Second Life

'Unexpected, intellectually rigorous, funny, beautiful; a profoundly talented writer' Claire Dederer, author of Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma

In the summer of 2020, when Amanda Hess was pregnant for the first time, a routine ultrasound screening detected a mysterious abnormality in her baby. Without hesitation, she reached for her phone, looking for answers online. But rather than allaying her anxieties, her search unleashed a destabilizing onslaught of data and technology, and she was vulnerable - more than ever - to conspiracy, myth, judgement, commerce and obsession.

In Second Life, Hess tells her deeply personal story of a pregnancy that falls outside the feted category of 'normal'. But this is also a story about all of us. For as she made her way through a bizarre digital world of pregnancy apps, prenatal genetic tests, gender reveal videos, rare disease Facebook groups, 'freebirth' influencers and hospital reality shows, Hess realised that ideas of eugenics, surveillance, ableism and hyper-individualism are being sold through shiny technologies to a new generation of parents.

At once funny, surreal and heartbreaking, Second Life asks compelling questions about how our most fundamental human experiences are fractured and reshaped by technology.

Second Life is a tender, perceptive account of pregnancy and early motherhood - and a stylish confrontation with the demented landscape of digital parenting content. It also happens to be a subtle indictment of a healthcare system that leaves some parents scrolling for alternatives. Hess is a smart, savvy, and generous guide -- Anna Wiener, author of Uncanny Valley
Second Life is indispensable ... frank, funny, searingly smart. A must read for anyone who has ever wondered what it means to parent in the digital age and an essential antidote for the information-overload they'll certainly be met with on the internet -- Allie Rowbottom, author of Aesthetica
There is no better writer than Amanda Hess to dissect the joys, fears, and humiliations that accompany having children in the information age, and no wittier chaperone through the strange world of surveillance, monetization, bureaucracy, and alternative medicine to which pregnant people and mothers are subjected. Second Life is a sharp, moving, sometimes harrowing, and always funny companion to some of the best and worst things life has to offer -- Max Read, editor of Read Max and former editor-in-chief of Gawker
The story of a crisis-born odyssey, Second Life charts a new mother's descent into and re-emergence from the internet's 'pregnant underworld' with clarity, rigor, and tremendous wit. That such a deft a vivisector of our digital age should find herself lost in its churn of data-brokerage, commerce, and myth is a reminder of what we're all up against, and an engine of Amanda Hess's bracing and eloquent memoir -- Michelle Orange, author of Pure Flame
New parents spend countless hours staring at our phones, scrolling for the comfort American systems fail to provide us. But pushed to the brink, only Amanda Hess could step through the blue light looking glass - journey through her specific, and our collective, anxiety, dissociation, data points, targeted ads, and apps - and emerge a more sensate, embodied, and sharper critic. The honesty of Second Life takes my breath away -- Angela Garbes, author of Essential Labor and Like a Mother
Finally a book about parenthood that acknowledges that the internet is the first place we go to navigate pregnancy. Hess doesn't demonize or valorize it but rather serves as a smart - and very funny - guide to the good, the bad, and the truly weird of how we give birth today -- Marisa Meltzer, author of the New York Times bestselling Glossy
What a book! It has the lyricism and intelligence of a literary masterpiece, and the urgency of a thriller; I read it in two sittings. Hess dissects the experience of modern childbearing with surgical precision, even as she holds out her heart. This is the book on motherhood the world needs right now. -- Marianne Levy, author of Don’t Forget to Scream
Amanda Hess is that rare thing, the real deal. Second Life is unexpected, intellectually rigorous, funny, beautiful; and the wisdom is hard-won. A major debut from a profoundly talented writer -- Claire Dederer, author of Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma

Amanda Hess is a critic at large for the New York Times. She writes about internet and pop culture for the Arts section, contributes regularly to The New York Times Magazine and created, wrote and starred in the video series "Internetting with Amanda Hess." Previous to the New York Times, she worked as an internet columnist for Slate, an editor at GOOD, and an arts and nightlife columnist at the Washington City Paper. Her feature on the online harassment of women for Pacific Standard won a National Magazine Award for Public Interest. Her work has also been awarded a Sidney Award for an outstanding piece of socially-conscious journalism, a Mirror Award for best traditional article on the media industry, and a Newswomen's Club Front Page Award for criticism, and has been featured in Best American Sportswriting 2014 and Best American Magazine Writing 2015.

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