Linda V. tells the full story of racial health disparities in America.

2128 Saint Claude Avenue,New Orleans LA 70117

22 June, 2022

Description

Don't miss this amazing book discussion and signing with Linda Villarosa. June 22, 2022 at 7:30pm. This powerful, carefully researched book reveals the significant health challenges faced by Black Americans simply due to being Black . . . Villarosa documents unending examples of social racism, inbred bias, and general neglect, but somehow remains hopeful for change, introducing individuals and programs that are making positive differences. Her thoughtful, personal account raises issues that affect all Americans. In 2018, Linda Villarosa’s New York Times Magazine article on maternal and infant mortality among black mothers and babies in America caused an awakening. Hundreds of studies had previously established a link between racial discrimination and the health of Black Americans, with little progress toward solutions. But Villarosa’s article exposing that a Black woman with a college education is as likely to die or nearly die in childbirth as a white woman with an eighth grade education made racial disparities in health care impossible to ignore. Now, in Under the Skin, Linda Villarosa lays bare the forces in the American health-care system and in American society that cause Black people to “live sicker and die quicker” compared to their white counterparts. Today’s medical texts and instruments still carry fallacious slavery-era assumptions that Black bodies are fundamentally different from white bodies. Study after study of medical settings show worse treatment and outcomes for Black patients. Black people live in dirtier, more polluted communities due to environmental racism and neglect from all levels of government. And, most powerfully, Villarosa describes the new understanding that coping with the daily scourge of racism ages Black people prematurely. Anchored by unforgettable human stories and offering incontrovertible proof, Under the Skin is dramatic, tragic, and necessary reading. This event is presented in partnership with Women with a Vision. , Linda will be joined on-stage with Latona Giwa from Birthmark Doula Collective. Linda and Latona will be interviewed by Deon Haywood from Women with a Vision. Latona Giwa is a birth justice advocate, Birth Doula, Registered Nurse, and International Board Certified Lactation Consultant in New Orleans. In 2011, she co-founded Birthmark Doula Collective, Louisiana's largest, and only worker-owned birth worker cooperative. In 2017, she co-founded the New Orleans Breastfeeding Center, Louisiana's first freestanding breastfeeding clinic. Deon Haywood is the Executive Director of Women With A Vision, Inc., a New Orleans-based community organization founded in 1991 to improve the lives of marginalized women, their families, and communities by addressing the social conditions that hinder their health and well-being. Since Hurricane Katrina, she has led the organization to a vibrant locally-rooted international network addressing the complex intersection of socio-economic injustices and health disparities.