Conceiving Asian Babies: Race, Capitalism, and the Market in Human Eggs

Conceiving Asian Babies offers a compelling and timely exploration of race, identity, reproduction, and capitalism within the industry of human egg donation. Far from being a purely medical or personal matter, egg donation serves as a powerful lens for understanding how race-based hierarchies and racial capitalism operate within one of our most intimate life processes: creating a family.

Daisy Deomampo examines how racial capitalism fundamentally shapes the market for human eggs. By focusing on the ways the egg donation industry constructs race and identity, Deomampo shows how the demand for "Asian eggs" as a commodity reinforces biogenetic understandings of race. By exploring the overt and subtle ways the egg donor market reifies racial identities, the book illuminates the profound and often troubling links between racial capitalism and reproductive projects.

Centering the experiences of women enmeshed in the industry, the book displays how the egg donation industry reinforces racial hierarchies and shapes notions of family and identity for Asian American communities. Offering a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of how race becomes a source of capital, benefit, and risk in the global reproductive market, Conceiving Asian Babies illustrates the links between reproductive practices and capitalist motivations.