![]() ![]() Over the years, I kept getting pulled back into the archives. ![]() When I began this journey, I didn’t know historical fiction would become my life’s work. It’s a city soaked in history, and I grew up in the arms of a rich Black community that told stories. Perkins-Valdez: I’ve only recently realized that the first source of my inspiration to remember is my birthplace, Memphis, TN. With Wench, Balm, and now Take My Hand, you invite readers to step into the past.Can you share how the inspiration to write historical fiction books came into your life? You have a calling to bring others back to remembrance. Wade, ESSENCE had the opportunity to speak with Perkins-Valdez about the timeliness of Take My Hand and the parallels that exist in American society today. The Tuskegee Syphilis project, the phrase Mississippi Appendectomy, systemic oppression of the poor and marginalized, involuntary sterilization, abortion, the legacy of historically Black colleges and universities, and the ill regard for the Black body are all themes that run deep in Take My Hand. By then it would be too late to connect their illness to Depo. ![]() If the drugs were dangerous, it could be years before we knew if they’d caused cancer. Civil ponders, “It was entirely possible the federal government was using our patients as if they were the subjects of a live clinical trial, the same thing they’d done to those men at Tuskegee. ![]()
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