Showing 1 - 10 of 54 results for Harriet Squier

Parish Doctor

Brown, Sterling

Last Updated: Dec-15-1995
Annotated by:
Squier, Harriet

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

An African-American physician from Louisiana provides care to patients whose ideas of traditional healing conflict with those of Western medicine. An observer describes how this Parish Doctor negotiates a compromise between his formal training and the beliefs and expectations of his patients. He accepts their black hens and claims to have "conjuh knowledge" while providing competent care.

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A History of the Body

Foster, Linda Nemec

Last Updated: Jan-20-1998
Annotated by:
Squier, Harriet

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

A mother reflects on the developing body of her unborn child, her own contribution to its development, and her hopes that her daughter will grow to cherish her body and to know the love it can hold.

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Womansong

Johnson, Marilyn

Last Updated: Oct-07-1997
Annotated by:
Squier, Harriet

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

The conflicting experiences of puberty for girls is the subject of this poem. A girl's bodily self awareness coincides with society's devaluation of a girl's sexuality. The conflicts between innocence, dirtiness, sexuality, and learning "to love yourself again" constitute the complexity of coming of age for young women.

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Notes from the Delivery Room

Pastan, Linda

Last Updated: May-15-2002
Annotated by:
Squier, Harriet

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry — Secondary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

Notes from the Delivery Room is a short poem that presents a series of metaphors commonly used to describe childbirth. It is a crisis, like the woman in a comic book tied to the railroad tracks; hard labor with physician as foreman; a harvest, like pulling potatoes from the earth; a magical event, like pulling a rabbit from a hat.

Throughout the poem, the reader feels the tension between these images, and the reality of bright lights, restraints, pain, and medical staff as they impinge upon an intensely personal experience. Finally the speaker abandons her metaphorical language and becomes simply herself, greeting her barefoot child. She and her child are finally human beings unencumbered by symbolism, not representing anything but themselves.

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Sunday Morning

Carr, Pat

Last Updated: Nov-24-1998
Annotated by:
Squier, Harriet

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

Sunday Morning is a short story about childbirth. In this story the mother is assaulted by the lights, sounds, and ritual of the delivery room. She is strapped to a table and forced to endure indignity, labor pains, and muscle cramps only to have her newborn child taken away from her. At the end of the story the narrator claims possession of her newborn son, excluding her husband from ownership, despite her sense that this child is a stranger to her.

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First, You Cry, excerpt from

Rollin, Betty

Last Updated: Aug-21-2006
Annotated by:
Squier, Harriet

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Autobiography

Summary:

In First, You Cry, an autobiography by Betty Rollin, a well-to-do television broadcaster adjusts to the loss of a breast from cancer. The author uses humor to deal with and recount her loss as well as her anger, as she slowly begins to adjust. This excerpt deals with the author’s fixation on finding the right breast prosthesis.

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A Palsied Girl Goes to the Beach

Hunt, Nan

Last Updated: Oct-27-1994
Annotated by:
Squier, Harriet

Primary Category: Literature / Poetry

Genre: Poem

Summary:

In this poem, a young woman with cerebral palsy must withstand the rude stares of children and the withdrawal of adults as they watch her walk to the beach. The narrator has never had a normal appearing body. She likens herself to objects in nature: mantises, crabs, coquinas. While these comparisons are not exactly flattering, they allow her to feel that she belongs in the world of nature. Only in the natural world are her jerky movements considered normal. Sitting on the beach she feels "inconsequential." Yet, the way her body is able to "stay the waves" and "more than stay-Resist," suggests that she is not inconsequential.

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Imelda

Selzer, Richard

Last Updated: Mar-05-2002
Annotated by:
Squier, Harriet

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

A physician recounts an experience he had assisting an American plastic surgeon as he performed charity surgery in Honduras. One young woman, Imelda, dies of malignant hyperthermia prior to surgical repair of her cleft lip. After her death, the surgeon returns to the patient to finish the surgery. The narrator tries to imagine the surgeon's motivation for this act, as well as the family's reaction to it.

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Fetishes

Selzer, Richard

Last Updated: Nov-05-1999
Annotated by:
Squier, Harriet

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Short Story

Summary:

The wife of an anthropologist can not bring herself to confess to her husband that she had all her upper teeth removed many years before when he was away for an extended period. When she is hospitalized for a hysterectomy, she is told she must remove her dentures. She is appalled that her husband might see her without her teeth and nearly refuses the operation. She is helped by an Indian physician with a limp who understands her needs.

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The Hypnotist

Schneider-Braus, Kathleen

Last Updated: Nov-24-1998
Annotated by:
Squier, Harriet

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Essay

Summary:

A psychiatrist who is skilled at hypnotism is asked by an oncologist to hypnotize a difficult patient prior to a bone marrow biopsy. The psychiatrist is able to achieve excellent pain relief through hypnotism, much to her own surprise. She is exhausted by the mental energy she has expended in this experience, and is discredited by the oncologist, who doesn't really believe that hypnotism is anything special.

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