Pure America: Eugenics and the Making of Modern Virginia
Longlisted for the 2022 PEN America John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction, a "riveting and tightly argued" history of eugenics and its ripple effects, by acclaimed historian Elizabeth Catte.
Between 1927 and 1979, more than 8,000 people were involuntarily sterilized in five hospitals across the state of Virginia. From this plain and terrible fact springs Elizabeth Catte's Pure America, a sweeping, unsparing history of eugenics in Virginia, and by extension the United States. Virginia's eugenics program was not the misguided initiative of well-meaning men of the day, writes Catte, it was a manifestation of white supremacy. It was a form of employment insurance. It was a means of controlling "troublesome" women and a philosophy that helped remove poor people from valuable land. It was cruel and it was wrong. As was amply evidenced by her acclaimed 2018 book What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia, Catte has no room for excuses; no patience for equivocation. What does it mean for modern America, she asks here, that such buildings are given the second chance that 8,000 citizens never got?
"Grounded, well-rendered, and highly disturbing," Pure America is another necessary corrective to the historical record, a must-read for anyone concerned with how to repair its damage.
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"In this grounded, well-rendered, and highly disturbing account, Catte examines the period from the late 1920s to 1979 at the Western State Lunatic Asylum....A well-told, richly contextualized investigation of an appalling episode in American history."--Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"Catte did not come to play. This is historical research at its most compelling and its most accessible. Fully academic yet fully human, Catte makes the historical personal, blending the past with her lived experiences in the present. Catte's first book, What You are Getting Wrong About Appalachia, proved she could be the voice for a story in desperate need of a better narrator, and in Pure America, she has done it again."--Sara Beth West
"Pure America exposes Virginia's shameful past, but it also highlights how much the present continues to be stamped in its image. ...Catte's dive into the houses eugenics built demonstrates just how thoroughly and pitilessly a certain kind of capital-backed white knowing shapes the country's built environment to this day."--Ellen Wayland-Smith, Boston Review
A Tom Beer pick of "Small Books That Shine a Big Light"--Kirkus
"Masterfully written."--Mary Elizabeth Williams, Salon
"Persuasive and compelling."--A National Book Review "5 Hot Books" pick
"Riveting [...] Slim but capacious."--Wall Street Journal
"Catte weaves a haunting but necessary story of how eugenics shaped and continues to shape her community, as well as how eager some in the community are to move on and forget."--Chris Hammer, Christian Century
