Patient

by Bettina Judd

Poetry. African American Studies. Women's Studies. "Bettina Judd's phenomenal debut poetry collection, PATIENT., is about recovery in many senses: recovery of the subjectivity of several historical figures, through the recovery, reconstitution, and telling of their stories--among them Anarcha Westcott, Betsey Harris, Lucy Zimmerman, Joice Heth, Saartjie Baartman, and Henrietta Lacks, who were infamously 'patients' or subjects of inspection and 'plunder' by, among others, J. Marion Sims, the controversial gynecologist, and P.T. Barnum, showman and circus founder. Sims (and the speculum) and Barnum are the featured antagonists in many of these flawlessly empathetic poems, but an unnamed speaker who adds a contemporary voice to the lyric chorus implicates those in charge of her care during a present-day hospital stay at Johns Hopkins--suggesting the linkage of modern medical treatment to the traumas vulnerable Black women, enslaved and not, suffered at the hands of unethical scientists and physicians in earlier eras.

In the collection's opening poem, the speaker reckons, '...verdicts come in a bloodline' and she determines 'to recover' from 'an ordeal with medicine' by 'learn[ing] why ghosts come to me.' She ends her testimony by asking, 'Why am I patient?' (Read that line in however many nuanced ways you want.) In this profoundly layered witnessing, the subject might be 'in the dark ghetto of my body,' or 'an idea of metaphors that live where bodies cannot.' Yet even as Judd vividly evokes the precise brutalities visited upon the Black female body and psyche--letting us see and hear women who 'quieted / broke into many pieces'--these poems also speak of 'shedding something,' 'another kind of sloughing.' Ultimately, PATIENT. enacts a healing and move toward wholeness, recovery of, as one speaker puts it, 'spirit [that] flees the body and / its treacherous / tearing.'"--Sharan Strange

Genres: Poetry, Race, Feminism, Disability, Disability Studies, School, Adult

90 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Bettina Judd is an interdisciplinary writer, artist, and performer whose forthcoming book Feelin: Creative Practice, Pleasure Politics and Black Feminist Thought is on Black women's creative production and our use of visual art, literature, and music to develop Black feminist thought. Her first collection of poems on the history of medical experimentation on Black women titled patient. won the 2013 Black Lawrence Press Hudson Book Prize. Her essays and poetry can be found in Feminist Studies, Meridians, Torch, The Rumpus, The Offing and other journals and anthologies. More information on her and her work can be found at www.bettinajudd.com.

Reviews

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Great discoveries are made on cushioned lessons and hard falls
Sims invents the speculum
I invent the wincing"

The collection is a remembrance to the named and unnamed Black women who were ab/used in experimentation and spectacle, specifically in gynecology and surgery by J. Marion Sims and in the circus sideshows of P.T. Barnum.

[Mindi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This poetry collection unsettled me in the best way: the history is haunting and disturbing. Bettina intertwines her medical incident with that of enslaved women who were basically guinea pigs. The writing is beautiful and will stick with you for a long time. It's a short collection that can and should be read multiple times to gain the full meaning. I'm glad I read this book to understand more of our history.

[Janel D. Brubaker · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a truly stunning work of poetry. The speaker in each poem imagines/writes themselves into the experiences of enslaved women who are forced into gynecological experiments. She writes about invasions of the body and the many consequences: blood, pain, the loss of agency and autonomy, and the fierce desire to survive.

One thing I found captivating about this work is how thoroughly the poems capture images of the body without necessarily naming body parts or specific actions of the procedures the women are being subjected to. As a writer who frequently writes about my in relationship to trauma, I thoroughly connected with and was inspired by many of these poems, their imagery, their captivating communication of pain and loss, and their intricate movements on the page that imitate the movement of instruments through the body.

As the book edges closer to its end, the poems shift. The language becomes more concrete, more sterile, as though the speaker(s) is/are aware that their time with the reader is approaching an end. These poems don't necessarily indicate death or loss of life, but they do forebode some kind of disconnect. For example, this quote is taken from the very first page: "I don't feel innocent here lurking with ghosts." And this from the first page, too: "It feels the same because I live in a haunted house. A house can be a dynasty, a bloodline, a body." And this from page seven: "I had the urge to scoot out of my hips but there was no blood. The smell of it but nothing."

These quotes are both specific and also abstract. We know they center the body and something happening in/to it, but we aren't given an indication of someone being in control of the speaker's body, someone claiming it, using it, dissecting it. We feel the presence of a "claimer," but we aren't shown who they are. Not explicitly. Here, however, are some quotes from closer to the end of this collection: "Body has a way of moving on / without you" (page 41); "Skin rarely lets me remember the good / so I make good memories for it" (page 41); "I have not yet learned / to look / when I am entered. / Not yet learned / where to turn. / Ceiling? / Curtain? / The barrel of / myself?" (page 72).

This speaker/these speakers are approaching the literal reality of their situation at a rapid speed. We are given a much keener sense of the body being overpowered, the body being taken over, the body being captured by someone. These poems give us a shape, an outline, but they do not center the colonizer. They center the voices and the bodies of the women who are dehumanized, women wrestling with how to exist in bodies that they're told/shown are not their own. These later poems also sprawl across the page, stanzas moving from left aligned to center, and then from center aligned to right and back again. It's the poems probing, searching, moving into the memories of assault in the same way that the bodies are being assaulted.

And while these poems condemn the practices of those who take advantage of Black women's bodies and those who practice them, the poems also carry an enormous sense of recovery, of taking back the narratives of those whose voices have been stolen, their bodies erased and objectified. It's seems a beautiful way to discuss trauma without centering the role of those who perpetuated the trauma. In essence, it's an erasing of those who seek to erase, and a centering of those who have been erased. Writing about abuse and loss and trauma are difficult, but Bettina Judd does it beautifully in her debut poetry collection. I highly recommend this book.

[thedailydiva · Rating 5 out of 5]

I rated this book highly not only for its powerful usage of words, but for the simple fact that it cracked open a vault in me. I needed to know more. I learned the names of Anarcha, Betsey, Lucy, Henrietta, Joice, and more. I would have to put the book down and run to my computer to research info it teased me with. I thought I knew, but I had no idea. Highly recommend. Read it slow, take it in, fill it out with research, remember those who came before you to ensure your health.

[jada alexis]

so so so good

[Randi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bettina Judd has written a collection of poems dedicated to Black women who were the victims of science and research in this country. Women like Lucy, Anarcha, and Betsey sustained horrific experiments at the hands of J. Marion Sims, who they call the father of gynecology. This collection also makes mention of women like Henrietta Lacks and Esmin Green. Esmin was left to die on the floor of King's County hospital in New York in 2008.
I think that the choice of subject matter is 5 stars. Judd definitely did a lot of research and her emotional connection to these women comes through in her work. I rated it at 3 only because of my personal issues with the structure of the poems. For me, the structure affected my ability to enjoy reading this book. Perhaps, my reading of poetry is not yet sophisticated enough to enjoy this book the way it should be enjoyed.
In the end, I am taking the information in this book as a jumping off point to learn more about the women it honors. The horrors of white supremacy are never ending.

[Barton Smock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do not let her know
terror
belongs to you. – {from} Fill A Woman With Meaning

This, a work of relentless becoming; able to achieve via line break, lyric, and research by association, a personable voicelessness that, with its investigative balm, summons those bodies brutalized by a past of another’s making into the nowness of caring.

The eyes, here, reach into the blank visions of male blindness and guide phantoms home from departure that they may arrive in reader and writer alike to unhaunt, or haunt correctly?, the overlong wait of the black, the female, spirit.

In what is both a clinical indictment and a worshipful reclamation, Judd does not merely brush at fossil, but resets the bone.

Sound a theft, mouth a password. Ghost a balloon popped in a dream. What a carefully wrought, and ongoing, thing, is Bettina Judd’s patient..

[Miah Jeffra · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most impactful books of poetry I've read in the last ten years. It collapses so many elements of what it means to colonize, and in particular to colonize the black female body, in the name of science. Judd summons various figures from history—notably Henrietta Lacks, P. T. Barnum, Lucy Zimmerman, and J. Marion Sims—and assembles them in a way that urges us to understand how our systems remain racist—even the ones that appear to be for the public good, like medicine. In fact, Judd suggests that is precisely why medical science is so dangerous. This book inspired in me a deep empathy for the body and for what it means to recover, to heal. It also made me realize yet another way a society can enslave.

[Erica Naone · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book of poetry can be a page turner, I learned. This book is a stunning blend of the personal and the historical, gynecological experience seen through the lens of race and the unethical experimentation that laid the foundation of the modern discipline. It explores the overlaps between gynecology and the circus (real and disturbing), and it humanizes women who were treated as objects of experimentation.

The author makes devastating use of quotations from historical works. They are stunning in their indifferent racism.

The author also makes incredible use of poetic form - bold, italics, spacing, strike throughs, etc. I was often in awe of how the poems were constructed.

I could not put this down and that is not my normal response to a book of poems.

[Mr. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am glad I learned so much about the father of gynaecology (because I didn't realize he was such an asshat). The poems were written in free verse. I thought the word play with "patient" was clever, but I thought many poems lacked memorable lines. Of course, the horrors Sims subjected women to would be indelibly branded in the minds of anyone with a conscience. I thought the poetry itself was lackluster in many respects. But again, I learned so much about a subject I'm not familiar with - I think I learned more from this book than any other book of poetry I've read, and for that, I am grateful!

[Sophia M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Following a self-described “ordeal with medicine” in 2006, Bettina Judd wrote this intricate, compelling, challenging, and incredibly important collection of poetry. PATIENT. explored both the history of gynecology, as well as the historical concepts between the male and the medical gaze of black, female bodies. This collection knocked the breath right out of me.

“Watch a seed / assemble a tree yielding / fully ripe peaches // It is not at all like / waiting for your children / to come home undead”

[Matt McBride · Rating 5 out of 5]

Judd finds an analogue between how the body is displayed for medicine and how it is displayed for show (and in the 19th century, this often happened at the same time). Judd recovers the stories of those made tangential in early gynecological research, both embodying them and allow them to embody her during her own harrowing encounters with doctors. These poems are not so much echoes as events that have not stopped happening.

[Kiana · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book came across my desk at work and I couldn’t stop myself from reading it in one go (granted, it isn’t a very long book). As someone who is familiar with the topics/historical figures discussed in this little volume of poems, the complex laying of historical accounts, medical anthropology, and personal experiences is so beautifully done - at once disturbing and reflective, commemorative and anguished.

[Amanda Inkenbrandt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came to this book after listening to Bettina Judd's powerful interview and reading on NPR. This book was exceptional and heartbreaking.

[Anatoly Molotkov · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Just two black women and a speculum, each asking the other, When did you get free?" A devastating, beautifully rendered collection that weaves historical and personal trauma in a reflective, evocative, tragic narrative of generosity, neglect and resolve.

[bella · Rating 4 out of 5]

judd digs into the body and the history it holds and the history it is. she utilizes poems to engage with her own pain and the pain of other Black women. judd opens up a conversation of bodies being used not necessarily sexually, but medicinally. it hurts to hear how doctors hurt.

[Salamanderinspace · Rating 3 out of 5]

As someone with a lot of serious health issues, I was not particularly impressed. Perhaps others would find it more moving.

I like the idea of appealing to ancestors / historical figures as guides through suffering but it's nothing new, you know?

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

No words.

[D. Travers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful poems enliven the victims of J. Marion Simms. I reach this in my graduate seminar on medical technology and gender.

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m going to re-read this book once my sister-in-law returns it.

[Abby Close · Rating 4 out of 5]

“A diagnosis is an ending to the idea that we are not human”

This collection was really unique and very profound. Highly recommend.

[Sophie Lyons · Rating 4 out of 5]

so extremely powerful! everyone should read. learned so much about medical discovery and how shady it is

[Ashur · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good, but I think I'm not really the intended audience for a wide variety of reasons. I first encountered Judd's work on NPR's Hidden Brain podcast; I plan to follow up on her other endeavors.

[Anne]

Black history month read. Not going to rate because it deserves better. The rating version of a moment of silence.

[Gagne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Personally, this book didn't seem too eye-catching for me and it was hard keeping up with the references, but I also understand this was written for and from the experiences of black women-particularly those in the United States, so I am not upset about it.

[Smileitsjoy (JoyMelody) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection needs to be talked about more! Immediately!
Judd does an amazing job of discussing the violent history of gynecology in America through poetry.
As someone who is a Black woman reproductive scholar, I was so excited to read this collection.

I annotated every last poem

[Audi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb!

[portico801 · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I listen deep / contrive my own telling // what he will remember / when he puffs up, thinks himself high // as his god: against black flesh / washington suckled // black hands clothed, held him / had mercy on his infant neck"