I am honoured and humbled to be a recipient of the 2023 Silvers Grants for Work in Progress. For those who are not aware, The Robert B. Silvers Foundation was established by a founding editor of the New York Review of Books, to support writers in the fields of long-form literary, art criticism, intellectual essays, and social reportage. My proposed project, “Freedom to Choose,” is a social reportage or narrative nonfiction that tells the stories of three women in three countries who have sought an abortion. Bringing their lives to the page in richly reported detail, the series of articles will give its subjects space to recount their struggles and strategies as they seek autonomy over their reproductive lives. The focus is on the United States, where I was born and raised; Haiti, where my parents migrated as young adults; and Germany, where I have lived for six years. Though legal regimes around abortion and the general societal position of women in these three countries vary widely, in all cases, women face legal or practical obstacles to the free exercise of their freedom to choose.
Also, I highly recommend that you work with the works of the other winners. I have been in admiration of many of them and look forward to seeing their projects come to fruition. As my friends always say, “Reading is fundamental.”
