Author | Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot |
---|---|
Language | English |
Series | Radcliffe Biography Series |
Genre | Biography |
Publisher | Addison-Wesley, Spine Lean edition |
Publication date | 1988 |
Publication place | United States |
Pages | 321 |
ISBN | 978-0201093124 |
OCLC | 462905172 |
Website | www |
Balm in Gilead: Journey of a Healer is Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot's 1988 biography of her mother, Dr. Margaret Morgan Lawrence, who was one of the first black women to graduate from Cornell University and Columbia University Medical School.
Lawrence-Lightfoot developed the project in collaboration with her mother, through a series of taped conversations. [1] She published the book with Addison-Wesley in October 1988, as part of the Radcliffe Biography Series. [2]
The book examines four generations of Lawrence-Lightfoot's family, following her mother's childhood (primarily in Vicksburg, Mississippi), her move to Harlem to finish high school while living with her grandmother, her college education at Cornell University then medical school at Columbia University, then her eventual career as a pediatrician, then psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry. Writing for the Los Angeles Times , Phyllis Crockett described Balm in Gilead as "the story of how Dr. Margaret Morgan Lawrence became who she is: a successful retired child psychiatrist, widow of the equally successful sociologist Dr. Charles Lawrence, and mother of three children who are successful in their careers. The book probes how she achieved that success despite the psychological scars of racism and sexism." [2]
Reviewing Balm in Gilead for The Washington Post , Nell Irvin Painter praised the book for its "sensitivity and candor", comparing it to John Hope Franklin's biography of George Washington Williams. Contrasting these with earlier African American works constrained by an obligation to present a favorable image to white audiences, Painter suggested Balm in Gilead belonged to a new group of biographies of African Americans "none of which prettifies subjects or censors foibles." [3] H. Jack Geiger writing for The New York Times said, "We are indebted to [Lawrence-Lightfoot] (and her mother and father) for their candid portrait of this black Southern middle-class version of a journey - so different from that of Richard Wright's Black Boy or the passage of Malcolm X - that is a central theme in black American fiction and biography," traveling "across the rugged terrain of race and gender in America." [1]
Sojourner Truth was an American abolitionist and activist for African-American civil rights, women's rights, and alcohol temperance. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to court to recover her son in 1828, she became the first black woman to win such a case against a white man.
Redbook is an American women's magazine that is published by the Hearst magazine division. It is one of the "Seven Sisters", a group of women's service magazines. It ceased print publication after January 2019 and now operates exclusively online.
Tama Janowitz is an American novelist and a short story writer. She is often referenced as one of the main "brat pack" authors, along with Bret Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney. Her novel-in-stories Slaves of New York (1986) was adapted into the movie of the same name in 1989.
Glenne Aimee Headly was an American actress. She was widely known for her roles in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Dick Tracy, and Mr. Holland's Opus. Headly received a Theatre World Award and four Joseph Jefferson Awards and was nominated for two Primetime Emmy Awards.
Phyllis Isobella Pearsall MBE was a British painter and writer who founded the Geographers' A-Z Map Company, for which she is regarded as one of the most successful business people of the twentieth century. She has erroneously been credited with creating London's first popular indexed street map.
Mary Edith Barnes was an English artist and writer with schizophrenia and became a successful painter. She is particularly known for her documentation of her experience at R. D. Laing's experimental therapeutic community at Kingsley Hall, London. She is referenced in the book The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson and Thomas Szasz's Schizophrenia.
Dorothy Louise Porter Wesley was a librarian, bibliographer and curator, who built the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University into a world-class research collection. She was the first African American to receive a library science degree from Columbia University. Porter published numerous bibliographies on African American history. When she realized that the Dewey Decimal System had only two classification numbers for African Americans, one for slavery and one for colonization, she created a new classification system that ordered books by genre and author.
Julia Emilie Neilson was an English actress best known for her numerous performances as Lady Blakeney in The Scarlet Pimpernel, for her roles in many tragedies and historical romances, and for her portrayal of Rosalind in a long-running production of As You Like It.
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot is an American sociologist who examines the culture of schools, the patterns and structures of classroom life, socialization within families and communities, and the relationships between culture and learning styles. She is the Emily Hargroves Fisher professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a 1984 MacArthur Genius.
"Marching Song of the First Arkansas Colored Regiment" is one of the few Civil War-era songs inspired by the lyrical structure of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and the tune of "John Brown's Body" that is still performed and recorded today. The "Marching Song" has been described as "a powerful early statement of black pride, militancy, and desire for full equality, revealing the aspirations of black soldiers for Reconstruction as well as anticipating the spirit of the civil rights movement of the 1960s." The song's lyrics are attributed to the regiment's white officer, Captain Lindley Miller. An almost identical song, "The Valiant Soldiers," is attributed to Sojourner Truth in post-Civil War editions of her Narrative. Recent scholarship supports Miller as the original author, or at least compiler, of the song.
Nell Irvin Painter is an American historian notable for her works on United States Southern history of the nineteenth century. She is retired from Princeton University as the Edwards Professor of American History Emerita. She has served as president of the Organization of American Historians and as president of the Southern Historical Association, and was appointed as chair of MacDowell's board of directors in 2020.
The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole is a 2012 fantasy novel by American writer Stephen King. As part of the Dark Tower series, it is the eighth novel, but it is set chronologically between volumes four and five. First mentioned by King in 2009, after the controversial ending of the seventh novel in 2004, the book was officially announced on King's official website on March 10, 2011.
Marie Nyswander was an American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst known for developing and popularizing the use of methadone to treat heroin addiction.
Kathleen Thompson is an American feminist, writer, and activist. She was first known for co-authoring with Andra Medea the feminist classic Against Rape, the book that broke the silence about rape not only in the United States, but around the world. She exposed the American diet industry's exploitation of women in Feeding on Dreams, written with psychologist Diane Pinkert Epstein. She was co-author, with pre-eminent historian Darlene Clark Hine, of A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in America., the first narrative history of black women in America. She then collaborated with Hilary Mac Austin on three print documentaries of groups underrepresented in American history: The Face of Our Past: Images of Black Women from Colonial America to the Present, Children of the Depression, and America's Children: Repicturing Childhood from Exploration to the Present. Thompson also served on the board of senior editors with Hine, Deborah Grey White, Brenda Stephenson, and other major scholars in the field on the second edition of the landmark encyclopedia Black Women in America. In addition to these adult trade books, she has written more than one hundred books for children and young adults and has had eleven plays produced in Chicago, New York City, and other cities.
Geraldine Dorothy Cummins was an Irish spiritualist medium, novelist and playwright. She began her career as a creative writer, but increasingly concentrated on mediumship and "channelled" writings, mostly about the lives of Jesus and Saint Paul, though she also published on a range of other topics.
Mary Antoinette Rodez Schiesler was an American chemist and director of research at Villanova University. She was also a former Roman Catholic nun and Episcopal deaconess.
Margaret Cornelia Morgan Lawrence was an American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, gaining those qualifications in 1948. Her work included clinical care, teaching, and research, particularly into the presence and development of ego strength in inner-city families. Lawrence studied young children identified as "strong" by their teachers in Georgia and Mississippi, as well as on sabbatical in Africa in 1973, writing two books on mental health of children and inner-city families. Lawrence was chief of the Developmental Psychiatry Service for Infants and Children at Harlem Hospital for 21 years, as well as associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons (P&S), retiring in 1984.
Ethelene Jones Crockett (1914–1978) was an American physician and activist from Detroit. She was Michigan's first African-American female board certified OB/GYN, and the first woman to be president of the American Lung Association. In 1988, Crockett was inducted posthumously into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame.
Melva Lorinda Price was an American educator and activist based in New York City. She taught Latin and other subjects for over thirty years in the New York public schools, and was active in Harlem with the YWCA, Alpha Kappa Alpha, the Hunter College Alumni Club, and other organizations.
Constance Porter Uzelac, also known as Coni Porter Uzelac, was a medical librarian and archivist in the United States. She was the Executive Director of the Dorothy Porter Wesley Research Center. She is the daughter of Dorothy Porter Wesley and James Amos Porter, and assisted Wesley with writing many books. She also worked on cataloging all of her mother's works that were housed at the African American Library and Research Center. The catalog for her father was a part of the James A. Porter: From Me To You exhibition that was shown at various galleries across the United States.