What do you think?
Anarcha Speaks: A History in Poems
The reimagined story of Anarcha, an enslaved Black woman, subjected to medical experiments by Dr. Marion Sims. Selected by Tyehimba Jess as a National Poetry Series winner.
In this provocative collection by award-winning poet and artist Dominique Christina, the historical life of Anarcha is personally reenvisioned. Anarcha was an enslaved Black woman who endured experimentation and torture at the hands of Dr. Marion Sims, more commonly known as the father of modern gynecology. Christina enables Anarcha to tell her story without being relegated to the margins of history, as a footnote to Dr. Sims's life. These poems are a reckoning, a resurrection, and a proper way to remember Anarcha . . . and grieve her.
In this provocative collection by award-winning poet and artist Dominique Christina, the historical life of Anarcha is personally reenvisioned. Anarcha was an enslaved Black woman who endured experimentation and torture at the hands of Dr. Marion Sims, more commonly known as the father of modern gynecology. Christina enables Anarcha to tell her story without being relegated to the margins of history, as a footnote to Dr. Sims's life. These poems are a reckoning, a resurrection, and a proper way to remember Anarcha . . . and grieve her.
95 pages, Paperback
Published October 30, 2018
About the author
Dominique Christina
13 books48 followers is an award-winning poet, author, educator, and activist. She holds five national poetry slam titles in four years, including the 2014 & 2012 Women of the World Slam Champion and 2011 National Poetry Slam Champion. Her work is greatly influenced by her family's legacy in the Civil Rights Movement and by the idea that worlds make worlds. Her poetry collections: The Bones, The Breaking, The Balm: A Colored Girl's Hymnal, published by Penmanship Books, and They Are All Me, published by Swimming With Elephants Publishing are available now. Her third book, This Is Woman's Work, is set for publication by Sounds True Publishing in October 2015.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
December 20, 2018
I can't even breathe after reading this. I have no words. My heart is aching
May 20, 2020
What a powerhouse of a collection! Christina gives voice to Anarcha in raw, painful, bold ways. We get Anarcha's story, her hopes and dreams, her grappling with faith, and her experiences at the brutal hands of Dr. Marion Sims. We also get his voice, and Christina captures the dehumanizing ideology he espoused and the pseudo-science he used to justify his repeated violence against enslaved Black women. But, unlike in real life, Anarcha gets a chance to speak back. The imagery in these poems is sharp, the messages and emotions are taut. This collection would make a brilliant companion to any slave narrative or other historical telling of enslavement, as it offers up a historical revision through language that touches deep to the heart.
December 20, 2018
Here is another young talented poet who skillfully weaves a volume of poems around historical events. The poems concern J. Marion Simms, once called the "Father of Gynecology." He utilized enslaved black women for his "medical" research, and given the race relations during that time, of course did so without any permission given. Anarcha was one of those women. The results were gruesome and inhumane. These are extremely hard hitting poems, as the uncompromised truth often is. These are part of what Toni Morrison called the unspoken truths unspoken. In "Don't Wanna Hear It But", we see where Simms "research" took him: "and now Betsey say/ I expecting.../how you translate /a bludgeonin to/a birth." These poems go further than reporting victimization. "Things Past Telling" explores the relationship people have, after torture, with any aspects of the Divine:
"when it came it was a overanswered prayer...
black clouds seem like they was mocking
all us looking up with sorrowful faces
cuz we ain’t understandin the nature of prayer
or anything called GOD....
I'm thinking thats what a answered prayer
looks like...
a flood.
and God (or something like it)
mocking you and the way you
asked for it."
As the title of the books tells us, Anarcha speaks here, and it feels as if she has been channeled. In "No Magic, No How", she pleads about the identity where she found herself:
"what I gotta do Jesus to
get out myself?
huh?"
"when it came it was a overanswered prayer...
black clouds seem like they was mocking
all us looking up with sorrowful faces
cuz we ain’t understandin the nature of prayer
or anything called GOD....
I'm thinking thats what a answered prayer
looks like...
a flood.
and God (or something like it)
mocking you and the way you
asked for it."
As the title of the books tells us, Anarcha speaks here, and it feels as if she has been channeled. In "No Magic, No How", she pleads about the identity where she found herself:
"what I gotta do Jesus to
get out myself?
huh?"
April 18, 2019
Humbling and enraging. The story of Anarcha in this format is so effective and well done.
February 25, 2019
So much of the things we take for granted and enjoy in this world have terrible histories. Do you know the history of gynaecology? J Marion Sims is considered the father of modern gynaecology, but most of what he learned was based on experiments on slave women, on whom he performed surgeries without anesthesia.
In this slim collection of poems Dominique Christina images Anarcha’s life, allowing her to speak for herself. Anarcha had 13 surgeries performed on her. Here, finally, she gets a voice. She gets a chance to talk back to the historical narrative which has ignored her or included her suffering as a minor footnote.
In this slim collection of poems Dominique Christina images Anarcha’s life, allowing her to speak for herself. Anarcha had 13 surgeries performed on her. Here, finally, she gets a voice. She gets a chance to talk back to the historical narrative which has ignored her or included her suffering as a minor footnote.
October 26, 2024
The anger that I felt burned right through my stomach. James Marion Sims and the rest of your cronies, you're truly a disgusting being- not even worthy to be called human. The father of gynecology bathed in the blood of black women for years to benefit the field of science. I can't even stomach the imagery of the grotesque surgeries that these women were subjected to. 11 victims that we know of, only three were named. black bodies mutilated in the name of science.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 27, 2018
Dominique Christina, Denver poet, put pain, horror, anguish, sadness in "Anarcha Speaks: A History in Poems". I'm not much of a reader of poetry, but these managed to wrench my heart.
October 17, 2018
I had the honour of listening to Christina recite the near-entirety of this today in Boulder, Colorado. It's worming its way down my spine still. Dominique Christina invoked some powerful spirits in that room today, perhaps the ghost, or a fraction of Anarcha herself. The physical and mental process of inhabiting and invoking Anarcha, is admirable, necessary, and what being a poet is all about. Inhabiting the different, outraging and creating the shimmer of hope: ANARCHY! RESISTANCE!
February 28, 2019
"fine. new hell, whatever."
(Full disclosure: I received a free copy of this book for review through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program. Trigger warning for violence inflicted on black bodies, including rape and medical experimentation.)
-- 4.5 stars --
Like his homeland, the man widely regarded as "the father of modern gynecology" built his wealth and success on the bodies of slaves. Specifically, enslaved black women who suffered debilitating complications from childbirth.
J. Marion Sims is credited with a number of advancements in the field of gynecology: He developed a precursor to the modern speculum, using a spoon and complicated series of mirrors. He built the first women's hospital in his backyard in Montgomery, Alabama, despite his reported disgust with women's anatomy. (He wrote in his autobiography, "if there was anything I hated, it was investigating the organs of the female pelvis.") Most famously, he developed a way of repairing vesicovaginal fistula.
Vesicovaginal fistula is caused during childbirth "when the woman's bladder, cervix, and vagina become trapped between the fetal skull and the woman's pelvis, cutting off blood flow and leading to tissue death. The necrotic tissue later sloughs off, leaving a hole. Following this injury, as urine forms, it leaks out of the vaginal opening, leading to a form of incontinence." Similarly, rectovaginal fistula can cause fecal incontinence; Sims explored treatment for this condition as well.*
And he did it all on the backs of the most vulnerable: enslaved black women.
Over a period of four years, Sims experimented on twelve female slaves who suffered complications from childbirth. He subjected each woman to multiple surgeries without the benefit of anesthesia (though some were given opium post-op). Sometimes he had an audience; on other occasions, the women themselves had to assist in Sims's procedures. Many were brought to him by their "owners," seeking to recoup their "investments." Sims purchased one woman outright so that he could experiment on her. Only three of these women's names resisted burial under the weight of history: Anarcha, Betsy, and Lucy, all of whom suffered from fistula. Sims violated Anarcha thirteen times before he declared her a success.
In Anarcha Speaks, poet/activist/educator - and mother - Dominique Christina attempts to reconstruct Anarcha's life, imagining the events that might have landed her on Sims's doorstep/operating table/torture chamber. Sims doesn't even make an appearance until halfway through the book, giving us a chance to get to know Anarcha as a person, and not "just" the ill-fated woman in that horrifying Robert Thom painting. After this, Christina occasionally alternates their perspectives: slave/patient and doctor/"massa." I'm not sure I loved this convention: I think perhaps the story would have been more powerful coming from Anarcha and Anarcha alone; and besides, history is overflowing with the perspectives of privileged white men - do we really need to hear more? On the other hand, Sims's POV gives necessary context on how doctors/society regarded black women - and their pain.
Anarcha Speaks is powerful, raw, and visceral. I don't always love poetry because I don't usually "get" it, but Christina's prose cuts to bone. I can't exactly call Anarcha Speaks an enjoyable read, but it's a necessary one, and skillfully done. This tiny little powerhouse of a tome would equally be at home on a history syllabus or in a class on medical ethics as in a creative writing course.
* He also experimented on children and babies, in an attempt to treat trismus nascentium; these interventions were met with a hundred percent fatality rate, which he blamed on the mothers (all black). Naturally.
http://www.easyvegan.info/2019/04/30/...
(Full disclosure: I received a free copy of this book for review through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program. Trigger warning for violence inflicted on black bodies, including rape and medical experimentation.)
this bruise ain't no girl
she gone
she never gon be again
she too much a ghost even
for burial
when he left
seem like he stayed
like i kept
some of it
like i ain't
have no other way
and now Betsey say
i expecting...
how you translate
a bludgeonin to
a birth?
you tell me how
i'm suposed to
do that -
a baby.
from the mud pile...
a baby...
one more
thing i don't know
how to carry.
i say:
what you make a dem stars?
he say:
they just like us. sizzlin dead.
-- 4.5 stars --
Like his homeland, the man widely regarded as "the father of modern gynecology" built his wealth and success on the bodies of slaves. Specifically, enslaved black women who suffered debilitating complications from childbirth.
J. Marion Sims is credited with a number of advancements in the field of gynecology: He developed a precursor to the modern speculum, using a spoon and complicated series of mirrors. He built the first women's hospital in his backyard in Montgomery, Alabama, despite his reported disgust with women's anatomy. (He wrote in his autobiography, "if there was anything I hated, it was investigating the organs of the female pelvis.") Most famously, he developed a way of repairing vesicovaginal fistula.
Vesicovaginal fistula is caused during childbirth "when the woman's bladder, cervix, and vagina become trapped between the fetal skull and the woman's pelvis, cutting off blood flow and leading to tissue death. The necrotic tissue later sloughs off, leaving a hole. Following this injury, as urine forms, it leaks out of the vaginal opening, leading to a form of incontinence." Similarly, rectovaginal fistula can cause fecal incontinence; Sims explored treatment for this condition as well.*
And he did it all on the backs of the most vulnerable: enslaved black women.
Over a period of four years, Sims experimented on twelve female slaves who suffered complications from childbirth. He subjected each woman to multiple surgeries without the benefit of anesthesia (though some were given opium post-op). Sometimes he had an audience; on other occasions, the women themselves had to assist in Sims's procedures. Many were brought to him by their "owners," seeking to recoup their "investments." Sims purchased one woman outright so that he could experiment on her. Only three of these women's names resisted burial under the weight of history: Anarcha, Betsy, and Lucy, all of whom suffered from fistula. Sims violated Anarcha thirteen times before he declared her a success.
In Anarcha Speaks, poet/activist/educator - and mother - Dominique Christina attempts to reconstruct Anarcha's life, imagining the events that might have landed her on Sims's doorstep/operating table/torture chamber. Sims doesn't even make an appearance until halfway through the book, giving us a chance to get to know Anarcha as a person, and not "just" the ill-fated woman in that horrifying Robert Thom painting. After this, Christina occasionally alternates their perspectives: slave/patient and doctor/"massa." I'm not sure I loved this convention: I think perhaps the story would have been more powerful coming from Anarcha and Anarcha alone; and besides, history is overflowing with the perspectives of privileged white men - do we really need to hear more? On the other hand, Sims's POV gives necessary context on how doctors/society regarded black women - and their pain.
Anarcha Speaks is powerful, raw, and visceral. I don't always love poetry because I don't usually "get" it, but Christina's prose cuts to bone. I can't exactly call Anarcha Speaks an enjoyable read, but it's a necessary one, and skillfully done. This tiny little powerhouse of a tome would equally be at home on a history syllabus or in a class on medical ethics as in a creative writing course.
* He also experimented on children and babies, in an attempt to treat trismus nascentium; these interventions were met with a hundred percent fatality rate, which he blamed on the mothers (all black). Naturally.
http://www.easyvegan.info/2019/04/30/...
September 20, 2018
This collection of poems, written by Dominique Christina and selected / arranged into a story by Tyehimba Jess, tells the story of a slave woman who was used for medical experimentation. Most of the poems are in the voice of this woman, Anarcha, and are conveyed in a slave dialect. However, a few are from the perspective of Dr. Marion Sims, the doctor who used Anarcha (and other slave women) for research and experimental procedures. Even without the cues in the poem titles, it’s easy to tell when these switches in voice occur because the doctor’s poems are in “proper” English, as opposed to Anarcha’s dialect. I should point out, while I can’t tell you how accurate the slave dialect is, I can say it presents no challenge to the reader’s understanding of the story or of the imagery or metaphor of the poetry.
The events described in these poems are based on a true story. Anarcha developed a fistula (a hole in bodily tissues that’s not supposed to be there) as a complication of carrying a child, and as a result suffered persistent bleeding. Anarcha’s owner handed her over to Dr. Sims to repair the fistula and stop the bleeding, which would require the development of a new procedure. Sims is often called the father of modern gynecology, and was lauded with statues and honors. However, in recent years, his image has been tarnished by the fact that many of his advancements were only possible through the non-consensual examination of, and experimentation upon, slave women.
I should point out that, while reading this book has made me interested in learning more about the details of the story, I can’t really comment on the degree to which the poems accurately convey history. From the little I was able to garner from quick internet research, there are wide-ranging views on Dr. Sims and his research. Some think Sims belongs in Josef Mengele’s corner of hell. (Note for non-history buffs: Mengele is the Nazi doctor who experimented on Jews and other prisoners during the Second World War.) Others believe Sims was genuinely working to heal the slave women and wasn’t solely motivated to find a treatment for paying patients, and that -- in the context of his times -- he should be considered a fine, if fallible, doctor. I don’t know how much is know about what was in Sim’s mind or how it matched his behavior, but at a minimum he seems to have been much less delicate with his slave subjects than he would have been with his patients in terms of subjecting them to pain and humiliation.
I will say that the poems in Anarcha’s voice feel authentic, i.e. they feel like they convey truth about what would go through a person’s mind when put in her position. Her humanity is felt. In a few cases in the Dr. Sims poems, that authenticity feels like it breaks down, and one thinks, “no one sees themselves that way” – an instance of self-deification springs to mind. That said, perhaps it’s an accurate depiction. More than one doctor has been known to be colossally narcissistic on occasion.
That said, this is a poetical work and not a historical account, and so the beautiful language, clever metaphors, and emotional resonance of the work are what serve to make it a book that should be read. I would highly recommend this book for all readers. Even if you aren’t typically a poetry reader, you’ll find this free verse collection readable because of its story and the insightful view into the mind of Anarcha it presents.
The events described in these poems are based on a true story. Anarcha developed a fistula (a hole in bodily tissues that’s not supposed to be there) as a complication of carrying a child, and as a result suffered persistent bleeding. Anarcha’s owner handed her over to Dr. Sims to repair the fistula and stop the bleeding, which would require the development of a new procedure. Sims is often called the father of modern gynecology, and was lauded with statues and honors. However, in recent years, his image has been tarnished by the fact that many of his advancements were only possible through the non-consensual examination of, and experimentation upon, slave women.
I should point out that, while reading this book has made me interested in learning more about the details of the story, I can’t really comment on the degree to which the poems accurately convey history. From the little I was able to garner from quick internet research, there are wide-ranging views on Dr. Sims and his research. Some think Sims belongs in Josef Mengele’s corner of hell. (Note for non-history buffs: Mengele is the Nazi doctor who experimented on Jews and other prisoners during the Second World War.) Others believe Sims was genuinely working to heal the slave women and wasn’t solely motivated to find a treatment for paying patients, and that -- in the context of his times -- he should be considered a fine, if fallible, doctor. I don’t know how much is know about what was in Sim’s mind or how it matched his behavior, but at a minimum he seems to have been much less delicate with his slave subjects than he would have been with his patients in terms of subjecting them to pain and humiliation.
I will say that the poems in Anarcha’s voice feel authentic, i.e. they feel like they convey truth about what would go through a person’s mind when put in her position. Her humanity is felt. In a few cases in the Dr. Sims poems, that authenticity feels like it breaks down, and one thinks, “no one sees themselves that way” – an instance of self-deification springs to mind. That said, perhaps it’s an accurate depiction. More than one doctor has been known to be colossally narcissistic on occasion.
That said, this is a poetical work and not a historical account, and so the beautiful language, clever metaphors, and emotional resonance of the work are what serve to make it a book that should be read. I would highly recommend this book for all readers. Even if you aren’t typically a poetry reader, you’ll find this free verse collection readable because of its story and the insightful view into the mind of Anarcha it presents.
April 5, 2021
This collection dissolved me! Christina takes me to places, fierce and bloody, history at its most visceral! Please don't let this one pass you by! Below is 'www.beacon.org' of Beacon Press! This is one that takes your collection of books to a whole new level! GET IT! Going to share one of her 'under the skin' poems from this collection.
Dr. Sims Comes Clean
"When fierce with science and strategy
A man, a doctor,
Beset with a certain vigor and interest
In fleshly arithmetic
The insistent ritual of skin and bone,
An awful marriage indeed.
For what God would make so flimsy
A mask? Should there not be
Some sturdier place to encase
The soul? That elusive
Centerpiece of personhood?
That stone which mocks good reason...
I am not ordinary.
There is a great stir in me...
A heavy-handed ambition.
To feed is all there is.
To be my own answered prayer.
To lift the accursed nature of woman...
To be a doctor, a good one,
Is to be Adam. The first to find his hands and call them hands.
To look for the geography of impossible
And travel there daily.
Despite the hearty arguments
Put upon us by doubt.
Ah,this. The Adam breed then.
The ones God neither loves nor envies.
We are the same, He and I.
Two engineers of flesh
Who will stare down the blood,
Dumb our eyes to piteous howls and pleas
In the advancement of our own autobiography...
What is a doctor but a God?
We both seek our names on everything.
You will know, by who has lived,
And you will know by who has died, that we were here."
Dr. Sims Comes Clean
"When fierce with science and strategy
A man, a doctor,
Beset with a certain vigor and interest
In fleshly arithmetic
The insistent ritual of skin and bone,
An awful marriage indeed.
For what God would make so flimsy
A mask? Should there not be
Some sturdier place to encase
The soul? That elusive
Centerpiece of personhood?
That stone which mocks good reason...
I am not ordinary.
There is a great stir in me...
A heavy-handed ambition.
To feed is all there is.
To be my own answered prayer.
To lift the accursed nature of woman...
To be a doctor, a good one,
Is to be Adam. The first to find his hands and call them hands.
To look for the geography of impossible
And travel there daily.
Despite the hearty arguments
Put upon us by doubt.
Ah,this. The Adam breed then.
The ones God neither loves nor envies.
We are the same, He and I.
Two engineers of flesh
Who will stare down the blood,
Dumb our eyes to piteous howls and pleas
In the advancement of our own autobiography...
What is a doctor but a God?
We both seek our names on everything.
You will know, by who has lived,
And you will know by who has died, that we were here."
July 24, 2026
Dominique Christina is captivating performing in person and on the page. When Christina headlined the poetry finale for CityLit Festival a couple years ago, you could hear a pin drop in Red Emmas.
In Anarcha Speaks, she gives voice to Anarcha, an enslaved black woman that was subjected to the experimentation of Dr. Marion Sims. Sims is considered the father of modern gynecology, but he "perfected" his treatments by experimenting on black women because he (like most people in the 19th century) believed they didn't feel pain.
i got a heart, i can feel it.
it keeps an ache better than
anything else i got.
"She Got Further Than Anybody" (28)
Christina embodies Anarcha's voice, she says, "hell is not knowin how to die" or in the poem "How Anarcha Sees His Work", she opens with having seen a chicken get his head cut off and the idea that a "dead thing doesn't know it's a dead thing." These poems go to powerful depths of ancestral memory to show us Anarcha's humanity.
May more people pay attention to our shared humanity.
In Anarcha Speaks, she gives voice to Anarcha, an enslaved black woman that was subjected to the experimentation of Dr. Marion Sims. Sims is considered the father of modern gynecology, but he "perfected" his treatments by experimenting on black women because he (like most people in the 19th century) believed they didn't feel pain.
i got a heart, i can feel it.
it keeps an ache better than
anything else i got.
"She Got Further Than Anybody" (28)
Christina embodies Anarcha's voice, she says, "hell is not knowin how to die" or in the poem "How Anarcha Sees His Work", she opens with having seen a chicken get his head cut off and the idea that a "dead thing doesn't know it's a dead thing." These poems go to powerful depths of ancestral memory to show us Anarcha's humanity.
May more people pay attention to our shared humanity.
May 16, 2019
An extraordinary collection of poems reimagining the story of Anarcha, an enslaved Black woman subjected to medical experimentation and torture by Dr. Marion Sims, known as the father of modern gynecology.
July 17, 2020
170720: 4.5 stars, but giving it 4 bc while this is an EXCELLENT collection that i definitely recommend, it didn’t quite blow me away the way my 5 star reads usually do. would certainly suggest reading this, tho, especially if you’re interested in poetry of witness and documentary.
December 27, 2018
Excellent book of poetry. Highly recommended.
July 16, 2019
This history in poems will change you. It’s as simple and as agonizing as that.
June 16, 2020
Impressive book. The horrors African American people have known throughout our history is atrocious. This is definitely one I will have to read again.
April 10, 2022
So powerful, beautiful yet overwhelming. Makes you question a lot about life.
May 12, 2023
There is a holiness reached in this work. I am in awe.
March 21, 2019
If you ever read a collection of poetry in your life, it should be this one.
Tyehimba Jess: "Sims wrote his legacy of healing in the blood of enslaved Black women who had no choice but to surrender to his scalpel and thread, who endured his harrowing research only to be relegated to the footnotes of history. [...] Anarcha and her fellow subjects bore the price of scientific progress with stitch after painful stitch at the core of their beings. Sims subjected Anarcha to thirteen experimental surgeries - all without anaesthetic - to perfect his treatment of vesicovaginal and rectovaginal fistulas."
devil came wit two hands
like men do 'cept he
ain't got to pretend
he comin in the name of progress-
(p.87)
Tyehimba Jess: "Sims wrote his legacy of healing in the blood of enslaved Black women who had no choice but to surrender to his scalpel and thread, who endured his harrowing research only to be relegated to the footnotes of history. [...] Anarcha and her fellow subjects bore the price of scientific progress with stitch after painful stitch at the core of their beings. Sims subjected Anarcha to thirteen experimental surgeries - all without anaesthetic - to perfect his treatment of vesicovaginal and rectovaginal fistulas."
devil came wit two hands
like men do 'cept he
ain't got to pretend
he comin in the name of progress-
(p.87)
Read
February 16, 2019“bones jinglin like wind chimes / in a house nobody stay in / how you kill a dead thing? / what kinda weapon work on a ghost?”
—from poem “Not Dead But...”
—from poem “Not Dead But...”
Read
May 24, 2019I will never be able to un-hear, to un-read, to un-think Christina's words. Anarcha Speaks is powerful.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews