Harvard Book Store Presents Dr. Uché Blackstock

Coming on January 25

Run Time: 90 min.

Harvard Book Store Presents:

Dr. Uché Blackstock

presenting

Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons
with Racism in Medicine

in conversation with RENÉE GRAHAM

Harvard Book Store welcomes DR. UCHÉ BLACKSTOCK—founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equity—for a discussion of her latest book Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine. She will be joined in conversation by RENÉE GRAHAM—associate editor and columnist for the Boston Globe.

Ticketing

There are two ticket options for this event.

Book Included: Admission for one and a signed copy of Legacy.

Admission Only: Admission for one

About Legacy

Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, it never occurred to Uché Blackstock and her twin sister, Oni, that they would be anything but physicians. In the 1980s, their mother headed an organization of Black women physicians, and for years the girls watched these fiercely intelligent women in white coats tend to their patients and neighbors, host community health fairs, cure ills, and save lives.

What Dr. Uché Blackstock did not understand as a child—or learn about at Harvard Medical School, where she and her sister had followed in their mother’s footsteps, making them the first Black mother-daughter legacies from the school—were the profound and long-standing systemic inequities that mean just 2 percent of all U.S. physicians today are Black women; the racist practices and policies that ensure Black Americans have far worse health outcomes than any other group in the country; and the flawed system that endangers the well-being of communities like theirs. As an ER physician, and later as a professor in academic medicine, Dr. Blackstock became profoundly aware of the systemic barriers that Black patients and physicians continue to face.

Legacy is a journey through the critical intersection of racism and healthcare. At once a searing indictment of our healthcare system, a generational family memoir, and a call to action, Legacyis Dr. Blackstock’s odyssey from child to medical student to practicing physician—to finally seizing her own power as a health equity advocate against the backdrop of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Praise for Legacy

“Uché Blackstock has made something abundantly clear: If you want to understand a society, look at its hospitals. Dr. Blackstock, one of the most insightful and impactful public voices in medicine, shares her remarkable personal story and her profound insight regarding race, gender, and health inequality. We meet a person who is vulnerable, human, and brilliant. However, this book is so much more than a compelling memoir. These are marching orders. Armed with concrete steps for addressing inequality, readers will be inspired to become better stewards of our communities and society. Simply put, Legacy makes room for us to freedom dream anew.” —Imani Perry, National Book Award-winning author of South to America

“Uché Blackstock has gifted us with a brilliant and timely wake-up call of a memoir. In her capable hands, a light is shone upon the deep inequities of our medical system. But more than a lament, this book is a battle cry. And like Dr. Blackstock, so many of us will find through reading Legacy, that we are ready for the fight.” —Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award-winning author of Brown Girl Dreaming and Red at the Bone

“Legacy is an illuminating and stirring journey of a book. The illuminating: the devastating cycle of racism in our healthcare system. The stirring: the inimitable family and career of Dr. Uché Blackstock and her quest to dismantle medical racism.” —Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist

Mask Policy

Masks are encouraged but not required for this event.

Dr. Uché Blackstock

Dr. Uché Blackstock is a physician and thought leader on bias and racism in healthcare. She appears on air regularly as an MSNBC medical contributor and is the founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equity, as well as a former associate professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine and the former faculty director for recruitment, retention, and inclusion in the Office of Diversity Affairs at NYU School of Medicine. Dr. Blackstock received both her undergraduate and medical degrees from Harvard University, making her and her twin sister, Oni, the first Black mother-daughter legacies from Harvard Medical School. Dr. Blackstock currently lives in her hometown of Brooklyn, New York, with her two school-age children.

Renée Graham

Renée Graham is a Boston Globe opinion columnist, associate editor, and author of the weekly newsletter, OUTTAKES. She has been a columnist since 2016 and writes about race and racism, domestic violence, LGBTQ issues and discrimination, police violence, gun reform, and politics. She has written for Essencemagazine and Radcliffe Magazine and her essays have appeared in the books, Out in America: A Portrait of Gay and Lesbian Life and Wake Up America: Black Women on the Future of Democracy. A frequent guest on MSNBC, Graham has been a prominent commentator in numerous acclaimed documentaries including the Peabody Award-winning We Need to Talk About Cosby on Showtime; The Two Killings of Sam Cooke on Netflix; CNN’s See It Loud: The History of Black Television, and 1968: The Year That Changed America.