I feel as though I SHOULD have liked this novel much more than I actually did. It is related to the shameful history of forced sterilization that took place in the US, mostly impacting poor, non-white women, that was exposed shortly after the revelations of the Tuskegee experiment came to light. If you don’t know much about the Tuskegee experiment, I highly recommend the Nova documentary on it, which is a little dated but still relevant. The section that explains how many researchers, especially black researchers, knew about the decades old experiment and tried to expose it for years before they were taken seriously – that felt especially relevant to this book.
Take My Hand is the story of Civil Townsend, the daughter of a prominent doctor and an artist mother, in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1973, Civil is a 23 year old college graduate who decides to use her nursing degree to work in a clinic that provides free birth control to residents (mostly poor and black) around Montgomery. Civil has both personal and political reasons for believing that everyone deserves access to reproductive choice. At first, she is impressed by the clinic, especially its director, a white woman who gives slight Nurse Ratchet vibes.
Civil has access to a car, so she is soon assigned home visits. Her first clients turn out to be children. Erica and India are pre-teen sisters, living in a single room shack on the back of a white man’s farm. They live with their father and his mother – the girl’s mother died suddenly. When Civil meets the Williams family, they are filthy, and she is pretty disgusted by their living conditions. She reluctantly gives both girls a shot of Depo Provera. Later that day, in discussing this with her friends and family (including her best friend, Ty, who has recently become MORE than a friend, which is a source of very conflicted feelings for Civil) she begins to question the practice of giving out a shot that could potentially have harmful side effects. She is especially disturbed when she visits the girls again and realizes neither is sexually active. She makes a decision to subvert her boss’ instructions and quit administering the shots. She also enmeshes herself more fully in the lives of the Williams family, helping them access social services and other resources.
Before long, the girls become the center of a case against the federal government for the crimes committed against them. Civil stands by the family, often even when they don’t ask her to do so. Every so often there is a chapter devoted to 2016, where we see an older Civil return to Montgomery and revisit friends and others associated with this case. We also learn the the framing device of the entire novel is that she is explaining this important part of her history to her adopted daughter, who (in 2016) is 23, the same age she was when she became so deeply involved with the Williams family.
It’s such an important topic, and so many people who read this seemed to love it. I usually really love historical fiction, but something about this bothered me. I felt like Civil was a bit exalted beyond reason. It was almost as if characters were either GOOD or BAD, with not quite enough believable downfalls. It’s almost like when someone tells an interviewer that their worst trait is that they work too hard – it’s not an acknowledgement of a real human problem. Not to say that the book isn’t genuine and human! But it lacked something level of depth that I can’t quite describe.
