(I do not rate memoirs.)
The beginning of this memoir held so many deeply profound thoughts. .It set my expectations really high for this memoir. While the memoir didn't disappoint, I generated different expectations for what the narrative would hold than the reality. I learned so much from this memoir even if I created unrealistic expectations for it.

So many personal and inspirational layers filled this book. Not only was this a story of one’s Mother and her past but the story of the next generation and their pursuits. How ironic that the daughter’s experiences mirrored those of their Mother.
Personally I also experienced many of the same inequalities having worked in a New York City public hospital and NYC education systems. It is necessary to work from within and then outside the system to attempt to change what is inherently wrong.
This book was a most interesting and enlightening read.
Our country has a long way to go

Uche Blackstock is a physician who writes about the inequalites that black people face in medicine. Her Mother was a physician who tragically died when she was in her forties. Uche and her twin sisters both went to Harvard to become doctors.
The author writes about the racism black people face in medicine. She writes in this book about how black people die more than white people for many reasons. From lack of insurance or poor health insurance. Black people are not taken seriously when they go to a doctor so symptoms are ignored. Black women have a higher chance of dying in childbirth. During the Covid more black people died than other races.
the author also devotes a chapter to the many innocent black people who have died at the hands of police officers or other people who kill them just for walking in a neighborhood.
the author Uche Blackstone urges others to pay attention and support black lives matter. an interesting book that is well written by Uche Blackstone.

Wow. This is a must read, even if you have no interest in the medical profession. This was illuminating, horrifying, and beautiful at the same time. Racism in medicine is real and Legacy will show you that.

This was extremely well written. While it is written from the author's own lived experiences as a Black woman in medicine, she provides many hard-hitting factual data points that allows the reader to learn more about the biased society we exist in.

This was a really powerful book, yet another excellent book by a Black physician trying to confront all the ways Black Americans are discriminated against and ignored in health care. Blackstock's mother was a Black female physician, a true pioneer, and Blackstock and her twin sister also become doctors. The author's medical career, however, is hampered both by actual discrimination against herself, the under-resourcing of health care institutions serving lower income and Black, ethnic and immigrant communities, and the terrible disparities in health outcomes for Black Americans, leading her to begin, during Covid, to focus instead on educating institutions and the public about those disparities. I enjoyed this one very much; it's a valuable contribution to our understanding of the spiraling disaster in communities. Recommended.

Great biography type opinion piece. Not my usually read but a good palette cleanser that talks about the racial divide in medicine and gives an anecdotal stories to give more depth.

This book was an absolutely fascinating read. Not only do I appreciate learning about black excellence, family, love, and duty, I was shocked to learn so much about how people of different races interact with the medical field.

It's heartbreaking to know that with all of the technology at our fingertips, people (predominately black and non-white individuals) are still getting subpar medical treatment. There is no excuse for it, and the fact that people are dying because of outdated, ridiculously racist ideas that have infiltrated medical institutions at every level is unacceptable.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

I've been following Dr. Uché Blackstock on Instagram throughout the pandemic, so was looking forward to reading this book. It's sort of a cross between a memoir and a non-fiction book looking at the history and present of how racism, and particularly anti-Blackness, plays out in the medical field. Sometimes the balance of these two slides further towards one side or the other, but overall the mix makes the book really readable. I wish this would be taught to medical and public health students--so much of it really lays bare the ways that medicine structurally devalues and attempts to dehumanize Black people, and making the professionals in the field grapple with that early in their training seems incredibly necessary.

This was a NetGalley ARC.

Dr. Blackstock is one of the most important voices in medicine today. There is no understanding the state of healthcare in this country without understanding the inequity of treatment between white people and Black people. She gives a scathing indictment of the treatment of Black patients by health care providers in this country - this should be a call to arms for anyone who cares about justice and fair treatment. We can do better - we MUST do better.