Toni Morrison’s Home and Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s Take My Hand as Counter-Sterilization Narratives

This paper examines and contextualizes eugenic sterilization as depicted in two African American narratives, namely Toni Morrison’s Home (2012) and Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s Take My Hand (2022). We refer to the aforementioned novels as “counter-sterilization narratives,” as they expose the history of eugenic sterilization in the United States and propose counter-hegemonic healing strategies. Such strategies, the two narratives show, help preserve and maintain the physical and psychic well-being of African Americans. Moreover, those strategies manifest themselves by means of both content and form, facilitating characters’ significant progress towards healing and wholeness; such progress is enabled by two specific venues for healing: Othermothering and the protagonists’ journeys of return. By responding to medical racism, Morrison and Valdez, we suggest, contribute to the field of the Critical Medical Humanities and take part in the battle for survival in a context which hinges on “survival for the fittest” and deems African Americans “unfit.”