How important was it for you to present these narratives in this way? Yet, the characters and plot of the story lend themselves towards diplomacy. Take My Hand couldn’t be more timely given the conversations around abortion being had in this country. I am deeply indebted to the work of Black women scholars who have delved into these histories and inspired my work. I also recommend Killing the Black Body by Dorothy Roberts. For anyone who is stunned by what happens in my book, Washington will contextualize the problematic history of experimentation on the Black body. P erkins-Valdez: I highly recommend Harriet Washington’s Medical Apartheid as a source of the history of medical racism in this country. What was the inspiration for Take My Hand and what was the research process like?
I know that sounds odd, but I really do believe in the ancestral spirit world.Īmerica has a legacy of having a complicated relationship with the Black body. The voices of the past kept calling me, and to this day, I hope that I can do those spirits justice. Over the years, I kept getting pulled back into the archives. When I began this journey, I didn’t know historical fiction would become my life’s work. It’s a city soaked in history, and I grew up in the arms of a rich Black community that told stories. Perkins-Valdez: I’ve only recently realized that the first source of my inspiration to remember is my birthplace, Memphis, TN. With Wench, Balm, and now Take My Hand, you invite readers to step into the past.Can you share how the inspiration to write historical fiction books came into your life?
You have a calling to bring others back to remembrance. Wade, ESSENCE had the opportunity to speak with Perkins-Valdez about the timeliness of Take My Hand and the parallels that exist in American society today. The Tuskegee Syphilis project, the phrase Mississippi Appendectomy, systemic oppression of the poor and marginalized, involuntary sterilization, abortion, the legacy of historically Black colleges and universities, and the ill regard for the Black body are all themes that run deep in Take My Hand. By then it would be too late to connect their illness to Depo. If the drugs were dangerous, it could be years before we knew if they’d caused cancer. Civil ponders, “It was entirely possible the federal government was using our patients as if they were the subjects of a live clinical trial, the same thing they’d done to those men at Tuskegee.
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