My account of the prison experiments, Acres of Skin, helped instill in me an abiding faith in well-researched journalism as an antidote to societal indiscretions and crimes. As I would discover years later, thousands of imprisoned Philadelphians had been used in a cross-section of unethical and dangerous scientific studies running the gamut from simple hair dye and athlete’s foot trials to radioactive isotope, dioxin, and US Army chemical warfare studies. Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of two previous novels, Wench and Balm, though Take My Hand is her first to be published in the UK. Unknown to the general public, the three city prisons had become a lucrative appendage of the University of Pennsylvania’s Medical School. The shock of cellblock life was eye-opening, but the most unexpected revelation was the sight of scores of inmates wrapped in bandages and medical tape.
I was just out of grad school and I accepted the challenge of starting a literacy program in the Philadelphia Prison System.
0 kommentar(er)
