantly, the contributors present new ways of thinking about the entire life cycle, providing a unique and creative entry point into the essence of all human struggle the struggle over the reproduction of life itself.

Alana Apfel is a birth worker, writer, and community gardener. She is a graduate of the Anthropology and Social Change program of the California Institute of Integral Studies. As a birth justice activist, she has been involved with the San Francisco General Hospital Doula Program, BirthWays community education center in Berkeley, and the growing international BirthKeepers coalition. She now lives and works in Bristol, UK, where she is part of the Positive Birth Movement and is training to be a midwife in the National Health Service. Birth Work as Care Work is her first book.

Jewel Buchanan-Boone is a doula within the San Francisco Bay Area. Her philosophy and approach to birth work are rooted in her passion for social and reproductive justice. Jewel shares her experience of doula work from a public health perspective, specifically addressing the need to break cycles of oppression within communities of color in relation to generational trauma and stigmas that surround Black motherhood.

Ariel Gore is a journalist, memoirist, novelist, nonfiction author, and teacher. She is the founding editor/publisher of Hip Mama, an Alternative Press Award-winning publication covering the culture and politics of motherhood. Through her work on Hip Mama, Gore is widely credited with launching maternal feminism and the contemporary mothers’ movement. Gore’s fiction and nonfiction work also explores creativity, spirituality, queer culture, and positive psychology.