Reproductive injustice Racism, pregnancy, and premature birth

Reproductive Injustice provides a powerful look at the disturbing and lingering disparity in premature births occurring among black women. Davis (City Univ. of New York, Center for the Study of Women and Society) exposes the high rate of premature births, often misattributed to class, found among educated and middle-class black women. Citing Jamaican-born British cultural theorist Stuart Hall, she restates the important insight that class is experienced and lived through race. She argues that medical racism is a pervading cause of premature birth as well as infant and maternal mortality among black women, and reveals its origins in the history of enslavement. Davis finds that the "afterlife of slavery" (quoting Saidiya Hartman) can be observed in both the overmedicalization of black reproduction and the diagnostic lapses that sometimes lead to fatal complications for mother and baby. Thus Davis presents a deterritorialized ethnography that covers time and space: her fieldwork with mothers, birth workers, and hospital staff illuminates a rich narrative encompassing black women's reproduction, the history of the March of Dimes, and development of the neonatal intensive care unit. A must read for students of anthropology, sociology, and medicine, particularly practitioners working with pregnancy and childbirth. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers. --Julie Anne Beicken, Rocky Mountain College

Davis (director, Ctr. for the Study of Women and Society, Graduate Ctr., City Univ. of New York; Battered Women and Welfare Reform) explores how medical racism impacts black women and their likelihood of having more premature births than other U.S. women. In order to include stories by women and families impacted by premature births, Davis observes neonatal intensive care units firsthand and conducted dozens of interviews with care providers such as nurses and midwives. The book is divided into two sections, with the first part uncovering the history of medical racism in the United States, rooted in slavery, while later chapters examine solutions to this deeply ingrained problem that still exists within the industry. The work is unique in that it is the first to focus on the subject as it relates to professional working women and provides evidence that black women across all classes still have a higher rate of premature births than other women. VERDICT An important addition for women's studies, social justice, and health science collections.--Venessa Hughes, Denver