Clica una miniatura per anar a Google Books.
|
S'està carregant… Mary Seacole (2004)de Jane Robinson
   No hi ha cap discussió a Converses sobre aquesta obra. 2   noveltea | Mar 7, 2012 |  Sense ressenyes | afegeix-hi una ressenya
She was a black woman, and she flouted convention. In an age that put ladies in the parlor and preferred them to be seen and not heard, she was nursing the British wounded, not in hospital wards with Florence Nightingale but on the Crimean battlefields--and off them, she was running a restaurant and hotel. She purveyed homemade pickles in England; she mined for gold in Panama. For unabashed individuality, Mary Jane Grant Seacole knew no peer. Yet Punch, the Times, the Illustrated LondonNews all ardently touted her, and Queen Victoria herself entertained her. Mary Seacole--childless widow of Horatio Nelson's godson and "good ole Mother Seacole" to the soldiers at Sebastopol--was Britain's first black heroine, and this robust, engaging biography by social historian Jane Robinson shows why. In a narrative driven by colorful adventure, Robinson charts Seacole's amazing odyssey from her native Kingston, Jamaica, to her adopted London, via Panama, where she lent her doctoring and nursing skills to catastrophic outbreaks of cholera and yellow fever, and the Crimea, where she founded the famous British Hotel. Seacole makes numerous other eventful stops along the way, and everywhere, even in the face of disappointment, disaster, and loss, her indomitable spirit prevails. No s'han trobat descripcions de biblioteca. |
Debats actualsCapCobertes populars  
 Google Books — S'està carregant…GèneresClassificació Decimal de Dewey (DDC)610.73092Technology Medicine and health Medicine Study and Teaching Training Schools for NursesLCC (Clas. Bibl. Congrés EUA)ValoracióMitjana: (3.8)
Ets tu?Fes-te Autor del LibraryThing. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1
There's a surprisingly wide assortment of history packed into this 200-page book—Jamaica; New Granada (Panama) during the Gold Rush; the Crimean War. I'd never heard of Seacole's friend Alexis Soyer, French chef and inventor of the soup kitchen, and I learned some things about her not so friendly counterpart, Florence Nightingale. Robinson points out that Nightingale, 34 at the time, needed her parents' permission to accept the British government's commission to establish a corps of nurses during the Crimean War, a detail that contrasts deliciously with the lifelong self-direction of Seacole.
The biographer is a bit too eager to bring up completely unrelated matters that allow her to footnote her own other works ("A certain Lady Hodgson, involved in an African uprising some fifty years after this Crimean experience of Mary's…"), and I quibble with a few of her interpretations, but I appreciate the way Robinson celebrates Seacole's unique experiences and achievements without seeking to turn her into a paragon. Seacole comes alive as an individual here: intrepid, entertaining, imperfect. (