Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

 "As I eat, I remember that first day I met the family, the time Mrs. Williams fed me the stew cooked over a hole in the ground. I had never seen anyone cook like that. The Williamses had always fed my soul, even when I did not know I was hungry. It occurs to me that I have received more from them than I ever could have given." 

          -Civil, from the novel

Someone gave me this paperback copy quite a while ago, maybe a couple of years. Since I read e-books about 90% of the time, I kept putting it off. I am so glad I finally pulled it off the shelf and read it! My rating is 5; I believe it is an important story to know.

The Author's Note describes how this novel is inspired by a true story of 2 young black girls profoundly mistreated by a broken system in early 1970's Alabama. Civil Townsend, newly graduated from Tuskegee Institute, is employed as a nurse at the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic. She is assigned to administer birth control injections to two young black girls---Erica and India Williams, ages 11 and 13, respectively. When Civil visits the poor family for the first time, she is appalled at their living conditions and sets out to help them get into government housing. 

When Civil finds out that the drug, Depo-Provera, that the clinic is dispensing, including to the Williams' girls, is not FDA approved and has caused cancer in lab animals, she is extremely concerned and sets out to make some changes. About this time and without Civil's knowledge, the girls are subjected to surgical sterilization. Both she and the family--father and grandmother---are horrified. Civil takes her activism even farther by finding a young lawyer willing to seek legal action. Since these procedures are financed through the U.S. government, they end up taking a federal office to court. 

The novel has two time frames, 1973, when most of the action occurs and 2016 as Civil goes back to visit Erica and India. As Civil is returning in 2016 she is relating her memories and thoughts to her daughter, Anne--an interesting literary device.

This book reminds me a great deal of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, in which a black woman's cancer cells are used in research with no permission of next-of-kin. And the author brings out the fact that many black men had been untreated for syphilis in a Tuskegee study for decades prior. The story of the two sisters certainly informs the reader of just another instance of racial injustice. And one can't help but think of the overturning of Roe v. Wade recently and consider how abortion bans affect poor women of color, as well as whites.