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How Cancer Crossed the Color Line 1st Edition, Kindle Edition
Spanning more than a century, the book offers a sweeping account of the forces that simultaneously defined cancer as an intensely individualized and personal experience linked to whites, often categorizing people across the color line as racial types lacking similar personal dimensions. Wailoo describes how theories of risk evolved with changes in women's roles, with African-American and new immigrant migration trends, with the growth of federal cancer surveillance, and with diagnostic advances, racial protest, and contemporary health activism. The book examines such powerful and transformative social developments as the mass black migration from rural south to urban north in the 1920s and 1930s, the World War II experience at home and on the war front, and the quest for civil rights and equality in health in the 1950s and '60s. It also explores recent controversies that illuminate the diversity of cancer challenges in America, such as the high cancer rates among privileged women in Marin County, California, the heavy toll of prostate cancer among black men, and the questions about why Vietnamese-American women's cervical cancer rates are so high.
A pioneering study, How Cancer Crossed the Color Line gracefully documents how race and gender became central motifs in the birth of cancer awareness, how patterns and perceptions changed over time, and how the "war on cancer" continues to be waged along the color line.
- ISBN-109780199752911
- ISBN-13978-0199752911
- Edition1st
- PublisherOxford University Press
- Publication dateFebruary 1, 2011
- LanguageEnglish
- File size1.4 MB
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
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Review
"A model of how to seamlessly weave together the complex intersectionality of class, gender and race. How Cancer Crossed the Color Line is a masterful account of how the reward structures of science funding, the profession of medicine, era-specific cultural stereotypes of women's 'proper place,' and shifting notions of racialized bodies have all converged to shape our views of who is at risk for cancer, and why."--Troy Duster, New York University"Keith Wailoo deftly and provocatively places medical and public health studies into conversation with films, novels, and autobiographical narratives. In so doing, he offers a stunning historical account of the dramatic shifts in popular and epidemiological consciousness about cancer and racial difference. It is an account that provides a much-needed historical context to contemporary debates in the genomic sciences about race and racial difference."--Michael Omi, University of California, Berkeley"Illuminating changing scientific and popular conceptions about who is at risk of cancer and why, How Cancer Crossed the Color Line compellingly argues that the answer to this question--and the epidemiologic data that underpins it are together shaped as much if not more by the racial, class, gender and broader political ideologies and conflicts of the times as by the actual occurrence--detected or not--of cancer itself. Offering rich detail and insightful examples, Wailoo provides an eye-opening account of the making and contesting of scientific knowledge that is essential reading for anyone engaged in cancer research, prevention, and treatment or concerned about health inequities more broadly."--Nancy Krieger, Harvard School of Public Health"A nuanced study of a complex subject."--Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B0058C6FM2
- Publisher : Oxford University Press; 1st edition (February 1, 2011)
- Publication date : February 1, 2011
- Language : English
- File size : 1.4 MB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 260 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,997,177 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,385 in Medical History
- #1,521 in Health Care Delivery (Kindle Store)
- #5,412 in Science History & Philosophy
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Keith Andrew Wailoo is Henry Putnam University Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University where he teaches in the Department of History and the School of Public and International Affairs. He is an award-winning author on drugs and drug policy; race, science, and health; and genetics and society; and he is widely known for insightful public writing and media commentaries on history of medicine, pandemics and society, and health affairs in the U.S.
In 2021, he received the Dan David Prize for his “influential body of historical scholarship focused on race, science, and health equity; on the social implications of medical innovation; and on the politics of disease.” In 2021, he was also elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is former Chair of the Princeton Department of History, the former Vice Dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and current President of the American Association for the History of Medicine.
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- Reviewed in the United States on June 11, 2015This is really one of my favorite books on cancer. As a breast cancer survivor and blogger, I noticed a few differences within the cancer community when it came to issues of race. This book brought so much clarity and understanding to me about how we got to where we are in the discussion of cancer and it shows how far we have to go.
Well-researched and well-written. I am so thankful for this book. I recommend it to cancer survivors all the time. (if they're interested in learning more about the community)