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    The Sun InterviewBy Naomi PittsStandards of CareRolonda Donelson on Bias and Anti-Science Attitudes in Medicine

    The reason Black women were used to develop the field of gynecology was because they were no more than property. They weren’t seen as people; they were just seen as things. The controlling of Black women’s bodies started with chattel slavery, but it continues today.

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    Readers WriteBy Our ReadersMilk

    Pumped for an infant, spilled at the dinner table, used as a tear gas antidote

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Janna Malamud Smith

Janna Malamud Smith is a writer and a clinical social worker who lives in Milton, Massachusetts. Her fourth book, An Absorbing Errand, is due out this month. She is a lecturer in psychology at Harvard Medical School, sees patients and teaches at the Cambridge Health Alliance, and has a private practice.

Essays, Memoirs & True Stories

An Absorbing Errand

In essence the defiance is about using time and skill to elaborate on an expression of feeling — or an object — beyond the crudest utility, and, by doing so, to endow it with an energy, an attractiveness, an aesthetic that invites the interest and recognition of others, sometimes even after much time has passed.

September 2012
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