IncorrigibleWilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, 2006 M01 1 - 172 páginas On a May morning in 1939, eighteen-year-old Velma Demerson and her lover were having breakfast when two police officers arrived to take her away. Her crime was loving a Chinese man, a “crime” that was compounded by her pregnancy and subsequent mixed-race child. Sentenced to a home for wayward girls, Demerson was then transferred (along with forty-six other girls) to Torontos Mercer Reformatory for Females. The girls were locked in their cells for twelve hours a day and required to work in the on-site laundry and factory. They also endured suspect medical examinations. When Demerson was finally released after ten months’ incarceration weeks of solitary confinement, abusive medical treatments, and the state’s apprehension of her child, her marriage to her lover resulted in the loss of her citizenship status. This is the story of how Demerson, and so many other girls, were treated as criminals or mentally defective individuals, even though their worst crime might have been only their choice of lover. Incorrigible is a survivor’s narrative. In a period that saw the rise of psychiatry, legislation against interracial marriage, and a populist movement that believed in eradicating disease and sin by improving the purity of Anglo-Saxon stock, Velma Demerson, like many young women, found herself confronted by powerful social forces. This is a history of some of those who fell through the cracks of the criminal code, told in a powerful first-person voice. |
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... doesn't spare us. Belmont Home health records are seemingly insufficient. Some of the girls must have been in the home for nearly two years. This is my third internal examination since my arrest. A second girl gets on the table and is ...
... doesn't assist Dr. Guest during internal treatments. This task is performed by Miss Allison, a tall woman with dark hair—perhaps in her twenties or thirties. The girls tell me that Miss Allison is the only Mercer attendant acting as ...
... doesn't want to upset me or herself by mentioning the unpleasant physical aspects of my imprisonment. Now my mother, always so bent on revenge against my father, has been caught in her own trap. We. Belmont girls have been here for about ...
... doesn't relate the terrible things she would like to do to my father. She's sure her mystic powers will lead him to disaster. This. afternoon finds my mother in the yard brushing down mattresses with kerosene to kill the bedbugs. Roy is ...
... doesn't she marry someone like that? She met him through a newspaper ad she'd inserted. She would never dream of answering an ad. “Let them come to me,” she says. Aside from playing up a good figure she makes no attempt to lure the ...
Contenido
CHAPTER 12 | 111 |
CHAPTER 13 | 121 |
CHAPTER 14 | 127 |
CHAPTER 15 | 135 |
CHAPTER 16 | 141 |
CHAPTER 17 | 149 |
CHAPTER 18 | 159 |
AFTERWORD | 165 |