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Presence: A Hidden History of the Female Body
Not yet published
Expected 16 Jun 26A vibrant history of women’s bodies, expertise, and work from a major new writer—stylish, revelatory, and liberating.
Today, we understand the mind and the body to be distinct; that the mind exercises control over the flesh. But as Erin Maglaque experienced the transformations of pregnancy, abortion, birth, and care-giving, she began to doubt the truth of that dichotomy. In an effort to better understand her experiences, she found herself reaching to the premodern past, a period when the strange rubbed up against the strikingly when people accepted both levitation and the smallpox vaccine, witchcraft and universal gravitation; a time when understandings of the body and its capacity for thought were more expansive, and more unruly.
Structured as a biography of the author's own body, from girlhood and adolescence, to sex and abortion, to feeding and caring for an infant, to her experience caring for someone as they were dying, Erin places her personal history into a deep dialogue with the premodern past. She explores the relation between imagination and gender, between maternal and historical subjectivity; she positions female desire as a practice with a past, and offers gentler and more forgiving understandings of housekeeping, pregnancy, early miscarriage, abortion, birth, sleeplessness, and breastfeeding.
For readers of Amia Srinivasan’s The Right to Sex, Cat Bohannon’s Eve, and Olivia Laing’s Everybody, Presence is a unique experiment in historical thinking and embodied knowledge; a thoroughly researched, vibrant history of women’s bodies, expertise, and work from a major new writer.
Today, we understand the mind and the body to be distinct; that the mind exercises control over the flesh. But as Erin Maglaque experienced the transformations of pregnancy, abortion, birth, and care-giving, she began to doubt the truth of that dichotomy. In an effort to better understand her experiences, she found herself reaching to the premodern past, a period when the strange rubbed up against the strikingly when people accepted both levitation and the smallpox vaccine, witchcraft and universal gravitation; a time when understandings of the body and its capacity for thought were more expansive, and more unruly.
Structured as a biography of the author's own body, from girlhood and adolescence, to sex and abortion, to feeding and caring for an infant, to her experience caring for someone as they were dying, Erin places her personal history into a deep dialogue with the premodern past. She explores the relation between imagination and gender, between maternal and historical subjectivity; she positions female desire as a practice with a past, and offers gentler and more forgiving understandings of housekeeping, pregnancy, early miscarriage, abortion, birth, sleeplessness, and breastfeeding.
For readers of Amia Srinivasan’s The Right to Sex, Cat Bohannon’s Eve, and Olivia Laing’s Everybody, Presence is a unique experiment in historical thinking and embodied knowledge; a thoroughly researched, vibrant history of women’s bodies, expertise, and work from a major new writer.
- GenresNonfiction
320 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication June 16, 2026
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20 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 21, 2025
Starting this review with a quote from this book:
“There was a fundamental distrust of what happened inside the female body; external evidence not required.
Oh how this still rings true, even 500 years later.
There was so much history built into this book from the 1400s to present day. I appreciated the mix of personal anecdotes and historical evidence, but I felt the pacing of the book would’ve benefited from more depth on the personal side. At times it felt like we were jumping from historical quote to historical quote with no context as to why; a way of dumping a ton of data into one chapter.
Chapter 3 was the most intriguing, as Maglaque delves into the history of “unpregnancy” and how people assume society was always against it. That wasn’t always the case, even in the Catholic church who became much more strict on the subject in the late 1500s.
The chapters on sleep and desire were two of my favorites; they were fascinating and relatable and although these are biological forces, the way we approach them has changed so much throughout history.
The epilogue perfectly wrapped the book up, and brought the reason for the research full circle. It was about the risk of being present, the risk of searching for more, the risk of being curious. The word ‘presence’ permeated through the book and it not only referenced the presence of others throughout a woman’s history, but the presence of oneself while experiencing these phenomena.
Thank you to Astra House and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy!!
“There was a fundamental distrust of what happened inside the female body; external evidence not required.
Oh how this still rings true, even 500 years later.
There was so much history built into this book from the 1400s to present day. I appreciated the mix of personal anecdotes and historical evidence, but I felt the pacing of the book would’ve benefited from more depth on the personal side. At times it felt like we were jumping from historical quote to historical quote with no context as to why; a way of dumping a ton of data into one chapter.
Chapter 3 was the most intriguing, as Maglaque delves into the history of “unpregnancy” and how people assume society was always against it. That wasn’t always the case, even in the Catholic church who became much more strict on the subject in the late 1500s.
The chapters on sleep and desire were two of my favorites; they were fascinating and relatable and although these are biological forces, the way we approach them has changed so much throughout history.
The epilogue perfectly wrapped the book up, and brought the reason for the research full circle. It was about the risk of being present, the risk of searching for more, the risk of being curious. The word ‘presence’ permeated through the book and it not only referenced the presence of others throughout a woman’s history, but the presence of oneself while experiencing these phenomena.
Thank you to Astra House and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy!!
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
*Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.*
Presence details the history of the female body by discussing topics of eating, pregnancy, abortion, birth, sleep, breastfeeding, desire, drudgery and dying. This book dives into historical facts around these topics but also discusses the authors personal experiences. People in the past especially men believed strange things about women regarding their bodies and this is a fascinating look at how certain beliefs have changed.
I enjoyed reading this and I had a good time learning the historical beliefs about women’s bodies. This is written well and even when I wasn’t the most interested in a topic I still found this compelling. I liked learning about the historical beliefs regarding pregnancy specifically what made a fetus human and the changing beliefs on fat/thin bodies. I think this book also shows how connections can be made to anything and at the time it will make sense. For example, in the past some people believed conditions a wet nurse had would be transferred to the child and at the time that easily made sense to people. I will be recommending this and I really appreciate what this author had to say on their experience of being a woman.
Favourite quote:
“A fetus, quick, ensouled, formed, was still only held to be human, by the law; it took being born to become human.”
Presence details the history of the female body by discussing topics of eating, pregnancy, abortion, birth, sleep, breastfeeding, desire, drudgery and dying. This book dives into historical facts around these topics but also discusses the authors personal experiences. People in the past especially men believed strange things about women regarding their bodies and this is a fascinating look at how certain beliefs have changed.
I enjoyed reading this and I had a good time learning the historical beliefs about women’s bodies. This is written well and even when I wasn’t the most interested in a topic I still found this compelling. I liked learning about the historical beliefs regarding pregnancy specifically what made a fetus human and the changing beliefs on fat/thin bodies. I think this book also shows how connections can be made to anything and at the time it will make sense. For example, in the past some people believed conditions a wet nurse had would be transferred to the child and at the time that easily made sense to people. I will be recommending this and I really appreciate what this author had to say on their experience of being a woman.
Favourite quote:
“A fetus, quick, ensouled, formed, was still only held to be human, by the law; it took being born to become human.”
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews