Admit One: An American Scrapbook

Download or read book Admit One: An American Scrapbook written by Martha Collins and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2016-03-31 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Admit One: An American Scrapbook,Martha Collins relentlessly traces the history of scientific racism from the 1904 St. Louis World's Fairthrough the eugenics movement of the 1920s. Using a wide variety of documentary sources, including her Illinois grandfather's newspaper, Collins constructs a "scrapbook" of fragments, quotations, narrative passages, and lyrical riffs that reveal startling connections between the Fair, the Bronx Zoo, and ideas that culminated in anti-immigration, anti-miscegenation, and eugenic sterilization laws in 1924. Among the book's recurring elements are evolving portraits of the "exhibited" African Ota Benga, the sterilization victim Carrie Buck, and the eugenicist Madison Grant, whose reach extended to Nazi Germany. Following the practice begun in her book-length poem Blue Front and continued in her exploration of race in White Papers, Collins combines careful research with innovative poetic techniques to create an arresting account of a segment of American history that haunts us even today. Admit One is a brilliant, troubling, necessary read.