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Reviews tagging 'Rape'
Pure America: Eugenics and the Making of Modern Virginia by Elizabeth Catte
1 review
savvylit's review
dark
informative
slow-paced
4.5
Pure America delves into the unsettlingly recent and intentionally repressed history that shaped the state of Virginia. Less than a hundred years ago, a handful of men with power decided to use a made-up rhetoric to control the poor and people of color. They designated poor people as imbeciles and people of color as inferior and committed them to two institutions: the Lynchburg Colony and Western State Lunatic Asylum. Once these people had been forcibly committed, the next step was usually sterilization. Forced sterilization was not a secret, it was a process that had legal basis and was justified by the powers that be as a way of maintaining the "purity" of the population.
As if that weren't horrific enough, Catte also traces the way that the legacy of eugenics still lingers in Virginia today. Many of the laws of the peak eugenics era are only just now being acknowledged or repealed. For instance, as recently as 2019, Virginia required that anyone applying for a marriage license state their race. This was a remnant of the era in which state officials were obsessed with tracking the "intermingling" of races.
Overall, this was a disturbing and enlightening glimpse into just one state's horrific history. Sadly, similar books could most likely be written about the other 49 U.S. states as well. As Catte shows in Pure America, this sort of deeply disturbing era in history is not only incredibly recent but is completely glossed over as an aberration -- rather than something that still deeply influences our lives today.
Full disclosure: Elizabeth Catte and I live in the same area of Virginia. And that's the region that she focuses on when delving into the history of eugenics in the state. Thus, perhaps this book was even more interesting to me because I am very familiar with the places that she discussed.
As if that weren't horrific enough, Catte also traces the way that the legacy of eugenics still lingers in Virginia today. Many of the laws of the peak eugenics era are only just now being acknowledged or repealed. For instance, as recently as 2019, Virginia required that anyone applying for a marriage license state their race. This was a remnant of the era in which state officials were obsessed with tracking the "intermingling" of races.
Overall, this was a disturbing and enlightening glimpse into just one state's horrific history. Sadly, similar books could most likely be written about the other 49 U.S. states as well. As Catte shows in Pure America, this sort of deeply disturbing era in history is not only incredibly recent but is completely glossed over as an aberration -- rather than something that still deeply influences our lives today.
Full disclosure: Elizabeth Catte and I live in the same area of Virginia. And that's the region that she focuses on when delving into the history of eugenics in the state. Thus, perhaps this book was even more interesting to me because I am very familiar with the places that she discussed.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Forced institutionalization, Racism, Classism, and Confinement
Moderate: Rape
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