Category: McCoy 101 Fall 2017

 

Death is a common occurrence: it happens every day, every person will have to deal with the death of someone they know and, at some point, death will  happen to every person on earth. In Zulus, Sue Kabnis asks Alice Achitophel to report any patients that have died as she makes her rounds to collect urine and pills. During her daily routine,  Alice makes an observation, “She dumped the medicines into the drawer held open by Sue Kabnis, as she did before, and left to go home with a stomach that was upset, tossing bile, because she had been asked to actually witness the dying, to acknowledge, to make it real by reporting it.” (page 203) Alice is forced  to face the fact that people die more frequently than she’d like to believe. Continue reading “Acknowledging Death”

Being fertile in the society of Zulus is suppose to be impossible. Sterilization is a regulated procedure created by the government and even those who live outside the city still live with the repercussions of this decision. Alice evades the procedure to be sterilized and in her head is always aware of her potential to have kids. When Alice goes on to become pregnant she is praised by others for this ability but to her it has become a burden. While reading the book, this type of situation seems very unrealistic, something we can never experience, but in all actuality its something some people live with everyday. Continue reading “Finding Our Own Alice Achitophels”

As we’ve discussed in class, Racism, Medicine, and Literature are all interconnected and are incorporated in other fields of study beyond their boundaries. I’m a Political Science major and right now I’m taking a course on International Relations/Politics. So far in this course, we’ve learned how theorists view interactions between different states (term used for countries) across the globe and how these interactions impact others around them. I guess I’ve experience a ‘both/and’ situation between these two courses, especially when discussing medical volunteering pros and cons. In the International Politics, we’re reading The Essentials of International Relations by Karen A. Mingst and Ivan M. Arreguin-Toft. We’re focusing heavily on theories and the structure of the international system and how interactions with other states impact them for better or worse. The ‘both/and’ connection I made was about how these main theories (Realism, Liberalism, Radicalism, Constructivism, and Feminism) play a role in medical voluntarism. Before I explain how the theories apply to this controversial situation, I’ll define the meaning of each theory so you have background context of International Relations. Continue reading “A Political Take on Medical Voluntourism”

While reading Zulus, it is inevitable that one thinks about rape, or at least some sort of sexual assault. Consent is a crucial theme to Percival Everett’s novel. Whether it be chapter A or chapter Z, Alice Achitophel, the protagonist, recalls the first scene of Zulus in which she is raped by a stranger. This horrific incident is described in great depth through the author’s use of sensory elements like imagery. This is literary element is evident in chapter H. Everett states; “Her thoughts spilled with shards of her brain down her body and into her lungs and became sparkling cities, bubble-covered cities, fat with the hope of success and clear of the poison planet-air which she sucked in.” The majority of books in this course have referenced a lack of consent. Although this is the case, Zulus uses a plethora of detailed descriptions and repetition to further the reader’s understanding on a more personal level. Continue reading “Sexual Assault and Consent”

Star Wars can be applied in many situations or can be referenced for the fun of it. The gist of Star Wars is there are two constant orders battling for control of the galaxy, (the empire and the resistance, Jedi’s vs. the Sith), there is always a small group of plucky warriors ranging in on the front to fight for the good of the people. Star Wars is a complicated universe that many don’t delve into, but it has some relevant importance for this post. For this instance, Star Wars can be seen as a sort of out-there parallel to Percival Everett’s Zulus. 

Alice Achitophel, protagonist from Zulus is pregnant in a society where pregnancy has been eradicated for the survival of the small population on a dying earth. After she brings too much attention to herself with a rebel act, knocking down her neighbors chimney, she runs to a work friend to help get her to safety. Surprise Surprise, he is a part of a rebel group that lives on the outskirts of this town she has lived in, and doesn’t follow what the government says to do. Of course, seeing as she is seen as the last hope for humanity to continue, there is an initial celebration as she arrives in the rebel camp, but that soon dies down, with everyone staring at her. As she arrives at the camp, she travels with three companions whom she considers close friends, the short Theodore Theodore, the small and pretty Lucinda Knotes, and the black man Kevin Peters. But as she soon realizes, the rebel camp is not all that it was talked up to be, at least not for someone like Alice. Being fat, in a world where the threat of reduction camps, and thin people is something she has had to deal with her entire life, but with the knowledge of her being pregnant, it should bring some reprieve to the ridicule dropped on her, but to no avail.

Alice could be likened to Luke Skywalker, for she is a new hope for the world she lives in now like him. She is the last person to be pregnant, while Luke Skywalker is the last person in the galaxy to be able to train to become a Jedi and use the ways of the Force to defeat Darth Vader, another Jedi whom also uses the Force. However Alice soon realizes that in this rebel camp where she should be able to be free she is not, and faces more obstacles just as Luke Skywalker did on his journey to become a true Jedi master. The two can be compared to each other, as both of them didn’t really know their mothers; Luke’s died in childbirth (RIP Padme) and Alice’s died when she was a little girl. Both of them were raised with paternal figures, Luke with his uncle and Alice with her father, and both of their families were ripped away from them in a time of war. Of course there is a fact that the both of them had been handed the poor end of life, Luke had to live in a desert on Tatooine in a small hut, while his sister got to live it up in a palace on a different planet. Alice was treated poorly because of her body weight, with scarce amount of kindness in her life from people other than her family and Theodore Theodore.

Alice is pregnant which should be a huge deal and she should be treated like a human in this camp, but yet again, as in back in the city with all the other people, she is treated as dirt and is only useful for this baby that she is carrying. “Don’t misread your position, Alice Achitophel. Your condition is hardly one for which you can claim credit and it is this fact we bear in mind in our gauging of you. You are a vehicle and nothing more, an any-woman, and you just happen to have been raped, you instead of some other unfortunate.” ( page 105). Of course being treated this way is nothing new to her, but the fact that she is being treated as a vessel, being shoved in a room only to be fed, is not how a pregnant woman should be treated, especially when she could possibly be the last person on the dying planet to be able to get pregnant.

Continue reading “To Protect and Serve”

In our latest reading of Medical Apartheid, I found myself once again disappointed by the systemic violence against black communities in our recent history; not least of all by our government’s own participation in the abuses. I’ll admit, my knee-jerk reaction to accusations of bio-terrorism by the United States government against minority communities was disbelief. In the modern era, terrorism brings to life images of mass casualties and of screaming civilians in bloody, torn clothes weeping of the remains of their loved ones. Surely, I thought, no such action had occurred here under the authority of the United States government. The activities of American racist groups and extremist like the KKK fit such a description, but the government? As though Harriet Washington had foreseen my objection, she explained her label of terrorism in a way more compatible with logical discourse: “…terrorism is best defined more narrowly – as a threat or the use of violence (including kidnapping, extortion, assault, and murder) by an individual or organization that targets innocent civilians… to further ideological, political, or religious goals.” (Washington, 365)

Through these lenses the definition becomes much more appropriate to the crimes that occurred at the Carver Village complex in Miami, Florida. The government was using medical knowledge to murder civilians in the hope of perfecting a technique to wage biological warfare. This crime against humanity, perhaps not the most egregious in human history but a crime none the less, highlights the often duplicitous nature of our countries institutions. The same government that abused its minority citizens has thwarted efforts by extremist groups to commit genocide. Washington, to her credit, describes several plots, one in Arkansas and another in Minnesota, where white supremacist groups attempted to use bioweapons to “cleanse” black communities. (Washington, 367)  The efforts of the FBI were instrumental in preventing these atrocities from happening. This does not forgive the past actions of the FBI in undermining the civil rights movement with their campaigns against Dr. King and other prominent leaders nor does it excuse the failure to prosecute government officials for their roles in experimentation on African-American and minority communities.

I suppose what Continue reading “To Protect and Serve”

Being enrolled in this Top Lit: Lit, Medicine, and Racism, I have learned that topics like race and medicine play a role in other aspects of society. I am also enrolled in a Civil Rights course for my Writing Seminar requirement as a freshman, so there have definitely been connections I’ve made between the two classes. What really inspired me to write this blog post is a word that we’ve discussed in this class that I just read in my Civil Rights class. In an excerpt by James Forman titled The Making of Black Revolutionaries, he interviewed Sam Block, a SNCC worker from the Mississippi Delta (**side note: please look up the book I’ve Got the Light of Freedom by Charles M. Payne if you’re interested in making more of a connection with the literature portion of this course). Forman wrote about Peacock’s experience of a town curfew in Clarksdale, Mississippi, which was one of the more dangerous parts of the South because of how outdated their ideologies were. Peacock recounts, “The meeting lasted until after midnight and this was past the curfew hours. All the Black people in Clarksdale had to be off the streets by twelve o’clock every night and we wondering if there would be trouble. The curfew system in Clarksdale seemed to me the most obnoxious insult to Black people I had ever encountered, something out of the slavery days. I was becoming inoculated against the horrors we had to suffer in the United States, yet new forms of insult and degradation could still leave me staggering” (Forman, Sam Block, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, 288). Can you guess where I made my connection?

Continue reading “Personal Connection between Medical Terms and Race”

The first 10 years of my life I lived in a small town in Ukraine. Considering that everyone is white, I never learned what race really meant. I saw people of color on TV but I never put much thought into how their lives differed from mine. However, most of all, I never considered them to be inferior to me. I just considered them to be different than me but that’s as far as that thought went. I then moved to America at the age of 10 and spoke absolutely no English. I was put into an English Second Language to learn English. The diversity of people in the class was enormous. There were people from all over the world and we all looked different. You would think that there would be some sort of culture shock but there wasn’t any at all. We all got along very well and became really good friends even though we could barely speak the same language. Continue reading “My experience with the term race”