The Organ Thieves: A Heart Transplant Without Consent From The Black Family Involved

So let me tell you about what happened to an African American family of Richmond, Virginia in 1968. William Tucker's brother Bruce went missing.  He learned that Bruce had been located at the Medical College of Virginia.  He had to actually go there to be told that he was dead, and would need to make funeral arrangements.  This had been difficult for William Tucker because polio had left him unable to walk without crutches.  He didn't find out that Bruce's heart and kidneys were gone until the mortician at the funeral home told him.  How did this happen without the family being informed?  That's the story told in The Organ Thieves by Chip Jones.  It's a non-fiction book about real events.  I found it very powerful.  It's my first five star read of 2021.

                                    

                                                                      

The Organ Thieves gives historical background involving medical schools paying grave robbers to obtain bodies in order to teach students anatomy.    In the Medical College of Virginia during the 19th century no one cared if  they used the bodies of slaves and free Blacks for this purpose.   The Medical College of Virginia even stated in their publicity material that no  White man was ever dissected there.  The deliberate choice of using Black bodies in medical schools also happened in the North. Chip Jones pointed out that medical schools in New York were using the corpses of African Americans as far back as 1787. We know this because of the riot protesting the practice during that year in New York.  Jones said that this may have been the earliest Black Lives Matter protest in the United States. I would add that Black deaths also matter as well as respect for Black burial sites.  By 1884 body snatching by medical schools was illegal.  They were supposed to get permission from families.

 So in 1968, the Medical College of Virginia had committed a crime when they took Bruce Tucker's heart for a heart transplant without getting family permission.   Jones' narrative of events shows how this happened. He quotes from Son of Virginia, the memoir of the Tucker family's lawyer, Doug Wilder.   Wilder claimed that the hospital considered Bruce Tucker a derelict.   Wilder believed that this was an assumption based on racism.  

I thought that The Organ Thieves was very thorough in exposing the roots of medical racism by showing us the history of the theft of Black bodies for medical purposes throughout the history of the United States.  Readers of this book should be outraged, as I was.

 

                                 

   

                                

Next To Last Stand: A Longmire Mystery As My First Read of 2021

 I haven't really kept up with Craig Johnson's Longmire series.  One of the reasons is probably because it had spawned a Netflix series.  For me, this is a sign that the series has gotten too popular.  The last Longmire novel that I reviewed on Goodreads was in 2014, but I really wanted to read more mysteries this year.  So there was Next To Last Stand gazing at me from the top of a library book pile, and I said "Why not that one?"  

                                    

 

What drew me to this volume in the Longmire series is the art aspect  which hinges on a famous painting that has been reproduced by the thousands, and hangs in a great many bars throughout the United States.  It's called  Custer's Last Fight by Cassily Adams.  I found a death notice for Cassily Adams from The Indianapolis Star on May 9, 1921 which appears on the internet here. That article explains why there were so many copies of this painting sent to establishments that exist for the enjoyment of alcoholic beverages.  You can also read more about this painting in Next To Last Stand. 

The narrative of Next To Last Stand begins with the death of Charley Lee Stillwater, a resident of the Veterans' Home of Wyoming.  He had left paintings and an extraordinary amount of cash in a shoe box. 

Stillwater's heir turned out to be named after Bass Reeves, the first black deputy U.S. marshal in the West.  I have to admit that I was more fascinated by that piece of African American history than what happened to Custer's Last Fight.  It saddens me that The Black Badge, a biography of Bass Reeves by his nephew,  Judge Paul L. Brady, isn't more widely available.  See "The Remarkable Bass Reeves" by Karl Smallwood here.  This thorough article  cites The Black Badge as a source.

                            

                                               Bass Reeves (Public Domain Photo)

                                        
                

Readers who are interested in Custer memorabilia will be delighted by Next To Last Stand.  I enjoyed it.  I'm glad that I made a return visit to the saga of Longmire's ongoing adventures.

                                     

                                

 

 

 

My 2020 Retrospective

                                  Image courtesy of Maicyber at freedigitalphotos.net

 

 This year I decided to count the number of reads that I gave five stars to include in this annual post.  I had eighteen of them.  Since this is a new statistic, I don't know how this compares to previous years.

Shomeret: Masked Reviewer had around 12,000 views in 2020.  That's about 3000 more than last year.   So this little blog that could is continuing to expand its audience a bit every year.

My most viewed post was, as usual, on Flying High Reviews. It was a review of a YA lesbian historical novel called Silhouette of a Sparrow which can be found here. Why was there so much interest? My guess is that there aren't enough lesbian historical novels written for the YA audience. 

 The most viewed post on Shomeret: Masked Reviewer during 2020 was my review of a novel about the creation of Michelangelo's David called The Giant which can be found here.  I think that Michelangelo's David is a popular subject.  I also think that the author of this book, Laura Morelli, has a following that increased the number of readers for this particular review. 

The rest of this post will be the list of my best reads of the year in various categories.   If I don't mention a blog review, it's because I didn't review the book on my blog.  In most cases, I did review it on Goodreads. I like to call this section of my annual retrospective:

                      THE GOLDEN MASK AWARDS

 Best Read of the Year

 Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez

It's also the best non-fiction book. It deals with the lack of inclusion of women in research, and the design of things that women use.  I thought that I would never have the time to read this extremely dense and topical book. Thanks to Read Women's discussion of Invisible Women on Goodreads, I did.

Best Book Published in 2020

Rachel Maddow: A Biography by Lisa Rogak

This is also the best in the bio/memoir category that I read in 2020. Since I knew nothing about Rachel Maddow's life, I found this book surprising.  It also humanized her for me.

Best Fiction

 The Time Collector by Gwendolyn Womack

This is also the best romance that I read in 2020.  It deals with characters who are psychometrists.  This means that they can read the history of objects by touching them.  I reviewed this fascinating novel here  on this blog.

Best Young Adult Novel

A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow

It's also the best fantasy I read in 2020. What if all sirens were Black, and some were involved in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's?  This YA alternate history fantasy swirls urgent issues with paranormal species and African American teen life.  I learned so much from reading it.  See my review on this blog here.

Best Historical Fiction

The Talking Drum  by Lisa Braxton

It's also the best indie novel that I read in 2020.  This is a novel about urban redevelopment.  I initially thought that urban redevelopment is too recent a phenomenon to be considered historical.  I did research on the subject and discovered that it didn't begin that recently.  See my review on this blog here.

Best Science Fiction

A Song For A New Day by Sarah Pinsker 

It's the music aspect that caused me to read this book, not the pandemic and certainly not the dystopia.  Though I have to say that this ends up being such a hopeful dystopian novel.

Best Contemporary Fiction

Side Chick Nation by Aya de León

"Side chick" becomes a metaphor for Puerto Rico's relationship to the U.S.  in #4 of de Leon's Justice Hustlers series involving female vigilantes. It's also the first novel taking place during Hurricane Maria and its aftermath.

Best Mystery

Songs From The Deep by Kelly Powell

If you've been scrolling down the page, you'll probably notice the titles with "song" in them. It's true that I'm very musically inclined. Yet in the case of this YA mystery, the "songs" are there because this is another book in which sirens play a role.  The sirens have been falsely accused of murder.  This made the mystery unusual enough to attract my attention.

Best Thriller

Cheater's Game by Paul Levine

This is the latest in the series about lawyer Jake Lassiter.  His nephew has unwisely involved himself in a college admissions scandal.   At the time this was written, it was ripped from the headlines.  Here's my review on this blog.

Best Net Galley

The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar

This is an authentic own voices novel dealing with a trans male protagonist and his search for identity.  It also deals with a Syrian American community.  My review on this blog is here.

Two thirds of the authors of these books are new to me.  The four exceptions are Laura Morelli, Bethany C. Morrow, Aya de León and Paul Levine.