Bodies in a Broken World
Women Novelists of Color and the Politics of Medicine
Ann Folwell Stanford
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Imprint: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 07/2004
Pages: 288
Subject: Medical, Social Science, Literary Criticism
| University of North Carolina
Print ISBN: 9.78E+12
eBook ISBN: 9780807862254
DESCRIPTION
In literary representations of physical and emotional states of illness and health, Stanford identifies issues related to public health, medical ethics, institutionalized racism, women's health, domestic abuse, and social justice that are important to discussions about how to improve health and health care. She argues that in either direct or indirect ways, the eleven novelists considered here push us to see health not only as an individual condition but also as a complex network of individual, institutional, and social changes in which wellness can be a possibility for the majority rather than a privileged few.
The novelists whose works are discussed are Toni Cade Bambara, Paule Marshall, Gloria Naylor, Leslie Marmon Silko, Toni Morrison, Louise Erdrich, Sandra Cisneros, Bebe Moore Campbell, Sapphire, Ana Castillo, and Octavia Butler.