In the era before antibiotics, when tuberculosis claimed the lives of 1 in 7 individuals, caucasian nurses at Sea View, New York's largest municipal hospital, began resigning. Faced with the looming threat of a public health crisis, city officials urgently called upon black, southern nurses, enticing them with promises of fair wages, a promising career, and liberation from the constraints of Jim Crow.
However, upon their arrival, these nurses discovered themselves on an isolated hilltop in the remote borough of Staten Island, once again grappling with racism and relegated to an inadequately staffed facility cynically labelled "the pest house", where survival seemed like an unlikely outcome.
Spanning the Great Depression, traversing World War II, and extending beyond, this narrative chronicles the journeys of courageous young women—the 'Black Angels'—who, for two decades, risked their lives in deplorable conditions while tending to the city's most impoverished - 1,800 individuals laid languishing in the wards, awaiting either death or becoming unwitting subjects for experimental and often lethal drugs.
Despite playing a pivotal role in desegregating the NYC hospital system and making crucial contributions to the quest for a tuberculosis cure, ultimately finding it at Sea View, these nurses were systematically erased from history. The Black Angels resurrect the voices of these remarkable women, placing them at the heart of a compelling narrative that honours their legacy and spirit of survival.
Thank you so much to the author - Maria Smilios for this enlightening and harrowing story, thank you for sharing the voices of so many people. Thank you so much to the whole team at Virago Press for sending the copy!
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