Pure America: Eugenics and the Making of Modern Virginia

Acclaimed historian Elizabeth Catte, author of What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia, returns with a lacerating analysis of the history of state-sponsored eugenics, and its ripple effects to this day.

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.

Author: Elizabeth Catte
Publisher: Belt Publishing
Published: 02/02/2021
Pages: 176
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 7.40h x 5.00w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9781948742733

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 11/30/2020
Kirkus Reviews 12/15/2020

About the Author
Elizabeth Catte is a historian and writer living in Virginia, and the author of What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia (Belt, 2018). She is an editor-at-large for West Virginia University Press and the co-founder of Passel, an applied history and consulting company. She lives in Staunton, Virginia.