I’ve been meaning to write about some of the books on my bookshelf for quite a while.  (As in, all semester!)  So here’s a quick roundup of a handful of 2011 titles relevant to motherhood globally:

Microfinance and Its Discontents: Women in Debt in Bangladesh, by Lamia Karim (University of Minnesota Press).  If you’ve been following microfinance, often touted as a cure-all for global poverty, anthropologist Karim offers a more sobering look.  You can read the great review in the current issue of the Women’s Review of Books (WRB) here.

Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men, by Mara Hvistendahl (PublicAffairs).  Hvistendahl is a correspondent for Science magazine, and her thoroughly researched (and deeply disturbing) book examines the gender imbalance globally. Amy Agigian does a fabulous job reviewing it in the same issue of WRB, although her essay (alas) isn’t available online.

The 21st Century Motherhood Movement: Mothers Speak Out on Why We Need to Change the World and How To Do It, edited by Andrea O’Reilly (Demeter Press).  If you need to feel uplifted about all the social change brought about by mothers, look no further.  This comprehensive anthology includes articles about maternal activism from all parts of the world, including Australia, Ireland, Germany, Argentina, Iran, Russia, Canada, and the U.S.

Shattered: Modern Motherhood and the Illusion of Equality, by Rebecca Asher (Harvill Secker).  Journalist Asher examines the current state of motherhood in the U.K. and discovers that women are still left cooking the bacon and, um, pushing the pram.

Shadow Mothers: Nannies, Au Pairs, and the Micropolitics of Mothering, by Cameron Lynn Macdonald (University of California Press).  Macdonald, a sociologist, provides a fascinating look at the relationships of professional women with their nannies/au pairs.  Rosanna Hertz reviews both this book and Raising Brooklyn: Nannies, Childcare, and Caribbeans Creating Communities, by Tamara Mose Brown (NYU Press) in that same issue of WRB (enough already, I know.  But have you subscribed yet?).  Brown has also reflected on her own experiences as a mother studying nannies, which I wrote about here.