
Pure America
Eugenics and the Making of Modern Virginia
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Buy for $13.75
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Jo Anna Perrin
-
By:
-
Elizabeth Catte
Between 1927 and 1979, more than 8,000 people were involuntarily sterilized in five hospitals across the state of Virginia. From this plain and terrible fact springs Elizabeth Catte's Pure America, a sweeping, unsparing history of eugenics in Virginia, and by extension the United States. Virginia's 20th-century eugenics program was not the misguided initiative of well-meaning men of the day, says Catte, with clarity and ferocity. It was a manifestation of white supremacy. It was a form of employment insurance. It was a means of controlling "troublesome" women and a philosophy that helped remove poor people from valuable land. It was cruel, and it was wrong, and yet today sites where it was practiced like Western State Hospital, in Staunton, Virginia, are rehabilitated as luxury housing, their histories hushed up in the service of capital.
As was amply evidenced by her acclaimed 2018 book What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia, Catte has no room for excuses; no patience for equivocation. What does it mean for modern America, she asks here, that such buildings are given the second chance that 8,000 citizens never got? And what possible interventions can be made now, repair their damage?
©2021 Elizabeth Catte (P)2021 TantorListeners also enjoyed...




















People who viewed this also viewed...


Read this!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Highly recommend
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Outstanding and smart
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Highly recommend this book
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Hillbillies were doing something very clever, very wise—too complex for Progressives either then or now to understand. They were gardening the wilderness.
Hillbillies & Indians gardened the Shenandoah
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The author never refrained from commentary throughout. All history was given in a tainted manner, leading the reader to the author's mindset, not presenting fact that would allow the reader to process.
Further, the author broke her own rule, which she herself set forth early in the essay, not to look at history through the eyes of the present. Instead, this happened constantly throughout, as well. It even got to the point of mentioning at least two current political figures, and attempting to tie them in to the dirt of the historical narrative.
It just was not what it was billed. It was not a history piece. It was an author's opinion with just enough historical veneer to allowed her to comment.
I wanted to like it, and kept hoping it would improve, but it did not.
Long on Commentary, Short on History
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Pure America
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This happens repeatedly. I think I heard more about Catte’s partner and daily driving around Virginia than actual history. I’m surprised Catte didn’t add in a portion of how an idea arrived because Catte was on the toilet pushing out a turd and was reminded of something.
I could write a better and more informative book in a day while looking at Wikipedia. Really poorly done. What history is here is good and mostly accurate but, overall, it reminds me of a dump. It’s a turd of a book with a slight coating of real eugenics history.
Performance is okay. Most things are pronounced correctly. Literally this books only saving grace.
Goes Off Topic
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.