★ 04/03/2023
Journalist Hallman (B & Me) corrects a huge omission in women’s health history in this innovative and riveting study of Anarcha, an enslaved woman who in the mid-1800s endured as many as 30 unanesthetized experimental surgeries performed by the “father of modern gynecology,” J. Marion Sims. Casting a critical eye on Sims’s statements about Anarcha, including his claim that he “cured” her of obstetric fistula, “a horrific condition that is the result of prolonged obstructed labor,” Hallman recreates Anarcha’s life from plantation and census records, and fills in the substantial gaps by drawing on slave narratives compiled by the Federal Writers’ Project in the 1930s. Mixing speculation and fact, he describes a young Anarcha becoming an assistant to an enslaved woman “who had been purchased for $175 to give medicines and catch babies”; her reappearance, more than a decade after the original surgeries, as a patient at Sims’s hospital in New York City; and her marriage to Lorenzo Jackson, an enslaved man in Virginia. Throughout, Hallman presents Sims as a “craven and conniving” physician who built his reputation by courting the press and touring Europe under the pretext of sharing his surgical knowledge while secretly spying for the Confederacy. Through rigorous and innovative research, Hallman successfully transforms Anarcha from historical object to subject, and shines a light on the contentious rise of medical ethics in the 19th century. It’s a must-read. Illus. (June)
Winner of the Phillis Wheatley Book Award
Los Angeles Times, "10 June books for your reading list"
"[A] truly astounding tale. . . . Say Anarcha is an important book and deserves to be widely read. . . . In the introduction, Hallman tells us that his goal is “to subvert every aspect of the fraudulent narrative” connected to Anarcha and to “excavate the life story of a young, enslaved woman who changed history, only to be forgotten by it.” He has accomplished that and more."
—New York Times Book Review
"When you ask for this one at the bookstore, you raise a cry for justice. . . . [A] new masterpiece. . . . Thanks to Hallman’s instant classic, [Anarcha]’s back in the skies and burning more brightly than ever."
—Brooklyn Rail
"This compelling, extremely well-researched account of the life of an enslaved Black woman changes the historical narrative surrounding J. Marion Sims and engages us in a sober reckoning over the legacy of slavery, medical experimentation and gynecology. This extraordinary book forces us to recognize that "Anarcha" is a name we should say, remember and reflect upon as we still contend with a history of racial injustice that has left us vulnerable to continuing racial disparities in health care, injustice and unnecessary suffering."
—Bryan Stevenson, bestselling author of Just Mercy and founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative
"With painstaking historical research and loving persistence, J.C. Hallman has pieced together the fragments of the life of a woman who otherwise would have been less than a footnote. At the same time, Hallman has corrected the sanitized story of J. Marion Sims. This fully realized account of their entwined histories restores the humanity and dignity of Anarcha and other Black women whose sacrifices advanced and modernized medicine in America and the world."
—Linda Villarosa, author of Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation
"Although she was not counted as a person until 1869, Anarcha, the enslaved woman at the center of J.C. Hallman’s fascinating history Say Anarcha, proved herself to be a shimmering star from the heavens, a “comet” as one slave owner once put it, who navigated her own life on earth with intelligence, bravery, and mercy. The author rescues Anarcha from the shadow of J. Marion Sims and restores her to her rightful position of American hero. Hallman reminds us on every page that Anarcha’s place as the so-called “mother of gynecology” is as much a foundation of the United States as was the writing of the Constitution, or the marches of the Civil War, or the prophetic showers, from slavery times until freedom, of the heavenly bodies. Say Anarcha is a masterpiece of research and storytelling and should be made required reading everywhere. A massive accomplishment."
—Carolyn Ferrell, author of Dear Miss Metropolitan
"The Story of America is one built on the backs of Black women, who, despite brutal bondage, abuse, cruelty, and dehumanization, managed to save this country from itself. It is the story of women like Anarcha who were forced to sacrifice everything, even her life, so that millions of women would continue to live theirs. Say Anarcha is more than a glorious corrective to an unjust erasure of history. It restores an extraordinary life to a time that denied it and refines the very notion of the great American Hero."
—Marlon James, winner of the 2015 Booker Prize
"Rigorous and innovative. . . . Hallman successfully transforms Anarcha from historical object to subject, and shines a light on the contentious rise of medical ethics in the 19th century. It’s a must-read."
—Publishers Weekly
"A staggeringly researched book that serves as an indictment of Sims' hubris and an homage to Anarcha."
—Kirkus Reviews
2023-03-11
An excavation of the lives and legacies of Dr. J. Marion Sims, “the so-called Father of Gynecology,” and Anarcha, the enslaved woman upon whom he operated without anesthesia.
“Every woman living today owes a debt to Anarcha,” writes Hallman, author of In Utopia and The Chess Artist, in the introduction to this dual biography. Beginning in 1845, Sims conducted experimental vaginal surgeries to treat fistulae, without anesthesia, on enslaved women in his backyard “Negro Hospital” near Montgomery, Alabama. “If Sims could contrive a cure for fistula on a slave,” the author writes, “gains that could be realized were immeasurable….The women would be willing because they were desperate, and their masters would leap at the chance of salvaging their investment.” The women, meanwhile, “said that a painful experiment was like being whipped while giving birth,” and the surgeries often resulted in death. Supposedly, Anarcha’s fistula was the first one Sims “cured.” Later, another doctor recognized that “the girl who was the first cure of an incurable condition had not been cured at all.” Still, Sims persevered, fueled largely by what the author identifies as blind ambition. “Sims knew his ambition was too large for Alabama,” writes Hallman, who divides the book into two parts. Instead of titles, numbered chapters bear descriptions—e.g., “Foreshortening of the vagina,” “Animal laboratory,” “An enslaved man, stabbed,” “Money problems.” Although Sims was long esteemed for pioneering modern gynecology, by 2017, the author writes, his legacy “had become intertwined with broader reevaluations of white supremacy in American history” and “with a long overdue indictment of the causes of racial health disparities.” Hallman has drawn from almost 5,000 sources, and he includes a four-page list of “all the formerly enslaved persons whose narratives contributed to the re-creation of Anarcha’s story.” Further information on his research can be found at AnarchaArchive.com.
A staggeringly researched book that serves as an indictment of Sims’ hubris and an homage to Anarcha.
