After Sex
Edna Bonhomme, Alice Spawls
We send all orders via Royal Mail: within the UK, choose from 1st Class, 2nd Class or Special Delivery; for the rest of the world, International Standard or International Tracked. Delivery and packaging charges are calculated automatically at the checkout.
To collect orders in person from the Bookshop, choose Click and Collect at the checkout.
From the publisher
Edited and introduced by Edna Bonhomme and Alice Spawls.
With contributions from:
Edna Bonhomme, Gwendolyn Brooks, Rachel Connolly, T.L. Cowan, Maggie Doherty, Nell Dunn, Anne Enright, Tracy Fuad, Kirsten Ghodsee, Vivian Gornick, Donna Haraway, bell hooks, Jamaica Kincaid, Patricia Knight, R.O. Kwon, Ursula K. Le Guin, Natasha Lennard, Sophie Lewis, Audre Lorde, Erin Maglaque, Adrienne Rich, Denise Riley, Sally Rooney, Loretta J. Ross, Madeleine Schwartz, Annabel Sowemimo, Keeanga Yahmatta Taylor, Bernard Williams and more.
Who decides what happens after sex? The last decade has seen a rise in activism and arguments over women’s reproductive freedom reminiscent of the 1960s and 1970s. Political progress in Ireland has been countered by regressive action in the US. After Sex provides personal and political perspectives from the mid-twentieth century to the present day, setting feminist classics alongside contemporary accounts and highlighting the experiences of women of colour and working-class women. These essays, short stories and poems trace past understandings of reproductive freedom and consider what it might look like in future, making urgent connections between women’s equality and access to contraception, healthcare and childcare.
The writers pay special attention to people — both fictional and real — who have sought control over their sexual lives, and the joy, comedy, difficulties and disappointments that entails. But above all, After Sex testifies to the power of great writing to show us why that freedom is worth pursuing — without shame and without apology.