LONDON: Two decades ago, I got a tattoo of an Akua’ba statuette on my inner right ankle. A female fertility symbol in Ghana, the disc-headed figure comes from the Akan legend of Akua, a woman who went to a priest for advice because she was having trouble conceiving. He instructed her to have a small wooden statuette of a child carved and to care for that surrogate baby as though it were her own. She was soon pregnant. Years later, as I was struggling to conceive, the irony was not lost on me that not only did I carry my infertility permanently around on my ankle but that I too needed a surrogate, albeit of a different kind, to help me become a mother. Read more
LONDON–I call it my Wimbledon breakdown.
Tennis players Rafael Nadal and Thomaz Bellucci were doing a changeover during their first round match at Wimbledon in 2015 when I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. When I saw it was my gynecologist, I jumped out of my seat and raced down the stairs, hoping for good news. Read more
SIMIEN MOUNTAINS, ETHIOPIA—In the end, I couldn’t do it. I looked up at the big narrow rock that had a number of awkward indentations leading up to a flat outlook point. From there, I would be able to see not only the beginning of the Jinbar waterfall, but also watch as the water tumbled down 500 meters of rocky cliff to the bottom of the valley. Read more
I am writing a book about the barriers to education that adolescent girls face across the globe. I met one 14/15 year old girl, Vica/Vika 15 years ago in Yaroslavl, Russia and I am trying to locate her to find out what happened to her. I do not know her last name, but I do know that she would be about 29/30 now. I featured her in a story I did for Newsweek about my experiences volunteering. If you happen to know of her whereabouts, please either send me a Facebook message or on my Twitter handle @ginnychan. Read more
I see that Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders will be taking their Democratic roadshow to Flint, Michigan—my hometown—on March 6. They will be holding a debate there (location TBD), invariably to do grandstanding and waxing lyrical about what a tragedy has befallen Flint. Read more