African American Literature and the Critical Medical Humanities: Literary Precedence and Theoretical Lag as Exemplified in Toni Morrison’s Home
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1404.36Keywords:
African American literature, critical medical humanities, healing strategies, medical abuse, Morrison’s HomeAbstract
This article aims to contribute to opening up a dialogue between African American literature and the field of the critical medical humanities. By so doing, the article highlights the value of African American literature as a contributor to the emergence of the critical medical humanities and an indispensable partner in the theorization about the racialization of medicine. We contend that African American literature’s interest in the intersection between medicine and race anticipates one of the most important tenets of the critical medical humanities. That anticipation is evident in such novels as Toni Morrison’s Home, in which Cee is exposed to the brutality of eugenic sterilization. We thus explore the way the novel—among other African American literary works—paves the way for engaging racialized medicine and unwittingly contributes to the rise of the critical medical humanities.
References
Adams, Z., & Reisman, A. (2019). Beyond Sparking Joy: A Call for a Critical Medical Humanities. Academic Medicine, 94(10), 1404.
Atkinson, S., Evans, B., Woods, A., & Kearns, R. (2015). ‘The Medical’ and ‘Health’ in a Critical Medical Humanities. Journal of Medical Humanities, 36(1), 71-81.
Banner, O. (2016). Structural Racism and Practices of Reading in the Medical Humanities. Literature and Medicine, 34(1), 25-52.
Bleakley, A. (2014). Towards a ‘Critical Medical Humanities,’ In Victoria Bates, Alan Bleakley, & Sam Goodman (Eds.), Medicine, Health and the Arts: Approaches to the Medical Humanities (pp. 17-26). Routledge.
Brody, H. (2011). Defining the Medical Humanities: Three Conceptions and Three Narratives. Journal of Medical Humanities, 32(1), 1-7.
Cucarella-Ramon, V. (2017). “Any Man’s Blues”: Exposing the Crisis of African-American Masculinity in the Delusion of a Post-Racial United States in Toni Morrison’s Home. Studies in the Literary Imagination, 50(2), 91-108.
Dorr, G. M., & Logan, A. (2011). “Quality, Not Mere Quantity, Counts”: Black Eugenics and the NP Baby Contests. In Paul A. Lombardo (Ed.), A Century of Eugenics in America: From the Indiana Experiment to the Human Genome Era (pp. 68-92). Indiana University Press.
Evans, H. M., & Greaves, D. A. (2002). ‘Medical Humanities’—What’s in a Name?” Medical Humanities, 28(1), 1-2.
Freedman, E. W. (2016). ‘Come on Brother. Let’s Go Home’: Dual-witnessing in Toni Morrison’s Home. Parlour, 1(1), 1-22.
Foucault, M. (1973). The Birth of the Clinic. Routledge.
Harack, K. (2016). Shifting Masculinities and Evolving Feminine Power: Progressive Gender Roles in Toni Morrison’s Home. Mississippi Quarterly, 69(3), 371-395.
Lombardo, P. A. (Ed.). (2011). A Century of Eugenics in America: From the Indiana Experiment to the Human Genome Era. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
López Ramírez, M. (2015). Gothic Tropes in Toni Morrison’s Home: The Scientist-Villain Figure and the Maiden in Distress. Revista de Filologia, 33(1), 119-132.
Morrison, T. (2012). Home. Vintage Books.
Oyebode, F. (2010). The Medical Humanities: Literature and Medicine. Clinical Medicine, 10(3), 242-244.
Singh, S., Khosla, J., & Sridhar, S. (2012). Exploring Medical Humanities through Theatre of the Oppressed. Indian Journal of Psychiatry, 54(3), 296-297.
Stanford, A. F. (1994). Mechanisms of Disease: African-American Women Writers, Social Pathologies, and the Limits of Medicine. NWSA Journal, 6(1), 28-47.
Syed, I. M. (2021). Exploring Medical Humanities. Medical and Clinical Research: Open Access, 2(1), 1-2.
Viney, W., Callard, F., & Woods, A. (2015). Critical Medical Humanities: Embracing Entanglement, Taking Risks. Medical Humanities, 41(1), 2-7.
Visser, I. (2014). Entanglements of Trauma: Relationality and Toni Morrison’s Home. Postcolonial Text, 9(2), 1-21.
Whitehead, A. (2017). Medicine and Empathy in Contemporary British Fiction: An Intervention in Medical Humanities. Edinburgh University Press.
Whitehead, A., & Woods, A. (Eds.). (2016). The Edinburgh Companion to the Critical Medical Humanities, UK: Edinburgh University Press.
