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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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Sheryl St. Germain

Sheryl St. Germain’s most recent book is Let It Be a Dark Roux: New and Selected Poems, and her collection of lyric essays Navigating Disaster is forthcoming from Louisiana Literature Press. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and directs the MFA program in creative writing at Chatham University. A native of New Orleans, she says her favorite place in the world is the Atchafalaya Swamp in south Louisiana.

Essays, Memoirs & True Stories

A Country Where You Once Lived

It starts when you’re thirteen, and those tight shorts make your crotch wet when you ride your bike. You like these shorts, the way they make you feel this new way: sexy. You fall asleep at night thinking about sex. You listen to songs that encourage you to think about sex, and you discover you can even think about it at church and in the classroom without anyone knowing, if you keep a certain demeanor and cross your legs a certain way.

January 2012
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