Book Review: The Farm by Joanne Ramos

The Farm is a nickname for the Golden Oaks surrogacy center in Boston where rich patrons known as Clients, pay exorbitant amount of money to have their kids carried for them by women referred to as Hosts. Most of the Hosts are minorities. White Hosts are so scarce/hard to find that the few they have are referred to as “Premiere Hosts” because as you can guess they are considered “white, pretty and smart, but not intimidatingly so”. The Hosts are nicely compensated by their Clients but what makes it a little uncomfortable is that the women are very closely monitored from the moment they have  viable pregnancy. Their diet, their emails, their every move is being watched by Coordinators and they are not allowed contact with the outside world.

Our protagonist, Jane is a single, Filipino mother of a 6 month old who has recently split from her husband. She is living in a dorm with her resourceful cousin, Evelyn who she refers to as Ate. Ate does all she can to make money to send back to her kids in the Philippines and has now become a sought after baby nurse in NY. After suffering a heart attack, she enlists Jane to sub for her but when that goes awry she suggests being a surrogate at Golden Oaks. Being desperate for money, Jane agrees and begins this new life for the next 9 months.

Mae Yu is the ambitious manager of the center who comes off as the villain in this book because she would stop at nothing to get wealthy clients including Madam Deng. She keeps a special eye on Jane who becomes friends with two fellow white Hosts – Reagan, an idealist who wants to believe doing this is her helping the world in some way while dealing with her family issues and Lisa, the wild free spirit who is doing this for the third time and is the person who coined the center “The Farm”

You guys, I could go on and on about this plot of this book because it was that rich and that layered. I’ve been in a reading rut for a while and it was great to finally read a book I was excited about. I have seen a lot of comparisons to The Handmaid’s Tale or saying it is a dystopian book, but I don’t think so at all. I think it is a realistic plot that is current (Goodreads tells me there is a center similar to this called Golden Generations – scary).

What did I like about this book? So many things.

This book was written through the lens of an immigrant and Ramos gets it right using the personal stories she has heard and experienced as a Filipina herself. She touches on the guilt so many immigrant parents face when faced with making the choice between being able to provide from afar or being close to them but not being able to provide. I liked how the book made me think.

Jane just always had an internal battle but there is a scene where Evelyn says Jane seems to have a knack for making the worst decisions at the wrong time and I agree. Jane is so ruled by her emotions, it got frustrating sometimes. Reagan just wanted to do the right thing and represented the white person that is cognizant of their privilege and racked with white guilt but at what point do you make it make sense and live your life? Mae is of Asian descent but seems to be one of those who sees herself as white, there is a point where she doesn’t get why her classmate who is black has been considered one of Forbes 30 Under 30 and doesn’t think she would have achieved that if she wasn’t black – which is probably the thought process for a lot of Americans.

“The colonizers let us tell stories. Even angry stories … They please the colonizer, make him feel hip and cool … What the colonizer would be frightened of is an uprising where the colonized took the means of representation and production and made them equal, for everyone, of all backgrounds.”

I liked how intelligent the book was with tackling racial and social status without being too preachy. Ramos made this very multi faceted with superb writing skills. I wish she had expanded more on what happened at Jane’s baby nursing job and the ending didn’t leave me fully satisfied or had me convinced but everything else was good enough for me to overlook. I fully recommend.

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