That it would be anti-feminist, anti-woman even, to merely wonder. We are thus primed to believe, as if it is dogma, that whatever this woman has decided is not only correct, but indisputable. With “Tomorrow,” I can render a guess: we are conditioned by years of a choice feminism that has set the horizon of struggle on women’s ability to make choices while ignoring how capitalism has circumscribed those choices that, in its worst incarnations, has made both self-exploitation and self-objectification in order to succeed in work or in love (or both) not only acceptable but aspirational. I want to know why Ma’s characters are so far away, not just in this story, but in all of the stories in Bliss Montage. Why would I accept this chasm, I ask myself as I read “Tomorrow.” I want to demand an explanation.

Pregnancy has flipped a switch in her mind, it seems, and created an inarticulable chasm, unbridgeable even by the author, between us and her. She learns she’s pregnant, she is surprised, and then, suddenly, she has decided to become a mother. Held at a distance by Ma’s deadpan, matter-of-fact prose style, we are not privy to Eve’s decision-making process.

After the doctor tells her this is normal, an effect of since-discontinued hygiene products and other regularly consumed toxic materials, Eve books a six-month trip to her (unspecified) country of origin, where she will spend the bulk of her pregnancy. Ling Ma’s new short story collection, Bliss Montage, ends with a story called “Tomorrow,” about a woman named Eve who discovers she’s pregnant and then, disturbingly, that the fetus’s arm is sticking down through her cervix and out of her vagina. Review of Bliss Montage: Stories by Ling Ma (Farrar, Strauss, and Giraux, September 2022)

Severance ling ma review