{"schema_version":"bf_book_companion_v1","release_id":"20261010T034321Z-reviewed-full-unique-works","book":{"amazon_purchase_url":"https://www.amazon.com/dp/1947793810?tag=bookfrontie00-20","asin":"1947793810","authors":["Jenny Zhang"],"book_id":"9781947793811","canonical_url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/my-baby-first-birthday-9781947793811","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781947793811.jpg?v=b4d681d8c88087fc","description":"A New York Public Library Best Book of 2020 A Best Read of 2020 at Ms. Magazine “To read Jenny Zhang is to embrace primal states: pleasure, hunger, longing and rage.” — TIME Radiant and tender, My Baby First Birthday is a collection that examines innocence, asking us who gets to be loved and who has to deplete themselves just to survive. Jenny Zhang writes about accepting pain, about the way we fetishize womanhood and motherhood, and reduce women to their violations, traumas, and body parts. She questions the way we feminize and racialize nurturing, and live in service of other people’s dreams. How we idealize birth and being baby, how it’s only in our mothers’ wombs that we’re still considered innocent, blameless, and undamaged, because it’s only then that we don’t have to earn love. Her poems explore the obscenity of patriarchy, whiteness, and capitalism, the violence of rescue and heroism. The magic trick in My Baby First Birthday is that despite all these themes, the book never feels like some jeremiad. Zhang uses friendship as a lyric. She seeks tenderness, radiant beauty, and having love for your mistakes. Through all this, she writes about being alone—really alone, like why-was-I-ever-born alone—and trying, despite everything, to reach out and touch something—skin to skin, animal to animal.","forthcoming":false,"isbn13":"9781947793811","publication_date":"20200512","publisher":"Zando","slug":"my-baby-first-birthday","subtitle":"","title":"My Baby First Birthday"},"discovery":{"categories":{"all":[{"bisac_code":"POE005060","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Asian American Poetry","score":0.7803,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"POE023050","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Family Poems","score":0.7689,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"POE023020","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Love Poetry","score":0.7591,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"hint":[{"bisac_code":"POE005060","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Asian American Poetry","score":0.7803,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"POE023050","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Family Poems","score":0.7689,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"POE023020","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Love Poetry","score":0.7591,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"publisher":[{"bisac_code":"POE005060","confidence_band":"high","label":"Asian American Poetry","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"POE023050","confidence_band":"high","label":"Family Poems","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"POE024000","confidence_band":"high","label":"Women Poets","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"}]},"genres":[{"label":"Asian American Poetry","score":0.7803,"slug":"asian-american-poetry"},{"label":"Family Poems","score":0.7689,"slug":"family-poems"},{"label":"Love Poetry","score":0.7591,"slug":"love-poetry"}],"reader_fit":["Good for readers interested in poetry about womanhood, motherhood, and power","Readers drawn to tender poems about loneliness, friendship, and connection"],"related_lists":[],"series":null,"similar_books":[{"authors":["Lee Wardlaw"],"book_id":"9781636551296","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781636551296.jpg?v=d2edc8e4f1d95e85","score":0.7433,"title":"My Book of Firsts","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781636551296"},{"authors":["Loryn Brantz"],"book_id":"9780063086333","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780063086333.jpg?v=0ace03c23856dc6e","score":0.7209,"title":"It Had to Be You","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780063086333"},{"authors":["Loryn Brantz"],"book_id":"9780063426436","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780063426436.jpg?v=b1719e117ed0e890","score":0.7132,"title":"Poems of Parenting","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780063426436"},{"authors":["Loryn Brantz"],"book_id":"9780063086357","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780063086357.jpg?v=62bb4cc1f00bb5bb","score":0.6993,"title":"Now That You're Here","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780063086357"},{"authors":["Karen Katz"],"book_id":"9781250018687","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781250018687.jpg?v=e1e6d44b2ccc6be6","score":0.6922,"title":"My First Chinese New Year","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781250018687"}],"topics":[{"evidence_refs":["keyword:poetry books"],"label":"Poetry","score":0.1898,"slug":"poetry"},{"evidence_refs":["keyword:books for women"],"label":"Women","score":0.1854,"slug":"women"},{"evidence_refs":["keyword:poems"],"label":"Poems","score":0.0265,"slug":"poems"},{"evidence_refs":["keyword:poem"],"label":"Poem","score":0.0264,"slug":"poem"}],"what_you_get":["Themes: Innocence and conditional love, Patriarchy and racialized nurturing, Loneliness, tenderness, and connection.","Themes: Poetry, Women, Poems.","Reading lane: Asian American Poetry and Family Poems."]},"llm_signals":{"confidence":0.9,"pacing":"unknown","reader_fit":["Readers interested in poetry about womanhood, motherhood, and power","Readers drawn to tender poems about loneliness, friendship, and connection"],"themes":["Innocence and conditional love","Patriarchy and racialized nurturing","Loneliness, tenderness, and connection"],"tropes":[]},"source_presence":{"amazon":true,"book_detail":true,"goodreads":true,"llm_signals":true,"similarity_seed":true},"stats":{"amazon_ratings_count":29,"goodreads_ratings_count":497,"goodreads_reviews_count":99,"quality_score":0.9123}}