Overview:
When 17-year-old poet Fact Bangura finds out she is pregnant, she decides to get an abortion. However her resolution quickly turns into everybody’s enterprise after she speaks about it in a poem she performs at an open mic evening.
In the case of “Fact Is,” her new younger grownup novel, acclaimed creator Hannah V. Sawyerr pulls no punches. When her 17-year-old protagonist, an aspiring poet with a turbulent life who finds herself with an undesirable being pregnant, chooses abortion over motherhood, Sawyer affirms it as the appropriate selection — full cease.
The guide “is a pro-choice novel in each sense of the phrase,” she wrote in an essay printed in Ms. journal final month.
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Moderately than write one thing preachy, nevertheless, Sawyerr got down to create a useful resource for younger folks — a guide that may educate in addition to inform them. That’s particularly necessary, she says, at a time when reproductive well being entry is more and more restricted, and intercourse schooling courses have all however disappeared for Okay-12 college students in some states.
Writing for Younger Individuals in a Publish-Roe America
Revealed in September, “Fact Is” was listed as a finalist for the 2025 Nationwide E-book Award below the Younger Individuals’s Literature class. It’s the most recent honor for Sawyerr, who was Baltimore’s 2016 Youth Poet Laureate in addition to a finalist for or winner of a number of literary awards.
However “Fact Is” could also be her most formidable work but. It follows Fact Bangura, a troubled teenager who chooses an abortion after discovering she is pregnant along with her ex-boyfriend’s youngster. However when she delivers a poem about it onstage, the response from her family and friends compels her to reckon along with her selection.
The guide additionally comes at a singular time in American historical past.
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Since 2022, when the Supreme Courtroom struck down the landmark Roe v. Wade resolution that legalized abortion, entry to the process is a state-by-state patchwork. Many purple states have enacted near-total bans or extreme restrictions and shut down clinics, whereas the blue states which have protected abortion rights have seen surges in out-of-state demand.
In the meantime, girls who need or want the process face elevated journey and better prices — developments which have a big impression on Black girls and different marginalized teams.
Filling the Gaps Left by Intercourse Training Cuts
Whilst abortion turned extra advanced and dearer, some states and districts have restricted entry to reproductive schooling in Okay-12 colleges or eradicated it totally — data that, research point out, helps scale back undesirable pregnancies amongst teenagers and younger adults.
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Sawyerr says she wrote the guide partially to fill that hole. She spent a big period of time at her native Deliberate Parenthood clinic, interviewing medical professionals and doing analysis about abortion choices.
Initially, Sawyerr supposed to jot down a guide about “mommy points,” along with her protagonist deciding to maintain the kid. However she says an opportunity comment about self-love at a convention in 2022 modified her perspective and satisfied her to alter the plot.
“It turned much less a few woman who actually wished to flee her circumstances, and extra a few woman who cherished herself sufficient to know that she wished extra for herself.”
Hannah V. sawyerr
The guide, a novel in verse, narrates Bangura’s life by a sequence of poems. It’s replete with themes of reproductive rights, bodily company, teenage being pregnant, and selecting oneself.
A guide about abortion and poverty might not lend itself to being for younger audiences — Sawyerr is aware of that. However she believes that folks ought to have extra confidence in what younger readers can deal with.
“We will’t be with younger folks, 24/7 and so we don’t actually know what they’re uncovered to,” she says. “And I feel literature is a really protected and a really dependable method to find out about this stuff.”
