Celebrating Black History Month

Available through February with no waitlist, check out Twice as Hard by Jasmine Brown in ebook. 

In this well-researched reclamation of neglected yet invaluable history, Brown, a medical student at the University of Pennsylvania and a former Rhodes scholar, looks at nine trailblazing Black women who became physicians despite the odds. She notes that in 1860, when the first Black woman enrolled in medical school, women comprised only 300 out of the 54,543 physicians in the U.S. When she became the first African American woman to earn a U.S. medical degree, she "was told the M.D. at the end of her name stood for mule driver." Since then, what has changed? Today predominantly white institutions throughout the country enroll Black women medical students, and young people have role models. Brown tells the stories of such Black women physicians as Dr. Edith Irby Jones, who persevered under Jim Crow and inspired many, including Dr. Jocelyn Elders, surgeon general in the Clinton administration, who said, "You can't be what you can't see." But it's increasingly difficult for aspiring doctors to handle the astronomical medical school costs ($400,000!), and only two Black women are deans of medical schools, both at historically Black universities. Still, Brown, as remarkable as the pioneers she profiles, ends on a high note, vowing to become a "changemaker." - Booklist

The eBook edition of Octavia E. Butler's Kindred  is now available without wait lists until February 22. It's the current selection for the Diane Rehm Book Club (and many of our patrons have been requesting it).

From the New York Times bestselling author of Parable of the Sower and MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Nebula, and Hugo award winner

The visionary time-travel classic whose Black female hero is pulled through time to face the horrors of American slavery and explores the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now.