Wings of gauze : women of color and the experience of health and illness / edited by Barbara Bair and Susan E. Cayleff.

Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
  • Detroit : Wayne State University Press, 1993.
  • ©1993
Description
393 pages ; 24 cm

Availability

Copies in the Library

Location Call Number Status Location Service Notes
Firestone Library - Stacks RA564.86 .W55 1993 Browse related items Request

    Details

    Subject(s)
    Library of Congress genre(s)
    Getty AAT genre
    Summary note
    Wings of Gauze is an anthology on health and illness as experienced by women of color in the United States. Written by community activists, health professionals, and scholars in the social sciences and humanities, the essays address the interconnections of psychological and physical health; ideas of traditional medicine among various minority groups; historical perspectives of culture as a factor in medicine; breast cancer; and health issues affected by federal and institutional policy: rape and domestic violence, reproductive rights, substance abuse, and sexually transmitted disease. Women of color, who make up a large number of the nation's poor, disproportionately face the pressing problems and consequences of infant mortality and poor pediatric care, drug and alcohol abuse, chronic disease, psychological stress, physical endangerment and homicide, and the likelihood that they will die at a younger age than whites. Minority women are also less likely to have personal physicians, to have quality health insurance coverage, or to be treated with respect and understanding in negotiating with health care institutions. However, many have as resources belief systems and traditions of caretaking, expertise, and mutual understanding that broaden dominant ways of perceiving well- or ill-being in the world. Thus their stories are about both oppression and empowerment, victimization as well as the strength to reshape and redefine. The emphasis in this collection is on changing perception, giving voice, and addressing the issues of racial discrimination. There is also discussion of solutions: ways to personal empowerment and better health; ways of changing outreach to more equitably instill the benefits of preventive education; ways of altering the structures of care offered through health institutions; and ways to think about self-help. With some notable exception's, recent feminist scholarship about women's health and the history of health care has focused primarily on the experiences of white middle-class women, and literature health professionals about people of color has emphasized illness rather than health, men rather than women, and African Americans to the exclusion of other peoples of color. Wings of Gauze is unique in that it considers the experiences of African-American, Native-American, Latina, and Southeast-Asian-American women and makes their perceptions the central reality. Testimony to the many layers of experience by women of color concerning health and illness, this book broadens our understanding of the connections that exist between those experiences and the health issues and cultural standpoints that frame them.
    Bibliographic references
    Includes bibliographical references and index.
    Contents
    • My guardian spirits / Ama R. Saran
    • Cracking the skull, mending the soul : Sonia Sanchez's role as teacher/healer/poet / Frenzella Elaine De Lancey
    • Madame Neau : the practice of ethno-psychiatry in rural Louisiana / Wonda Lee Fontenot
    • Perceptions of discrimination, psycho-social functioning and physical symptoms of African-American women / Carol M. Cummings, Adrienne M. Robinson, and Gretchen E. Lopez
    • Older women of the project : the socio-medical consequences of urban change / Linda Dumas
    • Cognitive coping strategies among the mothers of children with sickle cell disease / Shirley A. Hill
    • Health care decision making among Cambodian refugee women / Barbara Frye
    • Mind and body : revising approaches to the analysis of curanderismo / Françoise Vergés
    • Images of health : perceptions of the urban American-Indian women / Denis Drevdahl
    • Visiting the women and neighborhood of my past / Gregoria Rodriguez.
    • Mary Petersen : a life of healing and renewal / Joanne B. Mulcahy, with Mary Petersen
    • Homesickness, illness and death : Native-American girls in government boarding schools / Brenda Child
    • Managing on their own : ailing Black women in Philadelphia and Charleston, 1870 to 1918 / Priscilla Ferguson Clement
    • Empowered caretakers : a historical perspective on the roles of granny midwives in rural Alabama / Sheila P. Davis and Cora A. Ingram
    • Childbirth, lay institution building, and health policy : the Traditional Childbearing Group, Inc., of Boston in a historical context / Gloria Waite
    • Nutrition, breastfeeding and ethnicity : understanding maternal and child health beliefs among new-wave immigrants / Caroline Westbrook Arnold.
    • Breast cancer, breast self-examination, and African-American women / Teresa C. Jacob, Leslie E. Spieth, and Nolan E. Penn
    • Resignation and resourcefulness : older Hispanic women's responses to breast cancer / Michelle Saint-Germain and Alice Longman
    • Cancer in the family / Lois Lyles
    • Battered women of color in public health care systems : racism, sexism, and violence / Beth E. Richie and Valli Kanuha
    • Barriers to birth control use among Hispanic teenagers : providers' perspectives / Katherine Fennelly
    • Living with the threat of AIDS : perceptions of health and risk among African-American women IV drug users / Diane K. Lewis
    • Poverty, drug use, and AIDS : converging issues in the life stories of women in Harlem / Michael C. Clatts
    • Latinas and HIV infection/AIDS : reflections on impacts, dilemmas, and struggles / Gloria J. Romero, Lourdes Arguelles, and Anne M. Rivero
    • The use of women's culture in AIDS outreach / Mary Romero.
    ISBN
    • 0814323014 ((alk. paper))
    • 9780814323014 ((alk. paper))
    • 0814323022 ((pbk. ; : alk. paper))
    • 9780814323021 ((pbk. ; : alk. paper))
    LCCN
    92046308
    OCLC
    27266809
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