Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey To Motherhood

by Sandra Steingraber

A brilliant writer, first-time mother, and respected biologist, Sandra Steingraber tells the month-by-month story of her own pregnancy, weaving in the new knowledge of embryology, the intricate development of organs, the emerging architecture of the brain, and the transformation of the mother's body to nourish and protect the new life. At the same time, she shows all the hazards that we are now allowing to threaten each precious stage of development, including the breast-feeding relationship between mothers and their newborns. In the eyes of an ecologist, the mother's body is the first environment, the mediator between the toxins in our food, water, and air and her unborn child.Never before has the metamorphosis of a few cells into a baby seemed so astonishingly vivid, and never before has the threat of environmental pollution to conception, pregnancy, and even to the safety of breast milk been revealed with such clarity and urgency. In Having Faith, poetry and science combine in a passionate call to action.A Merloyd Lawrence Book

Genres: Parenting, Science, Nonfiction, Memoir, Environment, Health, Ecology

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Ecologist, author, and cancer survivor, Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D. is an internationally recognized expert on the environmental links to cancer and reproductive health. She received her doctorate in biology from the University of Michigan and master’s degree in English from Illinois State University. She is the author of Post-Diagnosis, a volume of poetry, and coauthor of a book on ecology and human rights in Africa, The Spoils of Famine. She has taught biology at Columbia College, Chicago, held visiting fellowships at the University of Illinois, Radcliffe/Harvard, and Northeastern University, and served on President Clinton’s National Action Plan on Breast Cancer.

Steingraber’s highly acclaimed book, Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment presents cancer as a human rights issue. It was the first to bring together data on toxic releases with newly released data from U.S. cancer registries. Living Downstream won praise from international media, including The Washington Post, the Nation, The Chicago Tribune, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, The Lancet, and The London Times. In 1997, Steingraber was named a Ms. Magazine Woman of the Year. In 1998, she received from the Jenifer Altman foundation the first annual Altman Award for “the inspiring and poetic use of science to elucidate the causes of cancer,” and from the New England chapter of the American Medical Writers Association, the Will Solimene Award for “excellence in medical communication.” In 1999, the Sierra Club heralded Steingraber as “the new Rachel Carson.” And in 2001, Carson’s own alma mater, Chatham College, selected Steingraber to receive its biennial Rachel Carson Leadership Award.

Continuing the investigation begun in Living Downstream, Steingraber’s new work, Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Journey to Motherhood, explores the intimate ecology of motherhood. Both a memoir of her own pregnancy and an investigation of fetal toxicology, Having Faith reveals the alarming extent to which environmental hazards now threaten each crucial stage of infant development. In the eyes of an ecologist, the mother’s body is the first environment for human life. The Library Journal selected Having Faith as one of its best books of 2001. In 2002, it was featured on “Kids and Chemicals,” a PBS documentary by Bill Moyers.

Formerly on faculty at Cornell University, Sandra Steingraber is currently Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York. She is married to sculptor Jeff de Castro. They are proud parents of five-year-old Faith and two-year-old Elijah.