“These are our children and we got to set them free”: A public health approach to reading reproductive justice in black literature

Abstract

This paper explores reproductive justice themes in different works of Black literature and juxtaposes that literature with modern scholarship to consider a reproductive justice agenda for public health researchers. Incorporating multiple disciplines including public health, critical geography, and anthropology, this paper goes on to suggest that public health researchers would benefit from engagement with works from beyond academia. Specifically looking into Black fiction, nonfiction, and autobiographical writing, this paper traces reproductive justice themes and suggests that attention to these themes will bolster academic public health scholarship aligned with the reproductive justice movement

Keywords:

• reproductive justice
• Black studies
• Black literature
• public health

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Professor Joe Fischel, the organizers and attendees of the 2023 Reproductive Justice Graduate Conference at Yale, Dara Hyacinthe, and Professor Ali Miller, who read, heard, and gave advice on previous versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Dedication

In memory of Dr. Dominique St.Juste, who taught me so much about reproductive justice, even without using the phrase.

Notes

1 Ruth Wilson Gilmore defines racism as the state-sanctioned and/or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death (2007).

Additional information

Funding

Funding provided by the NIH T32 Pre-Doctoral Fellowship.

Notes on contributors

Marie-Fatima Hyacinthe

Marie-Fatima Hyacinthe is a PhD candidate in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Program at the Yale School of Public Health. She also holds a Certificate from Yale’s Program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Marie-Fatima’s research interests span participatory action research, the impact of carceral systems on public health, reproductive justice, and the intersections of health justice and justice for people engaged in the sex trades. Prior to graduate school, Marie-Fatima worked in HIV advocacy and education. She was raised in Brooklyn, New York, where she still lives, and received her undergraduate degree from Harvard University.