How Cancer Crossed the Color Line

Reviews / Votes

Wailoo takes what already would have been an interesting, straightforward account of how racial perceptions of cancer changed over time and elevates it to a moving and humane examination of cancer's role in shaping American identity. * Journal of American History * The sensitive, nuanced history under review thus fills a crucial gap in our understanding of the interrelationships between medical history and U.S. social history. Wailoo has superbly integrated a broad mass of historical sources into a coherent and compelling narrative .Particularly interesting throughout the book is Wailoo's analysis of the shifting meaning of 'race' throughout the 20th century as exemplified in discussions about cancer. In today's world of widespread disparities research and increasing genomic analysis, we need more of this sort of sophisticated analysis. * Joel Howell, Journal of Social History * Wailoo reminds us of how American culture has shaped our awareness of this disease-and why knowing this history matters. His book provides a very useful, teachable, and thoughtful commentary on America's endless war on cancer; that war's more hidden racial and gender dimensions; and some of the reasons why we often seem, despite the endless media hyping of breakthroughs, not to be winning this struggle." * Susan M. Reverby, Health Affairs
* Keith Wailoo is the premier historian of the politics of medicine in America as it relates to the doings and sufferings of Black people. This book is a gem; it is vintage Wailoo-brilliant, rigorous and relevant! * Cornel West, Princeton University
* A model of how to seamlessly weave together the complex intersectionality of class, gender and race. How Cancer Crossed the Color Line is a masterful account of how the reward structures of science funding, the profession of medicine, era-specific cultural stereotypes of women's 'proper place,' and shifting notions of racialized bodies have all converged to shape our views of who is at risk for cancer, and why. * Troy Duster, New York University
* Keith Wailoo deftly and provocatively places medical and public health studies into conversation with films, novels, and autobiographical narratives. In so doing, he offers a stunning historical account of the dramatic shifts in popular and epidemiological consciousness about cancer and racial difference. It is an account that provides a much-needed historical context to contemporary debates in the genomic sciences about race and racial difference. * Michael Omi, University of California, Berkeley
* Illuminating changing scientific and popular conceptions about who is at risk of cancer and why, How Cancer Crossed the Color Line compellingly argues that the answer to this question * and the epidemiologic data that underpins it are together shaped as much if not more by the racial, class, gender and broader political ideologies and conflicts of the times as by the actual occurrencedetected or notof cancer itself. Offering rich detail and insightful examples, Wailoo provides an eye-opening account of the making and contesting of scientific knowledge that is essential reading for anyone engaged in cancer research, prevention, and treatment or concerned about health inequities more broadly.Nancy Krieger, Harvard School of Public Health * A nuanced study of a complex subject. * Publishers Weekly
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