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A review by seeceeread
Say Anarcha by J.C. Hallman
slow-paced
3.5
💭 "Medical men should be idolized as soldiers and inventors were."
Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey are three of the women on whose bodies J. Marion Sims staked a medical career. Even today, he is sometimes called the 𝘍𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘎𝘺𝘯𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺. In the author's speculative biography, Anarcha's life is filled with a commitment to sharing what she knows of herbal remedies, catching babies, treating fistula and other healing approaches. Despite many sales, relocations and separations from her children, she is well-known. The white West (rather erroneously) talks of her as Sims' first "cured" fistula patient, when in fact he is the one who created it; whose repeated, botched operations scarred her past for effective intervention, and lived with a prolapsed bladder for years before he finally intervened by pretending to resolve her fistula again.
Hallman opens with a quote from Orwell: "In the whole of history, how many slaves' names are known to you? I can think of two." Then offers pages of names — every formerly enslaved person whose WPA narrative helped him construct the story of Anarcha (Anaka, Anarcky, Annacay, Ankey). About half the book is about her; he embeds snippets from primary sources and directs readers to a website with much more to encourage critical engagement with his choices.
Every other chapter is J. Marion Sims' biography. Hallman focuses on the doctor's values. In pursuit of fusty masculinity (domination), honor (deference) and prestige (profit) ... Sims violated women of every class; named an absurd number of processes, positions and devices after himself; and adopted showmanship tactics from PT Barnum to transform half-truths into spectacle and clinical notes into oral myth. His contemporaries included both the awed and disgusted. The men who formed the American Medical Association to introduce and advance professional ethics were among his detractors, as were those who sided with the Union in the Civil War, those who saw through his bombast, and the women who ran his hospital (these last eagerly accepted his resignation!)
The writing is spasmodic. I appreciated Hallman's work to depict a raw, unforgiving 19th century US horror landscape — from medical schools' dead rooms to operating tables and plantation bayous to brutality against the enslaved. I admire his effort to celebrate young fistula sufferers' community care over the "sparkling jelly" of Sims' fallen star. Yet many concepts are minimally integrated and feel tacked onto the main project. Likewise, he overuses the facts of celestial events without this culminating in a satisfying motif; just a few sentences' connect to the main characters. I'm worried that too many readers might miss the fact that using Sims' own perspective is meant to be a slight, a denouncement and not pure excavation. The core components could have been executed in maybe two thirds the pages and I think I would have liked this better.
You'll probably see past imperfect delivery to the quality content if you like
• Hartman's creative methodology in 𝗪𝗮𝘆𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗟𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀, 𝗕𝗲𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀
• Historical fiction about the antebellum period, Civil War and post-period
• Soderbergh's 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗞𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗸, a 2014 two-season TV medical drama
Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey are three of the women on whose bodies J. Marion Sims staked a medical career. Even today, he is sometimes called the 𝘍𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘎𝘺𝘯𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺. In the author's speculative biography, Anarcha's life is filled with a commitment to sharing what she knows of herbal remedies, catching babies, treating fistula and other healing approaches. Despite many sales, relocations and separations from her children, she is well-known. The white West (rather erroneously) talks of her as Sims' first "cured" fistula patient, when in fact he is the one who created it; whose repeated, botched operations scarred her past for effective intervention, and lived with a prolapsed bladder for years before he finally intervened by pretending to resolve her fistula again.
Hallman opens with a quote from Orwell: "In the whole of history, how many slaves' names are known to you? I can think of two." Then offers pages of names — every formerly enslaved person whose WPA narrative helped him construct the story of Anarcha (Anaka, Anarcky, Annacay, Ankey). About half the book is about her; he embeds snippets from primary sources and directs readers to a website with much more to encourage critical engagement with his choices.
Every other chapter is J. Marion Sims' biography. Hallman focuses on the doctor's values. In pursuit of fusty masculinity (domination), honor (deference) and prestige (profit) ... Sims violated women of every class; named an absurd number of processes, positions and devices after himself; and adopted showmanship tactics from PT Barnum to transform half-truths into spectacle and clinical notes into oral myth. His contemporaries included both the awed and disgusted. The men who formed the American Medical Association to introduce and advance professional ethics were among his detractors, as were those who sided with the Union in the Civil War, those who saw through his bombast, and the women who ran his hospital (these last eagerly accepted his resignation!)
The writing is spasmodic. I appreciated Hallman's work to depict a raw, unforgiving 19th century US horror landscape — from medical schools' dead rooms to operating tables and plantation bayous to brutality against the enslaved. I admire his effort to celebrate young fistula sufferers' community care over the "sparkling jelly" of Sims' fallen star. Yet many concepts are minimally integrated and feel tacked onto the main project. Likewise, he overuses the facts of celestial events without this culminating in a satisfying motif; just a few sentences' connect to the main characters. I'm worried that too many readers might miss the fact that using Sims' own perspective is meant to be a slight, a denouncement and not pure excavation. The core components could have been executed in maybe two thirds the pages and I think I would have liked this better.
You'll probably see past imperfect delivery to the quality content if you like
• Hartman's creative methodology in 𝗪𝗮𝘆𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗟𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀, 𝗕𝗲𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗳𝘂𝗹 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀
• Historical fiction about the antebellum period, Civil War and post-period
• Soderbergh's 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗞𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗸, a 2014 two-season TV medical drama