Showing results for "Power" in History & Commentary

“DiGregorio’s storytelling is pitch-perfect; narrative and nursing, she understands, come from the same place and both are concerned with a deep understanding of character and plot….This is a brilliant book, and DiGregorio is a beautiful writer. Taking Care deserves to be on the reading...

Antebellum New Orleans sat at the heart of America's slave and cotton kingdoms. It was also where yellow fever epidemics killed as many as 150,000 people during the nineteenth century. With little understanding of mosquito-borne viruses, a person's only protection against the scourge was to "get acclimated" by surviving the disease. Repeated epidemics bolstered New Orleans's strict racial hierarchy by introducing another hierarchy, what Kathryn Olivarius terms "immunocapital." Whereas immunity conferred privilege on whites, it relegated enslaved people to the most grueling labor.