Top highlights from Take My Hand
There is no greater right for a woman than having a choice, Anne. And I exercised that right. Fully and consciously.
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Our bodies belonged to us. Poor, disabled, it didnt matter. These were our bodies, and we had the right to decide what to do with them.
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Our bodies belonged to us. Poor, disabled, it didnt matter. These were our bodies, and we had the right to decide what to do with them. It was as if they were just taking our bodies from us, as if we didnt even belong to ourselves.
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The past doesn't work that way. You can't just make it disappear. You can't pretend certain things didn't happen.
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The world was an enigma. My country was an enigma. Still, she was mine. And I loved every square inch of her.
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Sometimes love can kill you, just like hate. You love too hard and you can lose yourself in other folks' sorrow. You hate too hard and you know the rest of that story.
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Although I refused to believe there was such a thing as an unwanted child, there was such a thing as an unwanted pregnancyand I could speak to that firsthand.
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Medicine has taught me, really taught me, to accept the things I cannot change. A difficult-to-swallow serenity prayer.
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This was the way I figured it. There were all different kinds of ministers. Ministers of congregations. Ministers of music. To minister was to serve.
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They had that young girl on the shot and she wasnt even bleeding. Even worse, I had just stuck a needle in her. I focused my eyes on the smooth backs of my hands, trying to take it all in. In the funk the girls had left in my nose, I could barely breathe.
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When it becomes clear that a woman of a certain age has not married or had children, folks like to think theres something wrong with her.
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How dare they? Our bodies belonged to us. Poor, disabled, it didnt matter. These were our bodies, and we had the right to decide what to do with them. It was as if they were just taking our bodies from us, as if we didnt even belong to ourselves.
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She wore a belted yellow dress that screamed springtime even though it was chilly out. Anybody in a dress that bright had to be doing some good in the world, I decided.
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Reproductive Justice - a phrase coined by black feminists at a conference in 1994, remains illusive for African American women, who struggle to access affordable healthcare due to social and economic inequalities. The abortion rate for black women is nearly 5 times that for white women. African American women are 3-4 times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. Furthermore, health conditions that disproportionately affect black women, such as uterine fibroids, receive very little government research funding. My hope is this novel will provoke discussions about culpability in a society that still deems poor, black, and disabled as categories unfit for motherhood.
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Now, you know how some white folks feel about Black bodies. They think we can tolerate pain better than them. According to some of these documents Im about to show you, some of them even thought syphilis couldnt kill us. It was as much an experiment about the effects of the disease as it was a crazy white mans
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idea of a laboratory game with Black bodies.
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When I arrive in Jackson Im not just thinking of Evers, Im also thinking of Fannie Lou Hamer and her use of the phrase Mississippi Appendectomy.
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Hamer had been sterilized without her permission in 1961, and the procedure was so common, women had labeled it.
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A lot of Black women in the South had that dream of becoming a housewife back then. We called it sitting down.
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The Roe v. Wade decision had come down on a Monday in January of 1973, and I remember the afternoon newspapers sold out as word spread. I watched my daddy sit down in his chair and silently read, shake his head and then leave the paper on the coffee table. We never discussed it, but surely he knew that there were houses out in the country where women went to have the procedure, even before the ruling. Id gone to one in Opelika, one where Miss Pope believed I could get safe care. And it had still been a risk. Surely Daddy understood that women needed a trustworthy place. Some women traveled to New York to have the procedure, but that was too far for most of us. Make no mistake about it, that ruling was a big deal.
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Civil, you understand we have to work together to help these people. We are working for the common good. They need us.
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Sometimes love can kill you, just like hate. You love too hard and you can lose yourself in other folks sorrow. You hate too hard and you know the rest of that story. Take care of yourself. You cant help others if youre down and out. I have to remind myself of that all the time. I never thought a nun would tell me I could love too hard. Only Jesuss love is infinite, Miss Townsend.
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There is no greater right for a woman than having a choice,
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She had never married; she and her sister had visited thirty-two of the fifty states, no small feat for two Negro women traveling alone.
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There is no greater right for a woman than having a choice.
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There are a lot of things a mother can say to hurt her child, even long after the child is an adult.
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I never knew that good intentions could be just as destructive as bad ones.
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It baffled me how hatred and goodness could coexist. The world was an enigma. My country was an enigma. Still, she was mine. And I loved every square inch of her.
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Sometimes love can kill you, just like hate. You love too hard and you can lose yourself in other folks sorrow.
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I was too wrapped up in my hurt to even articulate my feelings to myself, let alone to him.
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names inside your clothes, too. A reminder to never forget. Medicine has taught me, really taught me, to accept the things I cannot change. A difficult-to-swallow serenity prayer. Im not trying to change the past. Im telling it in order to lay these ghosts to rest.
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And with that, the training was over. One week. A fifty-page orientation manual, half of which concerned cleaning the rooms and the toilet, and keeping the supply closet organized. We had spent three days just going over that part. Long enough to question if wed been hired as maids or nurses.
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Yes, maam. I sat quietly, digesting her words. My daddy had made sure that I was educated not only in my books but also, as he had once described
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I had never known that good intentions could be just as destructive as bad ones.
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it, in the code that dictated our lives in Alabama. Knowing when to keep your mouth shut. Picking your battles. Letting them think what they wanted because you werent going to change their minds about certain things.
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This was the way I figured it. There were all different kinds of ministers. Ministers of congregations. Ministers of music. To minister was to serve. This work was a ministry serving young Black women.
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I was determined that Mrs.Seager would not be disappointed in me. I was going to have that dragon eating candy out of my hand before it was over and done with.
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Some years back, your daddy and I went to see Booker T. and the M.G.s perform at the Coliseum in Memphis. We stayed at your aunt Ross house, but none of us slept. We partied and stayed up all night. The drummers name was Al Jackson Jr. He hung out with us that night after the concert. Ros knew them all. Lord, Mama. You never told me that. Where was I? You were away at vacation Bible school. So yall partied while I was getting saved. I laughed. I wanted my parents to dance again, to smoke reefer and curse and act like young people. Surely they had earned the carelessness of success. I wanted them to enjoy it.
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