A close look at stories of maternal death in Malawi that considers their implications in the broader arena of medical knowledge.

By the early twenty-first century, about one woman in twelve could expect to die of a pregnancy or childbirth complication in Malawi. Specific deaths became object lessons. Explanatory stories circulated through hospitals and villages, proliferating among a range of practitioners: nurse-midwives, traditional birth attendants, doctors, epidemiologists, herbalists. Was biology to blame? Economic underdevelopment? Immoral behavior? Tradition? Were the dead themselves at fault? 

In Partial Stories, Claire L. Wendland considers these explanations for maternal death, showing how they reflect competing visions of the past and shared concerns about social change. Drawing on extended fieldwork, Wendland reveals how efforts to legitimate a single story as the authoritative version can render care more dangerous than it might otherwise be. Historical, biological, technological, ethical, statistical, and political perspectives on death usually circulate in different expert communities and different bodies of literature. Here, Wendland considers them together, illuminating dilemmas of maternity care in contexts of acute change, chronic scarcity, and endemic inequity within Malawi and beyond.

“A well-written, compelling, dynamic narrative that broadens and complicates readers’ understanding of the contributing causes and impacts of maternal mortality. . . . Highly recommended.” * Choice *
“Partial Stories offers a new narrative about maternal death in Africa by undermining ‘the notion that any of the single stories we already think we know is definitive.’ . . . The care Wendland put into thinking about how to tell the stories she shares is evident throughout.”  * Medical Anthropology Quarterly *
“Partial Stories is an extraordinary accomplishment. It is that rare book that comes along and forever transforms how a perennial social problem is seen and thought about. The study is unmatched in its sheer breadth, and complex and nuanced depth, reflecting the rich experience, expertise, and empathetic knowledge brought to bear by Wendland. This book is a must-read for mortality scholars and maternal health policymakers.” * Population and Development Review *
“The book adeptly presents a large-scale perspective while still returning to an individual woman’s life. It’s an effective and moving reminder that numbers correspond to real people, and that maternal mortality is ultimately the tragic death of individual women. Wendland’s writing doesn’t lose sight of these tragedies, and the book is as sensitive and beautiful as it is frank and honest.” * African Studies Review *
"In an era of global health interventions that – at times – prioritize efficiency over equity, Wendland’s work serves as a vital reminder of the importance of context, history, and humanity. Her partial stories illuminate the need for holistic, justice-oriented approaches to maternal health within the broader discourse of global development." * Journal of Development Studies *
“I really enjoyed reading this book. . . . It’s a book that, to me, speaks to the reader’s humanity at least as much as it speaks to their intellect.” * New Books Network *
"Written by an ethnographer and obstetrician, this wide-ranging and comprehensive book offers a much more nuanced picture of maternal deaths and maternal health than much of the literature on critical global health can do—and it does so out of a commitment and an expertise, yet also a humility and curiosity that is often lacking in critical global health scholarship. It fills an important gap." -- Ruth Jane Prince, University of Oslo
"At last maternal mortality, that raging topic in obstetric, global health, and epidemiology circles, receives the sophisticated, complex, qualitative, and nuanced treatment it has long deserved. By emphasizing partialities and sharing stories, this anthropology offers up an important set of diagnostics about why so many poor, black, African women still die in pregnancy and childbirth, and how these death scenes unfold and what they conceal." -- Nancy Rose Hunt, author of A Colonial Lexicon: Of Birth Ritual, Medicalization, and Mobility in the Congo

Claire L. Wendland is professor in the Departments of Anthropology and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is the author of A Heart for the Work: Journeys through an African Medical School, the first ethnography of a medical school in the Global South, also published by the University of Chicago Press.