Community Book Club and Guest Author Q & A with Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens

CCCN Community Book Club Event with Guest Author Q & A

On March 26th, CCCN is honored to discuss the work of Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens and welcome her to the Central Coast Via Zoom!  Join CCCN in reading Dr. Owens Award Winning book Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology. **Tickets include BOTH the FB Book Club (Kicks off 2/4, First meeting starts 2/18-3/18), and Zoom with Author.

Purpose

The goal of the CCCN Community Book Club event is to inform, educate, and advocate on topics from Preconception through the first year of parenting through educational series providing a safe environment where discussion can take place in a respectful manner.

About the Book

"The accomplishments of pioneering doctors such as John Peter Mettauer, James Marion Sims, and Nathan Bozeman are well documented. It is also no secret that these nineteenth-century gynecologists performed experimental cesarean sections, ovariotomies, and obstetric fistula repairs primarily on poor and powerless women. Medical Bondage breaks new ground by exploring how and why physicians denied these women their full humanity yet valued them as “medical superbodies'' highly suited for medical experimentation.  In Medical Bondage, Cooper Owens examines a wide range of scientific literature and less formal communications in which gynecologists created and disseminated medical fictions about their patients, such as their belief that black enslaved women could withstand pain better than white “ladies.” Even as they were advancing medicine, these doctors were legitimizing, for decades to come, groundless theories related to whiteness and blackness, men and women, and the inferiority of other races or nationalities.  Medical Bondage moves between southern plantations and northern urban centers to reveal how nineteenth-century American ideas about race, health, and status influenced doctor-patient relationships in sites of healing like slave cabins, medical colleges, and hospitals. It also retells the story of black enslaved women and of Irish immigrant women from the perspective of these exploited groups and thus restores for us a picture of their lives." Source: https://www.deirdrecooperowens.com/medicalbondage

Structure

Participants are responsible for reading Medical Bondage: Race, Gender and the Origins of American Gynecology. We will review a chapter a week starting Feb 14- March 18.  We will come together in a Private FB Group via Zoom for discussion with guest speakers. Discussions are primarily participant-led.

Topics for discussion can include:

• Discuss and review racism, implicit biases, and racial inequities today in medicine.
• Review Black Birthing Bill of Rights.
• Discuss action and plans we can implement today, in a week, in a month, long-term in Maternal Health as individuals and providers in our places of work and community.

Participants

Participants in this Book Club are open to all. Highly encouraged for Medical, Birth/Wellness, Healthcare providers. Must register by March 20th to participate in a LIVE Q & A with the Author. We would like to acknowledge that this book and discussions will discuss content that can be sensitive. Please take extra care while reading acknowledging space to pause and for self-care as needed. Resources available for self-care.

Participation

Please select a copy of the book online in paperback, borrowed, or in e-format. Participation is encouraged, but not required, during the weekly discussions. Participants must agree to abide by the Book Club Ground Rules to ensure safe, respectful, and engaging discussion and participation.

This book can be purchased here https://www.deirdrecooperowens.com/medicalbondage, or on Amazon in paperback version and e-format on various web resources.

Each ticket is automatically entered into a giveaway for 1 autographed copy of Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and American Gynecology.

Meetings

Book Club meets every Thursday in the Private FB Group of each week from Feb 18 through March 18 with Moderator and Guest Speaker. The sessions last from 5:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Link available with registration.

Live Q & A with Guest Author Dierdre Cooper Owens will be held on March 26, 2021, 6:30-7:30 PM PST. Link available with registration.

General Meeting Format

We will meet via zoom and stream into private FB group. * A link will be given with registration. Time is given for members to share their impressions of the book. CCCN facilitator introduces a general discussion question and guest speakers. When needed, CCCN guides discussion in the groups and provides additional questions for consideration.

Book Club Ground Rules

Meetings start promptly at 5:30 PM in the Private FB Group. The recordings will be left up until the closing of the book club event on March 26, 2021.

• Please take extra care while reading acknowledging space to pause and for self-care as needed.
• Please do not interrupt when someone is speaking. Be courteous of others’ viewpoints.
• Disagreements are okay, but rudeness is not.
• Allow everyone in your group an equal opportunity to contribute.
• No one person should monopolize the conversation. Stay on topic during conversations.

Moderator:  Zabrina Cox (she/her), President of Central Coast Childbirth Network is a Registered Nurse, Doula and Childbirth Educator. She has her B.S. in Child Development and Minor in Psychology from Cal Poly University. She has lived on the Central Coast for 17 years.

Thank you for your support! 100% of proceeds go to support Central Coast Childbirth Network, INC. Our mission is to provide a diverse network of birth and wellness professionals who are committed to inform, educate and advocate for the individual needs of Central Coast families from preconception through the first year of parenting.