A compelling contribution to the literature on the important issue of health care inequity.
How systemic oppression erodes the health of members of marginalized communities.
Geronimus, a professor of public health, coined the term weathering to describe the decline in health and life expectancy that results from repeated or sustained activation of physiological stress responses. In this insightful and well-argued book, the author contends that the physiological effects of living in marginalized communities, often caused by racial, ethnic, religious, and class discrimination, play a more significant role in the health of its members than genetics or lifestyle choices. Geronimus also looks at the concept of “age-washing,” which describes a way of thinking that ignores the effects of systemic problems on the health of marginalized individuals and attempts to place the cause elsewhere, leading to the proliferation of the "blame narrative." The author bases her findings on three decades of research, including her own, some of which has contradicted conventional thinking. Though she considered writing a book about weathering for nearly her entire career, she was “stopped cold” and called to action when she learned about shocking increases in mortality rates, “in particular preventable deaths of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and rural white mothers,” over the same time period. With health inequalities not only remaining entrenched, but continuing to rise in the past 30 years, the author seeks to “spark new narratives and new understandings that will pave the way to new paths toward achieving health equity.” In that, she succeeds, and the text benefits from the author’s inclusion of stories of individuals who have experienced firsthand the effects of weathering, including those of her own family as descendants of Eastern European Jewish immigrants. In the hard-driving second part of the book, Geronimus provides suggestions to create a new path forward, creating action items for readers truly interested in doing something about “racialized injustice and the weathering it causes.”
A compelling contribution to the literature on the important issue of health care inequity.Pub Date: March 28, 2023
ISBN: 9780316257978
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Little, Brown Spark
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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