Reading Dána-Ain Davis’s Reproductive Injustice has broadened my efforts to understand and scrutinize the violence of care embedded within medical and therapeutic practices in the United States. My own work on the violence of care focuses on how such practices are implicated in the past and present landscape of racial inequality in the U.S. I argue that the violence of …
This article is part of the following series: Book forum
Dána-Ain Davis’s Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth (NYU Press, 2019) is a vividly written ethnography highlighting how medical racism shapes birth outcomes for Black women in America. Under the sign of maternal health risk and prematurity, Davis argues, the American medical system forces Black women to participate in a limited array of interventions informed by theories of wellness …
This article is part of: The Ethnographic Case
What constitutes evidence of sexual assault?
I am seated in a courtroom as a sexual assault forensic nurse is asked to explain, by a prosecutor, the basic tenets of genital anatomy. During the sexual assault trials I observed in Milwaukee, WI, testimony is highly orchestrated. Sequestration orders bar the presence of witnesses from the courtroom unless they are testifying. The …
My thanks to Christine Labuski, Julie Livingston and Gethin Rees, who have brought their sharp insights to their reading of my recently published book, The Violence of Care: Rape Victims, Forensic Nurses, and Sexual Assault Intervention. I began this project many years ago as a prelude to research, planning to gain experience as a rape crisis advocate in Baltimore, …