Fighting For Life (2013)

Book Info

Author

Helen Epstein

Genre

Fiction

Rating

4.34 of 5 Votes: 2

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ISBN

1590177061 (ISBN13: 9781590177068)

Language

English

Publisher

nyrb classics

Shops

Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble

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About book Fighting For Life (2013)

An excellent memoir by a founder of child hygiene practices that brought about a stunning drop in early 20th-century child mortalities rates, often using methods of child care and nutrition that are taken for granted as "natural" today. Baker was also prominent in the Woman's Suffrage Movement as it moved the country toward granting women the right to vote--with the hopes that further positive changes could be brought about (namely, establishing child labor laws) once that voting bloc was established. Alas, she was disappointed that the movement lost its momentum once voting rights were granted. All in all, this memoir is cast in the voice of a friendly yet no-nonsense role model, deeply aware as the point guard for women in leadership positions everywhere: she was once of the nation's first women to graduate from medical school, to earn a doctorate in public health, to lead a government office, etc.

Josephine Baker's memoir describes her path to becoming a public health pioneer with unstinting honesty. The historical notes in the introduction suggest you'd understand why people wanted to be friends with her after reading the first page, and they are right. She was quite a person, and her measures to improve public health in New York City saved some 90,000 babies.One of the most compelling questions in the book is why save the lives of babies? Their importance to their parents is given, but her experiences with World War 1 and touring Russia in the 1930s as they prepared for war suggested that government only cares about the lives of childbearing women and their babies when they are trying to make sure they have ample cannon fodder. I think this is still an important question.

Do You like book Fighting For Life (2013)?

Really good. Some of the chapters are a bit meandering in their musings on different experiences in Baker's life, but all together the book comes together quite well to tell a story of a time roughly 100 years ago...that was not so different from today. Baker, writing from the period between the two world wars, reflects on her medical training and her many accomplishments, but ends on a questioning note about humanity and the future, all that is left to accomplish, and what the right path is to take. Throughout the book, she also includes little asides about topics like the inevitability of abortion/unsafety of unregulated abortion (an important one for a pro-choicer like me), the convergence of ignorance and malice in opposition to progress, women's rights, and the impossibility of teaching the indignorant (such as Typhoid Mary). Really, really good.
—Ellen