McDermott’s text presents an interdisciplinary and intersectional sonogram rhetoric that works to “listen as well as speak, and always transcends its own boundaries” by “helping to construct more eidolons” (155). This approach has exciting future research implications for analyzing the ways we “form rhetoric, practice scientific inquiry, and value certain bodies over others,” and should be considered a valuable resource for rhetoricians and technical communicators interested in pursuits of reproductive justice.

Rhetoric Review

The best audiences for Liminal Bodies are those interested in the rhetoric surrounding feminine health, either as scholars of health, of composition, or of health policy. The book will also appeal to male readers new to feminism and seeking a civil but implicating tutorial. Hopefully [there will be] a sequel to her marvelous book.

International Journal of Feminist Approaches To Bioethics

This beautifully written, deeply and eclectically researched book expands the fields of embodied rhetoric and disability studies. Historical and personal, reflective and political, careful and empowering, the reader is left listening for rhetorical echoes and reverberations wherever maternity, embodiment, and ability are invoked—and whenever the normative character of these concepts is ignored. Scholarly books should all be written so resourcefully, artistically, and honestly.

Jay Dolmage, University of Waterloo

Liminal Bodies, Reproductive Health, and Feminist Rhetoric is well-written and powerful. This book provides a compelling exploration of the feminine and hysterical echoes reverberating in the recesses of the rhetorical tradition and of the connections between reproductive and verbal power. McDermott's development of ‘sonogram rhetoric’ as an analytical lens is an important contribution to the field of rhetoric and composition, and one that promises to have wide application.

Marika Seigel, Michigan Technological University