Zibby Mag

By Faith Tomlin

I read Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s novel Take My Hand in one day and have been thinking about it constantly ever since.

Inspired by the real case of Relf v. Weinberger, Take My Hand tells the story of Civil Townsend, an ambitious young nurse working at a family planning clinic in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1973. Her first two patients are Erica and India Williams: 13- and 11-year-old Black girls living in rural poverty. Civil is tasked with giving the young girls shots of Depo-Provera—a form of birth control that she quickly realizes has not been FDA-approved. Civil’s faith in the clinic’s noble mission to serve the community is shaken, and tension builds as she begins to uncover the dark truth and complicated morality behind her work.

Civil’s growing fears turn to abject horror when, without her knowledge or the girls’ consent, Erica and India are forcibly sterilized via involuntary hysterectomies by the very medical professionals who claimed to have their best interests at heart. With the help of her ex-boyfriend Ty and fellow nurse Alicia, Civil begins to expose the truth of this government-sanctioned attempt to control Black women and seeks justice for Erica and India.

Perkins-Valdez approaches this weighty subject matter by blending historical fact with a strong narrative voice and compelling characters. Civil’s strength, grief, wit, and passion shine through her first-person narration, captivating your attention and carrying you through an important historical event that can feel almost too painful to digest. The story shifts back and forth in time from 1973 to 2016, as an adult Civil wrestles with the legacy of this tragedy, her own career, and the indelible impact Erica and India have left on her life.

With rich dialogue and colorful description, Perkins-Valdez also immerses us in a vivid picture of the American South in the shadow of Jim Crow. In one moment of reflection, adult Civil thinks back on her own story and invokes the real historical sterilization of Fannie Lou Hamer alongside the murder of Medgar Evans. Through this powerful blend of fact and fiction, Perkins-Valdez contextualizes medical racism as a particularly insidious manifestation of prejudice.

As Civil investigates the dark reality of the clinic’s work, she is forced to confront her complicated feelings about the abortion that she received years earlier. Perkins-Valdez’s treatment of the topic is alarmingly prescient, deftly weaving the narrative into today’s public discourse over bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom. This book reminds us that we exist in the liminal space between personal and political, memory and history, past and present, reflection and revolution.

Listen to Zibby’s podcast with Dolen Perkins-Vasquez here!

++

Faith Tomlin is a graduate of Yale University with a B.A. in Psychology. She currently lives in the West Village and is a Marketing Assistant with Zibby Books.