My Review
A dual timeline taking place in 1973 and 2016, Take My Hand by author Dolen Perkins-Valdez explores the U.S. government’s forceful involvement in involuntary sterilization of mostly poor,disadvantaged,illiterate women of color.
Loosely based on a case in Alabama in 1973 involving children ages 12 and 14 years of age whose illiterate family signed the consent form for this procedure to take place after being lied to about what the paper said that they were signing.
The story is told through the eye’s of a nurse who was involved in the lives of the children and their family beyond typical nurse duties. This gave me a sense of hope and gladness.
The story hurt my heart and made me cry at the injustice done to these children just because they were poor and of color and the government though this would be in their best interest.
A woman’s reproductive choices are her own to make and no one has a right to make them for her no matter her circumstances or age.
In the author’s research she discovered this wasn’t the only case like this, that there were many cases across the country of forced sterilization. This sadly is relevant today as women in California prisons and immigrants coming into our country have had this procedure done to them.
Based on facts this book is one that moved me and will stay with me for a long time. I recommend it to you, it will open your eyes and educate you.
Published April 12,2022.
I was given a complimentary copy of this book.
All opinions expressed are my own.
Take My Hand Hardcover edition -published April 12,2022- Author Dolen Perkins-Valdez 368 pages -Publisher Berkley
Amazon Buy Link
TAKE MY HAND (Berkley Hardcover; April 12, 2022) reckons with the forced sterilization of Black women, inspired by true events in the 1970s American South, for readers of An American Marriage by Tayari Jones and The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray.
Dolen was inspired to write TAKE MY HAND by a 1973 lawsuit on behalf of Minnie Lee and Alice Relf. The Relf sisters were only twelve and fourteen years old when they were surgically sterilized without their knowledge in a federally-funded Montgomery clinic. At age 29, Joseph Levin—co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center—filed a lawsuit on the sisters’ behalf, shining a spotlight on the 150,000 impoverished victims across the county. TAKE MY HAND is a fictionalized account of this significant event.
Montgomery, Alabama, 1973. Fresh out of nursing school, Civil Townsend intends to make a difference, especially in her African American community. At the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, she hopes to help women shape their destinies, to make their own choices for their lives and bodies.
But when her first week on the job takes her along a dusty country road to a worn-down one-room cabin, Civil is shocked to learn that her new patients, Erica and India, are children—just eleven and thirteen years old. Neither of the Williams sisters has even kissed a boy, but they are poor and Black, and for those handling the family’s welfare benefits, that’s reason enough to have the girls on birth control. As Civil grapples with her role, she takes India, Erica, and their family into her heart. Until one day she arrives at their door to learn the unthinkable has happened, and nothing will ever be the same for any of them.
Decades later, with her daughter grown and a long career in her wake, Dr. Civil Townsend is ready to retire, to find her peace, and to leave the past behind. But there are people and stories that refuse to be forgotten. That must not be forgotten. Because history repeats what we don’t remember.
Inspired by true events and brimming with hope, TAKE MY HAND is a stirring exploration of accountability and redemption.
About The Author
Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of WENCH, BALM, and the forthcoming TAKE MY HAND. *USA Today* called WENCH “deeply moving” and “beautifully written.” *People* called it “a devastatingly beautiful account of a cruel past.” *O, The Oprah Magazine* chose it as a Top Ten Pick of the Month, and NPR named it a top 5 book club pick of 2010. Dolen’s fiction has appeared in The Kenyon Review, StoryQuarterly, StorySouth, and elsewhere. In 2011, she was a finalist for two NAACP Image Awards and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for fiction. She was also awarded the First Novelist Award by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Dolen received a DC Commission on the Arts Grant for her second novel BALM. Publishers Weekly writes “Her spare, lyrical voice is unsentimental yet compassionate.” Library Journal writes “No sophomore slump is in evidence here. Readers who were captivated by Perkins-Valdez’s first novel, Wench, will be intrigued by the post–Civil War lives of three Southern transplants to Chicago.” Dolen is an Associate Professor of Literature at American University. A graduate of Harvard and a former University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA, Dolen lives in Washington, DC with her family.
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