Women, Literature, and Medicine


compiled by: Deborah Grayson, PhD
             Department of English
             University of Rochester


Abraham, Laurie Kaye.  Mama Might Be Better Off Dead: The Failure of
Healthcare in Urban America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Achterberg, Jeanne. Woman as Healer. Boston, Mass.: Random House, 1990.

Albert, Gail. Matters of Chance. New York: Putnam, 1982.

Apple, Rima.  ed. Women, Health and Medicine in America: An Historical
Handbook. New York: Garland, 1990.

Brown, Linda Braggs. Rainbow 'Round My Shoulder.

Brown, Karen McCarthy. Mama Lola: a Voodoo Priestess in Brooklyn. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1991.

Butler, Octavia. Kindred. Boston: Beacon Press, 1988.

---, Wildseed. New York: Popular Library, 1980.

Cayleff, Susan. Wash and be Healed: The Water Cure Movement and Women's
Health. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1987

---, Wings of Gauze: Women of Color and the Experience of Health and
Illness. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1993.

Conde, Maryse. I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem. Charlottesville: University
of Virginia Press, 1992.

Donegan, Jane. Midwives and Medical Med: A History of Inter-Preofessional
Rivalries and Women's Rights. New York: Schocken Books, 1977.

Dove, Rita. Darker Face of the Earth. Brownsville, OR: Sky Line Press, 1994.

Ehrenreich, Barbara and Deirdre English. Complaints and Disorders: The
Sexual Politics of Sickness. Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press, 1973.

---, For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts' Advice to Women. Garden
Cuty: Anchor Press, 1978.

Fisher, Sue. In the Patient's Best Interest: Women and the Politics of
Medical Decisions. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1986.


Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." this short story is
widely anthologized.  Try the Norton Anthology of Women's Literature.

Hoffman, Alice. At Risk. New York: Putnam, 1988.

Hughes, Muriel.  Woman Healers in Medieval Life and Literature.  Freeport,
NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1968.

Hurd-Mead, Kate Campbell.  A History of Women in Medicine:  The Earliest
Times to the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century. Haddam, Conn.: The Haddam
Press, 1938.

Jones, Gayle, Corregidora. Boston: Beacon Press, 1986.

---, Eva's Man. New York: Random House, 1976.

Klass, Perri. Other Women's Children. New York: Random House, 1990.

Lightfoot, Sarah Lawrence.  Balm in Gilead: Journey of a Healer.  Reading,
Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishers, 1988.

Literature and Medicine (journal). 14.1 (Spring 1995). This is a special
issue on literature, health, and women.

Lorde, Audre.  The Cancer Journals. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1980.

McLain, Carol S. ed. Women as Healers: Cross Cultural Perspectives. New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989.

Moldow, Gloria. Women Doctors in Gilded-Age Washington: Race, Gender, and
Professionalization. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987.

Morrison, Toni.  Beloved. New York: Knopff, 1987.


Perrone, Bobette.  Medicine Women, Curanderas and Women Doctors. Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1989.

Piercy, Marge. Woman on the Edge of Time.

Saxton, Marsha and Florence Howe. With Wings: An Anthology of Literature By
and about Women with Disabilities. New York: Feminist Press at CUNY, 1987.

Sherwin, Susan. No Longer Patient: Feminist Ethics and Health. Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1992.

Shields, Carol. The Stone Diaries. Penguin Books, 1994.

Snow, Loudell.  Walkin Over Medicine. Boulder: Westview Press, 1993.

Walker, ALice.  Possesing the Secret of Joy. New York: Harcourt, Brace
Jovanovich, 1992.

Wear, Delease and Lois Lacivita Nixon, Literary Anatomies: Women's Bodies
and Health in Literature. Albany: SUNY Press, 1994.

WIlson, Harriet E. Our Nig. New York: Random House, 1993.