An eye-opening resource illustrates one more facet of how race affects health care.
A veteran nurse and educator compiles firsthand accounts of nurses who have faced racism in New York City hospitals.
In this debut collection of interviews, seasoned nurse and nursing teacher Semper pulls back the veil on the racism and discrimination in New York hospitals in the 21st century, giving a platform to 50 minority nurses to share their frustrations and battles with prejudice and intolerance within their field. These caregivers range in age, experience, and, especially, background, including but not limited to Latino, Indian, Asian, and African-American nurses as well as immigrant caretakers who have come to New York from as far away as Russia and Guyana. Despite these differences, each illustrates a consistent pattern of minority nurses being ignored or exploited, paid less than their white counterparts, and segregated to working only night shifts. Those wronged have few places to turn for aid, as most human resources officials are influenced by institutional racism or are unable to protect complainants from retaliation, while organizations like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission are largely staffed by nonminority workers as well. It is clear some of those interviewed have given up hope, discouraging other minority nurses from pursuing their careers, but others, though not optimistic, offer pragmatic solutions, pushing for racial-awareness training, suggesting more on-the-job nurse advocates, and stressing the importance of education and effective mentors. Most striking in these accounts, besides the great bravery each nurse demonstrates in coming forward, is the near-identical hardships they describe. Furthermore, each clearly illustrates the impact these discriminatory environments have on patient care, with mental and emotional abuse leading to burnout or breakdown, decreasing the quality of treatment and forcing much-needed skilled workers out of the field. Individually the essays are rather abrupt, and while this makes them no less believable, the heartbreaking similarities across all 50 stories are largely what tie these diverse voices together. Some broader statistical information would have been welcome, but even without it, the final product is more than just a collection of grievances. It’s a cacophonous call to action.
An eye-opening resource illustrates one more facet of how race affects health care.Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4917-9751-8
Page Count: 126
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Dec. 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.
Seven stories, including a couple of prizewinners, from an exuberantly talented young Thai-American writer.
In the poignant title story, a young man accompanies his mother to Kok Lukmak, the last in the chain of Andaman Islands—where the two can behave like “farangs,” or foreigners, for once. It’s his last summer before college, her last before losing her eyesight. As he adjusts to his unsentimental mother’s acceptance of her fate, they make tentative steps toward the future. “Farangs,” included in Best New American Voices 2005 (p. 711), is about a flirtation between a Thai teenager who keeps a pet pig named Clint Eastwood and an American girl who wanders around in a bikini. His mother, who runs a motel after having been deserted by the boy’s American father, warns him about “bonking” one of the guests. “Draft Day” concerns a relieved but guilty young man whose father has bribed him out of the draft, and in “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place,” a bitter grandfather has moved from the States to Bangkok to live with his son, his Thai daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. The grandfather’s grudging adjustment to the move and to his loss of autonomy (from a stroke) is accelerated by a visit to a carnival, where he urges the whole family into a game of bumper cars. The longest story, “Cockfighter,” is an astonishing coming-of-ager about feisty Ladda, 15, who watches as her father, once the best cockfighter in town, loses his status, money, and dignity to Little Jui, 16, a meth addict whose father is the local crime boss. Even Ladda is in danger, as Little Jui’s bodyguards try to abduct her. Her mother tells Ladda a family secret about her father’s failure of courage in fighting Big Jui to save his own sister’s honor. By the time Little Jui has had her father beaten and his ear cut off, Ladda has begun to realize how she must fend for herself.
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1788-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
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