The success of O’Connor’s book comes not just from the gripping tales of St. Louis politics, with its palpable racial overtones, but from the personal recollections of the hospital’s staff and community leaders, who viewed the hospital with awe and reverence.
As the morbidity and mortality mounts, this country can demonstrate that it understands how structural racism has contributed to the disproportionate burden of disease borne by the Black and Indigenous People of Color community at large.
The Common Reader, a publication of Washington University in St. Louis, offers the best in reviews, articles and creative non-fiction engaging the essential debates and issues of our time.
The real Elvis is American, remember, and America is a consumer society. The desires we project, the stuff we buy—that is what feels real to us. It lets us have any Elvis we want. He left plenty of kitsch in his wake, plenty of pseudo-religion, plenty of Elvis jokes—but he was not, is not, a joke. He lived our contradictions, released our inhibitions, and lost himself in the process.
