Synopses & Reviews
In Precarious Prescriptions, Laurie B. Green, John Mckiernan-Gonzandaacute;lez, and Martin Summers bring together essays that place race, citizenship, and gender at the center of questions about health and disease. Exploring the interplay between disease as a biological phenomenon, illness as a subjective experience, and race as an ideological construct, this volume weaves together a complicated history to show the role that health and medicine have played throughout the past in defining the ideal citizen.
By creating an intricate portrait of the close associations of race, medicine, and public health, Precarious Prescriptions helps us better understand the long and fraught history of health care in America.
Contributors: Jason E. Glenn, U of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston; Mark Allan Goldberg, U of Houston; Jean J. Kim; Gretchen Long, Williams College; Verandoacute;nica Martandiacute;nez-Matsuda, Cornell U; Lena McQuade-Salzfass, Sonoma State U; Natalia Molina, U of California, San Diego; Susan M. Reverby, Wellesley College; Jennifer Seltz, Western Washington U.
Review
andquot;
Precarious Prescriptions forges vital new terrain in the study of race, medicine, and public health in the U.S. and its borderlands. The bookandrsquo;s carefully crafted essays explore the relationships between medicine, health, and lived experience in such diverse locales and settings as Hawaiandrsquo;i, pre-revolutionary Texas, the Mexican-American borderlands, and the Salish Sea. By so doing
Precarious Prescriptions expands our understandings, not just of medicalized andlsquo;raceandrsquo; and andlsquo;racisms,andrsquo; but of medicine itself, in all of its colonizing and liberatory implications. This is vital reading indeed.andquot;and#160;andmdash;Jonathan M. Metzl, author of
The Protest PsychosisSynopsis
Precarious Prescriptions brings together essays that place race, citizenship, and gender at the center of questions about health and disease. Exploring the interplay between disease as a biological phenomenon, illness as a subjective experience, and race as an ideological construct, this volume helps us better understand the long and fraught history of health care in America.
About the Author
Laurie B. Green is associate professor of history at University of Texas at Austin.
Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction
Laurie Green, John Mckiernan-Gonzandaacute;lez, and Martin Summers
1. Curing the Nation with Cacti: Native Healing and State Building before the Texas Revolution
Mark Allan Goldberg
2. andldquo;We Were Promised Medicinesandrdquo;: Health and Illness around the Salish Sea, 1853andndash;1878
Jennifer Seltz
3. andldquo;I Studied and Practiced Medicine without Molestationandrdquo;: African American Doctors in the First Years of Freedom
Gretchen Long
4. At the Nationandrsquo;s Edge: African American Migrants and Smallpox in the Mexican-American Borderlands
John Mckiernan-Gonzandaacute;lez
5. Diagnosing the Ailments of Black Citizenship: African American Physicians and the Dilemma of Mental Illness, 1895andndash;1940
Martin Summers
6. andldquo;An Indispensable Serviceandrdquo;: Midwives and Medical Officials after New Mexico Statehood
Lena McQuade-Salzfass
7. Professionalizing andldquo;Local Girlsandrdquo;: Nursing and U.S. Colonial Rule in Hawaiandrsquo;i, 1920andndash;1948
Jean J. Kim
8. Borders, Laborers, and Racialized Medicalization: Mexican Immigration and U.S. Public Health Practices in the Twentieth Century
Natalia Molina
9. andldquo;A Transformation for Migrantsandrdquo;: Mexican Farmworkers and Federal Health Reform During the New Deal Era
Verandoacute;nica Martandiacute;nez-Matsuda
10. andldquo;Hunger in Americaandrdquo; and the Power of Television: Poor People, Physicians, and the Mass Media in the War against Poverty
Laurie B. Green
11. Making Crack Babies: Race Discourse and the Biologization of Behavior
Jason E. Glenn
12. Suffering and Resistance, Voice and Agency: Thoughts on History and the andldquo;Tuskegeeandrdquo; Syphilis Study
Susan M. Reverby
Contributors
Index