“You can decide not to have children because of love... I love my unborn children,” says author Guadalupe Nettel. “I don’t want them to live in this world or to have a difficult life or go through climate change.” It’s a sentiment that challenges conventional narratives – a vision of motherhood shaped not by absence, but by protective love.
In this month’s Service95 Book Club interview, Guadalupe joins Dua to discuss Still Born – Dua’s May Monthly Read (which you can watch in full via the link below). Set in Mexico City, friends Alina and Laura are united in their decision to be childfree, refusing to fall into a trap of the patriarchy.
When Alina changes her mind, their friendship doesn’t fracture – it deepens, becoming more vital than ever. In her conversation with Dua, Guadalupe reveals how the novel was inspired by her friend Amelia’s true story, about a difficult fertility journey followed by a very uncertain prognosis and future for her unborn daughter. “The way she reacted [when I asked if I could write her story] moved me because she decided to accept, not because she would like everyone to know what happened to her and her baby, but because she wanted to give visibility to these kind of issues and to families like hers,” says Guadalupe. “That was her purpose, and it was also my purpose during the writing of the book.” (Discover Guadalupe’s essay on writing her friend’s story here.)
That theme of care, in its many forms, echoes in a complex parallel storyline that Dua and Guadalupe delve into, where Laura becomes entangled in the lives of her next-door neighbours – a traumatised young boy and his depressed mother – and feels compelled to step in to help. “It’s not just that you give birth to someone and you are this person’s mother,” says Guadalupe. “You can also be an adoptive mother; you can also be a stepmother or a mother for a little while. Motherhood is also more like an attitude and not only a title that you get.” Still Born doesn’t romanticise these roles; instead, it holds space for their complexity, their tenderness, and their quiet, often unseen power.
