Who doesn’t love an inspirational story about determination, grit, and fighting the odds? We included a couple of titles for younger readers in your life. Add these books to your summer reading list:
GRIT: A Pediatrician’s Odyssey From a Soviet Camp to Harvard, by Regina Kesler, MD
The true story of a teenager and her family fleeing their hometown in Poland during WWII, and after deportation to the Soviet Union, becoming slave laborers, then refugees in Central Asia. The book brings to life a remarkable young woman who struggles with existential war challenges to help her family survive, while unflinchingly pursuing her goal of becoming a physician. Coming to America in 1947, she fights on to finally enter Harvard Medical School.
The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore
In the early 20th century, women and girls were recruited to work in radium dial factories, where they would sit around tables and paint radium on clock faces and watches to make the numbers easier to see. The women would moisten their paintbrushes in their mouths before dipping them into the paint. It was a good gig, until the women began to fall ill and die agonizing deaths from radium poisoning. In this book, bestselling writer Kate Moore tells the story of these women and their fight to be recognized and compensated by the companies that employed them.
This book comes in a young readers edition, perfect for children ages 9-12.
RX by Rachel Lindsay
In this graphic-style memoir, artist and writer Rachel Lindsay explores the relationship between treatments for mental illness, mental illness as a commodity, and the “often unavoidable choice between sanity and happiness.” Diagnosed with bipolar disorder in her early 20s, she finds herself working for an advertising company, writing ads for an antidepressant drug. Increasingly stressed by her professional life, she winds up in the hospital; this is her story of finding a path through the pain.Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor’s Reflections on Race and Medicine by Damon Tweedy, MD
Damon Tweedy’s memoir describes the challenges he faced as an African American in the medical community — both as a physician and a patient — and how health disparities negatively impact African American patients.Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, by Brenda Maddox
In 1962, Maurice Wilkins, Francis Crick, and James Watson received the Nobel Prize, but it was Rosalind Franklin's data and photographs of DNA that led to their discovery. Brenda Maddox tells a powerful story of a remarkably single-minded, forthright, and tempestuous young woman who, at the age of fifteen, decided she was going to be a scientist, but who was airbrushed out of the greatest scientific discovery of the twentieth century.
Young readers might be interested in this version of Rosalind Franklin’s story, written especially for 9-11 year olds: Rosalind Franklin (A Life Story), by Michael Ford
Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter, by Adeline Yen Mah
A memoir. Born in 1937 in a port city a thousand miles north of Shanghai, Adeline Yen Mah was the youngest child of an affluent Chinese family who enjoyed rare privileges during a time of political and cultural upheaval. But wealth and position could not shield Adeline from a childhood of appalling emotional abuse at the hands of a cruel and manipulative stepmother. Determined to survive through her enduring faith in family unity, Adeline struggled for independence as she moved from Hong Kong to England and eventually to the United States to become a physician and writer.
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Stephanie Weiner
Director, Digital Strategy & Engagement
Association of American Medical Colleges
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