A Reckoning for Erasure: Putting Anarcha Speaks in Conversation with J. Marion Sims’ The Story of My Life

While many historians and medical researchers often refer to James Marion Sims as the “Father of Gynecology,” what many fail to recognize is that the field of gynecology, a field dedicated to women, was developed through the nonconsensual vesicovaginal fistula experimental surgeries on enslaved women. The process of Sims’ experimenting was recorded in his autobiography, The Story of My Life; however, due to the blatant racism, dehumanization, and misrepresentation of its subjects, this paper calls into question the credibility of the autobiography as a primary source for historical research. Instead, the paper turns to Dominique Christina’s Anarcha Speaks, a poetic reimagining of the surgeries from the perspective of one of the enslaved women, Anarcha, to humanize and challenge what one may refer to as historical fact. This paper argues that putting these two texts, written in entirely different time periods and political contexts, into conversation with each other is crucial to properly reckon with the absence of the victims’ perspectives.