Dying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health - Softcover

Wailoo, Keith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807848964 ISBN 13: 9780807848968

Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001

Synopsis

This groundbreaking book chronicles the history of sickle cell anemia in the United States, tracing its transformation from an "invisible" malady to a powerful, yet contested, cultural symbol of African American pain and suffering.

Set in Memphis, home of one of the nation's first sickle cell clinics, Dying in the City of the Blues reveals how the recognition, treatment, social understanding, and symbolism of the disease evolved in the twentieth century, shaped by the politics of race, region, health care, and biomedicine. Using medical journals, patients' accounts, black newspapers, blues lyrics, and many other sources, Keith Wailoo follows the disease and its sufferers from the early days of obscurity before sickle cell's "discovery" by Western medicine; through its rise to clinical, scientific, and social prominence in the 1950s; to its politicization in the 1970s and 1980s. Looking forward, he considers the consequences of managed care on the politics of disease in the twenty-first century.

A rich and multilayered narrative, Dying in the City of the Blues offers valuable new insight into the African American experience, the impact of race relations and ideologies on health care, and the politics of science, medicine, and disease.

About this title

Book Description:

"Wailoo's comprehensive telling . . . is the definitive story of race and health in the United States."-- Library Journal

About the Author:

Author of the award-winning Drawing Blood: Technology and Disease Identity in Twentieth-Century America, Keith Wailoo is Martin Luther King Professor of History, jointly appointed in the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research, at Rutgers University. In 1999 he received the prestigious James S. McDonnell Centennial Fellowship in the History of Science.

About this edition

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0807848964
• ISBN 13: 9780807848968
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352