Robyn Lee

Responding to the most widely read breastfeeding manual, La Leche League’s The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, Robyn Lee’s The Ethics and Politics of Breastfeeding explores breastfeeding as an art that must be developed through skillful application of effort and distinguished from a merely natural or physiological process. The Ethics and Politics of Breastfeeding challenges the dominant understanding of breastfeeding and cultivates an alternative conception as an ethical, embodied practice of the self. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, Emmanuel Levinas, and Luce Irigaray, Lee develops a new understanding of breastfeeding as an "art of living," where the practice is reconsidered in the light of ongoing social inequalities.

Absolutes is mostly written by Dia the Cat, who was not fret-free and fuzzy; she was a spiritual anarchist who refused to be modified. Fa was her serious but clumsy student who grew to be a master. Dia and her soul mate, Fa, followed the tradition of interspecies illumination with slapstick wisdom, unrelenting truth, and wild creativity. At a time when I was running in circles, chasing my own tail, Dia and Fa spoke up, engaging me in conversations that distracted me from myself just long enough for me to grasp some insights. Absolutes are those conversations.

It eventually becomes clear that we are healed with insight. At the precise moment of seeing, we spontaneously breathe, release tension, feel stronger, clearer and move on. The Book of TABs {Take a Breath} is offered to inspire natural healing.