“It was about making a new kind of slave”: corporeal sufferings of Afro-American woman in Megan Giddings’ Lakewood

Abstract

The present article investigates the incapacitating bodily experiences of an unconsented African American research subject Lena Johnson in a Lakewood healthcare project by closely reading Megan Giddings’ novel Lakewood (2020). By Portraying the impact of various medical experiments that incarnate pernicious effects on Lena’s body, the deft fiction reminds the readers how the healthcare institutions in the US have been replete with the stereotypical racial beliefs. Afro-American literature while addressing the irrefutable presence of racial culture in the American society, has further emerged to portray the complex narrative experiences of black women in healthcare institutions. In this context, by drawing the theoretical postulates of Elizabeth Grosz and other theoreticians of varying importance, the article seeks to incorporate facets of corporeal feminism (ethical, ontological, and metaphorical dimensions) as its conceptual framework to examine the bodily intricacies and experiential agonies of Afro-American women in healthcare institutions.