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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... father, has been caught in her own trap. We. Belmont girls have been here for about a week and we're having our half-hour exercise time in the yard. Because we're in separate wards and at different dining-room tables, this is the only ...
... father. The full storm of her feelings, her humiliation, must be told over and over again. “The doctor said I would go into consumption if I continued the way I was going. It was decided I should go to England with your grandmother. On ...
... father's infidelity was established by the court at the divorce hearing. And his crimes continue. “He hadn't sent me ... father had a disease, that's why he wasn't sleeping with me.” My mother refuses to consider she wasn't desirable to ...
... father despite the prejudice against South European foreigners. They lived upstairs over the store. Later, she borrowed money from her relatives and helped my father, together with a partner, buy a building in a central location across ...
... father's name insured my security, and I was transported to New Brunswick. I was fifteen then and lived with my father for a year and a half. I'm actually not one for taking chances, possibly due to my mother's stories of her narrow ...
Contenido
CHAPTER 12 | 111 |
CHAPTER 13 | 121 |
CHAPTER 14 | 127 |
CHAPTER 15 | 135 |
CHAPTER 16 | 141 |
CHAPTER 17 | 149 |
CHAPTER 18 | 159 |
AFTERWORD | 165 |