Mama Might Be Better Off Dead

Download or read book Mama Might Be Better Off Dead written by Laurie Kaye Abraham and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-05-10 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A provocative examination of our health care delivery for the poor. . . . Such an honest and candid account is essential.” —Alex Kotlowitz, national bestselling author of There Are No Children Here Mama Might Be Better Off Dead immerses readers in the lives of four generations of a poor, African-American family from North Lawndale, Chicago, who are beset with the devastating illnesses that are all too common in America’s inner-cities. Headed by Jackie Banes, who oversees the care of a diabetic grandmother, a husband on kidney dialysis, an ailing father, and three children, the Banes family contends with countless medical crises. From visits to emergency rooms and dialysis units, to trials with home care, to struggles for Medicaid eligibility, Laurie Kaye Abraham chronicles their access—or lack thereof—to medical care. Their story reveals an inadequate health care system that is further undermined by the effects of poverty. Mama Might Be Better Off Dead is an unsettling, profound look at the human face of health care in America. This new edition includes an incisive foreword by David Ansell, a physician who worked at Mt. Sinai Hospital, where much of the Banes family’s narrative unfolds. “Goes to the heart of today’s problem. Powerful . . . deeply searching.” —Washington Post “A powerful indictment of the big business of medicine.” —Los Angeles Times “Abraham . . . illuminates the problems with passion and skill.” —Kirkus Reviews “This personally observed, lucid chronicle and call for reform of our ailing health system covers all levels of responsibility in the medical establishment.” —Publishers Weekly “Clearly identifies in human and policy terms how [healthcare] programs have failed a population desperately in need of help.” —Library Journal

Download or read book Ellen Foster (Oprah's Book Club) written by Kaye Gibbons and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2012-10-17 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Filled with lively humor, compassion, and intimacy." —Alice Hoffman, The New York Times Book Review "When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy." With that opening sentence we enter the childhood world of one of the most appealing young heroines in contemporary fiction. Her courage, her humor, and her wisdom are unforgettable as she tells her own story with stunning honesty and insight. An Oprah Book Club selection, this powerful novel has become an American classic. Winner of the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction and the Ernest Hemingway Foundation's Citation for Fiction.

Download or read book Yo' Mama's Disfunktional! written by Robin D.G. Kelley and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2001-01-04 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this vibrant, thought-provoking book, Kelley, "the preeminant historian of black popular culture writing today" (Cornel West) shows how the multicolored urban working class is the solution to the ills of American cities. He undermines widespread misunderstandings of black culture and shows how they have contributed to the failure of social policy to save our cities. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Download or read book Handbook of Health Social Work written by Sarah Gehlert and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2006-03-20 with total page 769 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Handbook of Health Social Work provides a comprehensive and evidence-based overview of contemporary social work practice in health care. Written from a wellness perspective, the chapters cover the spectrum of health social work settings with contributions from a wide range of experts. The resulting resource offers both a foundation for social work practice in health care and a guide for strategy, policy, and program development in proactive and actionable terms. Three sections present the material: The Foundations of Social Work in Health Care provides information that is basic and central to the operations of social workers in health care, including conceptual underpinnings; the development of the profession; the wide array of roles performed by social workers in health care settings; ethical issues and decision - making in a variety of arenas; public health and social work; health policy and social work; and the understanding of community factors in health social work. Health Social Work Practice: A Spectrum of Critical Considerations delves into critical practice issues such as theories of health behavior; assessment; effective communication with both clients and other members of health care teams; intersections between health and mental health; the effects of religion and spirituality on health care; family and health; sexuality in health care; and substance abuse. Health Social Work: Selected Areas of Practice presents a range of examples of social work practice, including settings that involve older adults; nephrology; oncology; chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and HIV/AIDS; genetics; end of life care; pain management and palliative care; and alternative treatments and traditional healers. The first book of its kind to unite the entire body of health social work knowledge, the Handbook of Health Social Work is a must-read for social work educators, administrators, students, and practitioners.

Download or read book Dead End in Norvelt written by Jack Gantos and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR). This book was released on 2011-09-13 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dead End in Norvelt is the winner of the 2012 Newbery Medal for the year's best contribution to children's literature and the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction! Melding the entirely true and the wildly fictional, Dead End in Norvelt is a novel about an incredible two months for a kid named Jack Gantos, whose plans for vacation excitement are shot down when he is "grounded for life" by his feuding parents, and whose nose spews bad blood at every little shock he gets. But plenty of excitement (and shocks) are coming Jack's way once his mom loans him out to help a fiesty old neighbor with a most unusual chore—typewriting obituaries filled with stories about the people who founded his utopian town. As one obituary leads to another, Jack is launced on a strange adventure involving molten wax, Eleanor Roosevelt, twisted promises, a homemade airplane, Girl Scout cookies, a man on a trike, a dancing plague, voices from the past, Hells Angels . . . and possibly murder. Endlessly surprising, this sly, sharp-edged narrative is the author at his very best, making readers laugh out loud at the most unexpected things in a dead-funny depiction of growing up in a slightly off-kilter place where the past is present, the present is confusing, and the future is completely up in the air.

Download or read book Mama written by Terry McMillan and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The explosive novel that introduced #1 New York Times bestselling author Terry McMillan-now in a new trade edition.

Download or read book The Death Gap written by David A. Ansell, MD and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-06-16 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We hear plenty about the widening income gap between the rich and the poor in America and about the expanding distance separating the haves and the have-nots. But when detailing the many things that the poor have not, we often overlook the most critical—their health. The poor die sooner. Blacks die sooner. And poor urban blacks die sooner than almost all other Americans. In nearly four decades as a doctor at hospitals serving some of the poorest communities in Chicago, David A. Ansell, MD, has witnessed firsthand the lives behind these devastating statistics. In The Death Gap, he gives a grim survey of these realities, drawn from observations and stories of his patients. While the contrasts and disparities among Chicago’s communities are particularly stark, the death gap is truly a nationwide epidemic—as Ansell shows, there is a thirty-five-year difference in life expectancy between the healthiest and wealthiest and the poorest and sickest American neighborhoods. If you are poor, where you live in America can dictate when you die. It doesn’t need to be this way; such divisions are not inevitable. Ansell calls out the social and cultural arguments that have been raised as ways of explaining or excusing these gaps, and he lays bare the structural violence—the racism, economic exploitation, and discrimination—that is really to blame. Inequality is a disease, Ansell argues, and we need to treat and eradicate it as we would any major illness. To do so, he outlines a vision that will provide the foundation for a healthier nation—for all. As the COVID-19 mortality rates in underserved communities proved, inequality is all around us, and often the distance between high and low life expectancy can be a matter of just a few blocks. Updated with a new foreword by Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot and an afterword by Ansell, The Death Gap speaks to the urgency to face this national health crisis head-on.