rc_cola's review
4.0
Vividly painting the antebellum South's cultural lanscape, Hallman brings dark buried histories of slavery, gynecological research, and doctoral ethics into the light. A work of speculative nonfiction that reads as compelling as Butler's "Kindred" and well-researched as Larson's, Chernow's, and Kearns Goodwin's volumes. A creative powerhouse, brilliantly stitching science, healing, violence, and humanity together for a telling read.
tipsytarsier's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
sad
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Pregnancy, Violence, Rape, Sexual violence, and Slavery
full_of_flowers's review
The story of Anarcha herself is one that needs to be known, but this book, thick as it is, contains too little of it in proportion. There's so much tangential information that pulls focus from her experience, as well as too much grace given to J. Marion Sims (the doctor who experimented on Anarcha without consent or anesthesia) in my opinion.
fkshg8465's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
slow-paced
5.0
******************SPOILERS ******************
Wow! So much to say about this book. Really feeling conflicted. On the one hand, we’ve got this terribly tragic history of a narcissist doctor chasing fame and glory by blatantly and cruelly experimenting on women without their consent ; mostly because they are slaves, who by the way often found themselves at his mercy because of all the many times they’d been raped), and on the other hand, I have to acknowledge that modern gynecology is what it is because of these medically unethical atrocities. I suppose that’s how it often is - progress at the expense of those without a choice.
I was shocked to learn some of the procedures Dr. Simms was trying to do, like clitorectomy to “solve” women’s maturation, angered that he even suggested slicing women’s tongues to keep them from talking so much, and others. What really made me upset is that he had so little interest in gynecology and then decided to exploit women in order to achieve professional stature.
Eye opening, informative, and emotionally disruptive.
Wow! So much to say about this book. Really feeling conflicted. On the one hand, we’ve got this terribly tragic history of a narcissist doctor chasing fame and glory by blatantly and cruelly experimenting on women without their consent ; mostly because they are slaves, who by the way often found themselves at his mercy because of all the many times they’d been raped), and on the other hand, I have to acknowledge that modern gynecology is what it is because of these medically unethical atrocities. I suppose that’s how it often is - progress at the expense of those without a choice.
I was shocked to learn some of the procedures Dr. Simms was trying to do, like clitorectomy to “solve” women’s maturation, angered that he even suggested slicing women’s tongues to keep them from talking so much, and others. What really made me upset is that he had so little interest in gynecology and then decided to exploit women in order to achieve professional stature.
Eye opening, informative, and emotionally disruptive.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Kidnapping, Miscarriage, Slavery, and Rape
seeceeread's review
slow-paced
3.5
💭 "Medical men should be idolized as soldiers and inventors were."
Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey are three of the women on whose bodies J. Marion Sims staked a medical career. Even today, he is sometimes called the 𝘍𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘎𝘺𝘯𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺. In the author's speculative biography, Anarcha's life is filled with a commitment to sharing what she knows of herbal remedies, catching babies, treating fistula and other healing approaches. Despite many sales, relocations and separations from her children, she is well-known. The white West (rather erroneously) talks of her as Sims' first "cured" fistula patient, when in fact he is the one who created it; whose repeated, botched operations scarred her past for effective intervention, and lived with a prolapsed bladder for years before he finally intervened by pretending to resolve her fistula again.
Hallman opens with a quote from Orwell: "In the whole of history, how many slaves' names are known to you? I can think of two." Then offers pages of names — every formerly enslaved person whose WPA narrative helped him construct the story of Anarcha (Anaka, Anarcky, Annacay, Ankey). About half the book is about her; he embeds snippets from primary sources and directs readers to a website with much more to encourage critical engagement with his choices.
Every other chapter is J. Marion Sims' biography. Hallman focuses on the doctor's values. In pursuit of fusty masculinity (domination), honor (deference) and prestige (profit) ... Sims violated women of every class; named an absurd number of processes, positions and devices after himself; and adopted showmanship tactics from PT Barnum to transform half-truths into spectacle and clinical notes into oral myth. His contemporaries included both the awed and disgusted. The men who formed the American Medical Association to introduce and advance professional ethics were among his detractors, as were those who sided with the Union in the Civil War, those who saw through his bombast, and the women who ran his hospital (these last eagerly accepted his resignation!)
The writing is spasmodic. I appreciated Hallman's work to depict a raw, unforgiving 19th century US horror landscape — from medical schools' dead rooms to operating tables and plantation bayous to brutality against the enslaved. I admire his effort to celebrate young fistula sufferers' community care over the "sparkling jelly" of Sims' fallen star. Yet many concepts are minimally integrated and feel tacked onto the main project. Likewise, he overuses the facts of celestial events without this culminating in a satisfying motif; just a few sentences' connect to the main characters. I'm worried that too many readers might miss the fact that using Sims' own perspective is meant to be a slight, a denouncement and not pure excavation. The core components could have been executed in maybe two thirds the pages and I think I would have liked this better.
You'll probably see past imperfect delivery to the quality content if you like
• Hartman's creative methodology in 𝗪𝗮𝘆𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗟𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀, 𝗕𝗲𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀
• Historical fiction about the antebellum period, Civil War and post-period
• Soderbergh's 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗞𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗸, a 2014 two-season TV medical drama
Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey are three of the women on whose bodies J. Marion Sims staked a medical career. Even today, he is sometimes called the 𝘍𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘎𝘺𝘯𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺. In the author's speculative biography, Anarcha's life is filled with a commitment to sharing what she knows of herbal remedies, catching babies, treating fistula and other healing approaches. Despite many sales, relocations and separations from her children, she is well-known. The white West (rather erroneously) talks of her as Sims' first "cured" fistula patient, when in fact he is the one who created it; whose repeated, botched operations scarred her past for effective intervention, and lived with a prolapsed bladder for years before he finally intervened by pretending to resolve her fistula again.
Hallman opens with a quote from Orwell: "In the whole of history, how many slaves' names are known to you? I can think of two." Then offers pages of names — every formerly enslaved person whose WPA narrative helped him construct the story of Anarcha (Anaka, Anarcky, Annacay, Ankey). About half the book is about her; he embeds snippets from primary sources and directs readers to a website with much more to encourage critical engagement with his choices.
Every other chapter is J. Marion Sims' biography. Hallman focuses on the doctor's values. In pursuit of fusty masculinity (domination), honor (deference) and prestige (profit) ... Sims violated women of every class; named an absurd number of processes, positions and devices after himself; and adopted showmanship tactics from PT Barnum to transform half-truths into spectacle and clinical notes into oral myth. His contemporaries included both the awed and disgusted. The men who formed the American Medical Association to introduce and advance professional ethics were among his detractors, as were those who sided with the Union in the Civil War, those who saw through his bombast, and the women who ran his hospital (these last eagerly accepted his resignation!)
The writing is spasmodic. I appreciated Hallman's work to depict a raw, unforgiving 19th century US horror landscape — from medical schools' dead rooms to operating tables and plantation bayous to brutality against the enslaved. I admire his effort to celebrate young fistula sufferers' community care over the "sparkling jelly" of Sims' fallen star. Yet many concepts are minimally integrated and feel tacked onto the main project. Likewise, he overuses the facts of celestial events without this culminating in a satisfying motif; just a few sentences' connect to the main characters. I'm worried that too many readers might miss the fact that using Sims' own perspective is meant to be a slight, a denouncement and not pure excavation. The core components could have been executed in maybe two thirds the pages and I think I would have liked this better.
You'll probably see past imperfect delivery to the quality content if you like
• Hartman's creative methodology in 𝗪𝗮𝘆𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗟𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀, 𝗕𝗲𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀
• Historical fiction about the antebellum period, Civil War and post-period
• Soderbergh's 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗞𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗸, a 2014 two-season TV medical drama
bookwhimsy2's review
3.0
Say Anarcha makes significant contributions to the history of medicine. Knowing more about the women that Sims experimented on is immensely valuable, and I cannot praise that enough. However, the book is unnecessarily bloated with the stories of people tangentially related to the lives of Anarcha and Sims.
Anarcha was one of the enslaved women that Dr. Marion Sims experimented on extensively on his path to fame. He has been celebrated as the father of American gynecology, while the enslaved women he performed surgeries on without anesthesia 20 and 30 plus times have been erased from the medical and history books. This is difficult history to recover, but Hallman's extensive work revealed important stories.
The book is worth it for the chapters on Anarcha and Sims. The writing here is approachable and perfect for both a wider audience as well as experts. However, I found the focus on comets and celestial bodies completely unnecessary to the story, and there are too many chapters dedicated to detailing the lives of people that, while interesting in their own right, don't add significantly to understanding either Anarcha or Sim.
The speculative nature of the history here is necessary, given how little evidence we have of Anarcha or her point of view. The speculative parts were well done. Though as a historian, I would have appreciated more of a discussion of sources and the choices made by Hallman. There are parts where that was done with other people's stories, and it was expertly done, so why not with Anarcha?
I received a free advanced reader's copy of the book via NetGalley.
Anarcha was one of the enslaved women that Dr. Marion Sims experimented on extensively on his path to fame. He has been celebrated as the father of American gynecology, while the enslaved women he performed surgeries on without anesthesia 20 and 30 plus times have been erased from the medical and history books. This is difficult history to recover, but Hallman's extensive work revealed important stories.
The book is worth it for the chapters on Anarcha and Sims. The writing here is approachable and perfect for both a wider audience as well as experts. However, I found the focus on comets and celestial bodies completely unnecessary to the story, and there are too many chapters dedicated to detailing the lives of people that, while interesting in their own right, don't add significantly to understanding either Anarcha or Sim.
The speculative nature of the history here is necessary, given how little evidence we have of Anarcha or her point of view. The speculative parts were well done. Though as a historian, I would have appreciated more of a discussion of sources and the choices made by Hallman. There are parts where that was done with other people's stories, and it was expertly done, so why not with Anarcha?
I received a free advanced reader's copy of the book via NetGalley.
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