Summer Muse Snippers

“It's where my imagination is fecund and I am really at my best. Nothing matters more in the world or in my body or anywhere when I'm writing. It is dangerous because I'm thinking up dangerous, difficult things, but it is also extremely safe for me to be in that place.“ —Toni Morrison

In the summer when I sit at my ephemeral desk looking out the window I can get a clear view of a magnolia tree. Some early mornings when I leave the blinds open if I’m awake I catch a glimpse of bold orange-red hues through the slits for a new start to the day with sensory cues signal wakefulness at daybreak.

Magnolia spring blooms remain throughout summer.

An early morning riser my grandmother with her Southern roots was once an avid gardener. She believed firmly in planting perennials.  Her exotic plantings were dramatic with strange-shaped leaves of unfamiliar blooms.  In the rich soil I remember playing with worms, snails, slugs and getting bee stings as there was a hive in the back yard that kept me curious. When in full bloom there is a fragrant richness in her yard that is still something to behold. When I was growing up some neighbors would ask others while others would just help themselves to snippets to plant in their yards. Snippets come from when you pinch or use a garden tool to break off a piece of a plant in the right place to regrow in a new setting.   

In a recent NPR interview Toni Morrison talked about losing her lush jade bush that she’d grown from a snippet when a fire destroyed her family home.  She relishes her life as a snipper. Her storytelling in the interview moved my unplanned reading of her newest novel God Help the Child, which imaginatively opens a lucid conversation about race as determined skin color and culture. In this story unhealed racial childhood wounds infect the life of Bride. Morrison still writes to teach, her point:  "Distinguishing color — light, black, in between — as the marker for race is really an error:  It's socially constructed, it's culturally enforced and it has some advantages for certain people." 

I’m reading from e-books on the 3M Cloud, the Kindle app, but still find great pleasure in the feel of turning pages especially in my favorite chair, outdoors or on the beach.  How many books do you read over three months?  I also like listening to writers on writing.  Morrison continues to use her stories for broader, meaningful conversations.   

As we move through summer here’s my list of titles on my bookshelf in no order, but there are few themes. 

1.   Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series by Leah Dickerman and Elsa Smithgall moved to read by the MoMA One Way exhibit and experience. 

2.   God Help The Child by Toni Morrison whose work I have been reading since The Bluest Eye.

Poetry and stories for such a time this:

3.   Native Guard by Natasha Tretheway

4.   Rise by Sarah Elizabeth Lewis

5.   The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander

6.   Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

7.   Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

8.  Aimless Love by Billy Collins

New writers and writing from my summer scene including the #blklitchat group:

9.  Dear Continuum: Letters to a Poet Crafting Liberation by Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie

10.  Everything to Teach Nothing to Learn by Marc Polite

11.  BALM: A Novel by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

12.  The Turner House by Angela Flournoy

There are titles from the #Charleston Syllabus and because freedom is a process: 

13.  Staging Migrations Toward an American West: From Ida B. Wells to Rhodessa Jones by Marta Effinger-Crichlow and I also just read The Light of the Truth by Ida B. Wells. 

14. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

15.  Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates 

16.  Gateway to Freedom by Eric Foner

 

Selection inspired by family and friends reading:

 17.   Where the Wild Grapes Grow by Dorothy West her short stories are among my   favorites so I will be reading a new short story and enjoying poems by her cousin Helene Johnson another Harlem Renaissance writer.

From the world of science, medicine and health care:

18.  History of the Present Illness by Louise Aronson

19. The Patient Will See You Now by Eric Topol

20.  Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande

For many years July has been the month where I am intentional about reading and writing on my own and in good company.  In Literary Reading, Cognition and Emotion: An Exploration of the Oceanic Mind, a literarly scholar and professor of rhetoric, Dr. Michael Burke notes: 

      "When readers sit down in a comfortable location of their own choosing to read a book, they experience subconscious echoes of where they came from and what made them. These are implicit, somatic, affective memory prompts."  

Like many I also find a time just before going to sleep a good time to grab a book.  As for writing, hypnagogia the experience of the transitional state from wakefulness moves my creative expression.  Early morning writing works for me especially in the summer.

Black Lives Matter:  The loss of lives among our families, friends and communities has morphed into collective grief and many are suffering.  Anger, rage and outrage must find new ground. Our stories can help shed light on pain and suffering as we search for relief to work for better days ahead. While I read and write in this climate, I also walk and travel to reflect and work more effectively each day.  

Please share titles from your bookshelf and reading experiences.  Feel free to leave comments.

On the Rise: Women in Leadership

We are living a new era where the progress for the civil rights of women is undeniable, yet Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg points out in her compelling TED presentation:

“We still live in a world where some women don’t have [civil rights]. But all that aside, we still have … a real problem … women are not making it to the top of any profession anywhere in the world.

The fault line is in the family and life balancing act women must do to survive in the workplace.  To be clear this is true for men too. Women are more likely to face challenges when long work hours, travel and the business of professional networking keep them away from families.

Furthermore, the profession of medicine requires a commitment to patient care, education and research, but the climb to the top has additional milestones. While many put in extra time and sweat their persistence still places them outside the closed doors of  hospital board rooms, department chair offers, academic medicine positions or physician-leader roles.  Data and research are scant on measures for progress.  I always look at the pictures on the walls in medical center hallways and conference rooms, it’s rare to see anyone who resembles me in those pictures. I do see women moving through up the ranks who are awesome role models.

For the last 10 years medical school classes have held equal portions of men and women, but those who teach medical students and lead institutions are predominately men.  Recent research published by Dr. Borges and others indicate that “women physicians choose their careers because of the perceived quality of life, earnings potential, and organizational reward. They are less likely than men to identify role models for professional–personal balance.”

Women do need to seek out role models early in their careers, but it’s not enough. More significant is the understanding that if there’s no institutional, top-down approach to addressing the complexity of these issues, meritocracy alone will not break down barriers nor will change occur.

Dr. Karen Sibert’s recent op-ed in the New York Times inspires my blog post along with other offline discussions, including the talk with Michele Martin on NPR’s Tell Me More, which aimed to further the conversation about part-time career choices women are making in the face of doctor shortages, decreasing health care budgets and a moral obligation. Dr. Sibert and others make it clear about the sacrifices for both men and women when it comes with a commitment to patient care, but Dr. Au and others make the case for our right to choose, wisely and carefully.

I follow the career paths by reading the literature as well as over the years books written by women in medicine, here are just a few from my bookshelf:

Treatment Kind and Fair: Letters to a Young Doctor by Perri Klass

Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter by J. Nozipo Maraire

Final Exam: A Surgeon’s  Reflections on Mortality by Pauline Chen

Another Day in the Frontal Lobe: A Brain Surgeon Exposes Life on the Inside by Katrina S. Firlik

Medicine in Translation: Journeys with My Patients by Danielle Ofri

Almost Home: Stories of Hope and the Human Spirit in the Neonatal ICU by Christine Gleason

The Country Doctor Revisited: A Twenty-First Century Reader edited by Therese Zink

Stories of Illness and Healing: Women Write Their Bodies edited by Marsha Hurst and Sayantani DasGupta

On a historical note Dr. Virginia Apgar’s story is endearing as she was set on becoming a surgeon, but gender discrimination led her to a career in anesthesiology after training she went on to head a new division of anesthesiology where she developed the Apgar score. As the medical school’s first female division head, she built a residency program and, in 1949, became the first woman appointed to a full professorship at the Columbia University College of Physician & Surgeons.  No, I’m not interested in a career anesthesiology, I am looking for opportunities where innovative ideas are supported regardless of gender, race or ethnicity.

A few pointers, I’ve heard from those listed above and elsewhere:

• Relationships and family matter, try to avoid undermining your anchors to move ahead, you may find short-term success and long-term misery with the loss of your family and friends and a more demanding job.
• Don’t turn your head or look way when you see real harm done to women especially if it’s you in the hot seat, choose battles worth fighting.
• Read and review the policy handbook at your institution. Knowledge is power.
• Honor and respect women physician-leaders in their roles and get to know their stories.
• Tell your own stories so that others might know of your success and/or be warned of your pitfalls.
• “Lift as you climb” so that you enable collective success in the profession.
• The road is long so make good friends for the distance.

U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and First Lady Michelle Obama are at the helm efforts to improve health and health care in America and these women are all phenomenal. We should continue our look up stream and push for policies and practices that allow for a more balanced profession for men and women, which in my view enables better patient care and improves quality of life for both patient and physician. There should debate, divergent points of view as well as common ground to stay focused on more progress.

7/12/2011 blog cross-post on KevinMD.com

I'm Reading

This week, I'm reading Edwidge Danticat's Brother I’m Dying.  A 2009 MacArthur Fellow, Danticat is a brilliant storyteller. She uses the power of creative nonfiction to bring you closer to the stories unfolding offering layers of complexity.  I have already shed tears.    The stories about Haiti's recent earthquake have faded from the media. Ruins remain.  Catastrophic devastation in Haiti is better understood in it's historical context. Brother I’m Dying delivers a paradigm to help us help Haiti. Danticat's storytelling about her family is about Haitian culture and life. Listen to Edwidge and maybe you will read her books.