STEEP

A pioneering Black neurosurgeon reflects on history, race, and liberation in this debut memoir.

Scanning the works found in the Black Studies section of his local bookstore, author Yorke was struck by volumes of works centered on courage, trauma, and scholarly acumen. Still, he “wondered where my story could find shelf space.” This bookstore moment proved to be the genesis of this memoir, in which Yorke surveys his life within the context of America’s complicated racial history. Raised in the late 1940s in Roxbury, Massachusetts, the author recalls growing up as a sickly, asthmatic kid with clubfoot in a house without electricity. An astute child, he attended the historic Boston Latin School in the early 1960s, which he likened to a prison given the “racist rhetoric” that fomented from the school board. In 1966, he was accepted to Harvard College, where his initial euphoria was met with the harsh realization of the cost of higher education. Working multiple jobs, which included cleaning dorm bathrooms and washing out rat cages in a psychology lab, Yorke did not only graduate college, he received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School. After his residency at the University of California San Francisco, he settled in Topeka, Kansas, where he practiced neurosurgery for more than two decades. At 150 pages, Yorke’s concise memoir doesn’t provide a comprehensive biography; instead, the author uses carefully chosen anecdotes that connect to larger themes of American history, from his parent’s admiration of W.E.B. DuBois to his personal analysis of James Baldwin. Stories from his medical career are equally poignant; for example, the author rushed to the emergency room to care for an unconscious patient in critical condition after he had plowed his motorcycle into a tree. After cutting off the man’s t-shirt, Yorke saw the man’s chest tattoo emblazoned with the words “WHITE POWER” and treated him while feeling more sad than angry. And while acknowledging the ways in which America’s sordid racial history continues to reverberate, the author provides learned insights on how to cope with that history through love.

A nuanced, powerful memoir of a retired Black neurosurgeon.