Farming the Future Out
As immigrants bear babies of billionaires, several hierarchies come under the scanner of this novel
IIn Joanne Ramos’ The Farm, wealthy patrons outsource pregnancies to “hosts” for a price at a luxury surrogacy facility in Massachusetts. The narrative—reminiscent of The Handmaid’s Tale (though less sinister)—follows Filipina-American immigrant Jane, a single mother in New York whose cousin Evelyn, a nurse and babysitter, pushes her to register with Golden Oaks and give her infant a better life. The “gestational retreat”, boasting organic food and big airy bedrooms, is an empire built on racial hierarchy where babies of billionaires are borne by largely immigrant surrogates—Filipinas, Trinidadians, East Europeans.
The facility is run by Mae West, a Chinese-American Harvard Business School graduate whose actions reflect a firm conviction in the goodness of capitalism. Mae’s world is a human value chain with an uninterrupted flow of goods and services. The uber-rich “pay a gigantic premium for wombs that have graduated from Princeton or Stanford or UVA”. The ideal host is pretty (but not sexy), well-educated (“but not intimidatingly so”) and Caucasian. Filipina immigrants are desirable because their “personalities are mild and service-oriented”. Uteruses, too, are hierarchy driven.
The book locates the female body along the fault lines of class, race and privilege, revealing the seamy underbelly of the American dream. Ramos depicts a tight-knit network of Filipina women who migrate for better opportunities, leaving their children behind.
Evelyn, a hardened businesswoman who understands the hypocrisies of American life, becomes the book’s most complex character. Her actions form its moral quandaries, engaging the reader in evaluating questions of family, community and class.
The book’s brilliance is that there is no black or white. Ramos observes how capitalism turns on itself, uncovering a narrative that must accommodate the biological desires of career women and their clash with a hypercapitalist, unequal world. The book is about exploitation without being overtly scathing, but signals an ominous future. Its only problems are a shoddy editing job and an abrupt, uncritical ending. But the latter may have been its intention in the first place.