The 8th book I have finished this year is Take My Hand, by Dolen Perkins-Valdez.
I am on a roll in the history department. This book is about a nurse whose clinic is giving experimental child control shots, that may lead to cancer. And after giving the shots to these 2 little black girls, one in which who haven’t even started menstruating, our main character Civil falls into a moral dilemma. After seeing the state in which these children are living in, she makes it her goal to turn their lives around, along which not giving them these shots.
The story is narrated through the voice of Dr. Civil Townsend, years later, as she tells her daughter about her earlier life. This story was inspired by true events during the 1970s. It includes themes of medical racism, abuse, ableism, bigotry, and more. Again, this story has given me such a new look on a part of my history that I didn’t really learn as much in school. It is again, one of those books that I believe should be read during school, should be a part of the curriculum.