Birth Management Water follows a couple as they navigate the denial of their right to parenthood in an oppressive regime, embarking on a quest for autonomy amidst a society that tightly regulates birth. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

With the whole debacle of abortion rights in the US in recent times, I thought to myself, “What might the opposite of banning abortion or the right to choose abortion look like?” I came up with “banning birth or the right to choose to give birth,” which is what we find is the situation in BMW. I also feel very strongly about the squeeze put on the middle class in recent years (in the US but also elsewhere in the West), and I found that these issues fit together well, so we have leading characters who are educated and articulate but who are middling earners saddled with debt for something that’s not really paying off the way it should.

Jane and Jacob are intriguing and well-developed characters. What were some driving ideals behind your character’s development?

Jane and Jacob have different economic origins, and they meet in the middle. They meet in school, which is a great equalizer – an intended provider of opportunity – and their relationship grows from there, but they are never able to reconcile their foundational differences but not because it is inherently impossible. Rather, it is because society makes it impossible for them. Opportunity isn’t enough. Their economic and family situation is made untenable by political policy. Further, Jane’s father, Huy, who largely guides Jane’s mother’s views as well, never accepts Jacob although no one in the text can understand poverty and the struggle for social mobility quite like Huy. Instead, in Huy’s eyes, Jacob thumbs his nose at what he should do to provide for Jane – seek money first and everything else second. Huy sees Jacob as irresponsible. Jacob’s and Huy’s contrasting ideals – despite them being of similarly humble origins – drive an immovable wedge between these two men who would otherwise likely have the strongest shared understanding of struggle of any two characters in the novel. They are also the two people who care about Jane the most, so she has to manage both sides of their conflict, which becomes a burden she is, perhaps, justified to shed. To his last breath, Jacob never stops fighting for Jane even though by the end it becomes clear that it is probably no longer the right thing to do. They share ideals, but Jane and Jacob never quite share circumstances except for the denial of their right to have children.

Jane was brought up to do the “right thing,” but what is right is too individual to determine for another – this also speaks to the law that denies Jane and Jacob the right to have a child. Huy is never able to accept that the “right thing” might not be exactly what he thinks it is, and so he is never able to support Jane, so I would say there is an element of tragedy in that the disintegration of Jane and Jacob’s relationship is foretold by Huy’s rigid concept of the pursuit of success, which he only even begins to realize at the very end of the last chapter. Moreover, it happens that Huy’s views are largely supported by the legislation that blocks unsanctioned births. Although we don’t directly see that this is the case, he probably loves that Jane and Jacob can’t have a baby. Ultimately, “good girl” Jane can only find relief in a relationship entirely separate from anything in her past life – one that must help her forget her disappointment and also satisfy her physical needs because physicality with Jacob becomes analogous to pointlessness, to absurdity. Therefore, the only way for her to find relief for herself is to betray pretty much everything to which she had ever devoted herself, and she almost has no choice.

What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?

Early on, I realized I was speaking to the question “what is right?” or “what is the right thing to do?” in this novel. The answer, I think, is that there is often not a clear right path. That isn’t to say there is never a clear path – I think there sometimes is. However, when too many people are too rigid concerning too many things, especially enormously important things such as child-bearing, things are unlikely to go well.

Obviously, in conjunction with the childbirth motif, I wanted to explore choice. Who gets to choose? Why? Why can’t everyone have the same power of choice? Choice becomes a class conflict in BMW, which, as I mentioned earlier, squeezes the middle class, which, in my opinion, is the wrong direction for any country, fictional or real. I mean – what do we really think is going to happen if people such as teachers and social workers are made to inhabit a de facto economic underclass?

When and where will Birth Management Water be available?

I wish I had a good answer for this one. I am a new author – this is my first extended piece of fiction. BMW is not yet published (although it is copyrighted), but I hope that won’t be the case a year from now. If I’m not swept off my feet by an eager publisher or agent (ha!) at some point in 2024 while I’m entering every contest I can that accepts unpublished manuscripts, I suppose I might self-publish – perhaps using Amazon – but I really don’t know right now. As soon as I do, I’ll let the world know!

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