The Gift of Life: organ transplantation and surrogacy on the stage

This chapter examines two contemporary plays that explicitly stage global majority bodies in relation to whiteness in the medical contexts of organ transplantation and gestational surrogacy: Harvest by Manjula Padmanabhan (1999) and Made in India by Satinder Kaur Chohan (2017). Focusing on medical procedures that are often described as involving the ‘gift of life’, both plays are written by women and focus on the discriminatory and colonialist fault lines in these complex social and medical scenarios. Offering an exploration of the racialised positions of donor and surrogate in relation to the brown female body as they entangle with whiteness in globalised medical practices and procedures, the plays are analysed in relation to the idea of gift giving and the dangers inherent in the commodification of bodies for racially marginalised women and their communities.