Might Zora Neale Hurston's Janie Woods Be Dying of Rabies? Considerations from Historical Medicine

Abstract

Janie's mad dying husband Tea Cake bites her, an event their doctor warned could also infect her. We think the risk to be negligible, but I argue that in the ignorance and dread of the 1930s the threat was meant seriously. It is also consistent with the ambiguity and Trickster character in African folktales influencing Hurston. Janie's story thus becomes her testament; perhaps her courage also speaks to those suffering chronic illness today.

Why Bioethics Has a Race Problem

“…Over the past half century they have published very little on the African American experience or race relations in medicine. From 1995 to 2015, for example, Literature and Medicine , the official journal of the Institute for the Medical Humanities, published one article that bears directly on the modern African American experience, an important essay on the health‐related consequences of the stereotype of “the strong black woman.” Another essay explores whether a fictional black character might be dying of rabies . Two more articles discuss race and disease in Africa during the late nineteenth‐century colonial period .…”

“…18 Another essay explores whether a fictional black character might be dying of rabies. 19 Two more articles discuss race and disease in Africa during the late nineteenth-century colonial period. 20 This is the output of pieces with race at their center from this journal over a period of twenty years.…”