Books for Black Pre-Med Students

It’s been so long since I’ve published a post– too long. Being a full-time student and trying to create content is difficult! I’m still bothered by the fact that I still haven’t been able to figure out how to balance them both. I decided to take a study break and make some time for what I love.

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I’m going to be taking a social media break this summer as I will be preparing for the MCAT. I figured reading would be a good alternative for study breaks than mindlessly scrolling through social media. So, I decided that I would look up some books written by Black doctors to keep me going through this tough time. When I made this decision, I turned straight to Google. I searched for “books for Black Pre-Med Students” and came up short. By short, I mean that there were very few medical books (listed in my search) were written by Black people. After readjusting my search a few times, I stumbled across a thread on Reddit and kind of went from there. I joked with my friends about having to write my own book because it really should not have taken me two hours to make up my summer reading list. I successfully came up with a list of six books for myself–the first six on the list. For today’s post, I added a few more that you may or may not have heard of.

Books for Black Pre-Med Students

1. She Can Bring Us Home: Dr. Dorothy Boulding Ferebee, Civil Rights Pioneer by Diane Kiesel
2. What I learned in Medical School: Personal Stories of Young Doctors
3. Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick by Maya Dusenbery
4. Beside the Troubled Waters: A Black Doctor Remembers Life, Medicine, and Civil Rights in an Alabama Town by Dr. Sonnie Wellington Hereford III & Jack D. Ellis
5. Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty by Dorothy Roberts
6. Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillian Cottom
7. Black Man in a White Coat by Damon Tweedy, MD
8. The Pulse of Perseverance: Three Black Doctors on Their Journey to Success 
9. The Pact: Three Young Men Make a Promise and Fulfill a Dream
10. Black and Blue: The Origins and Consequences of Medical Racism
11. Black Physicians in The Jim Crow South
12. Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice 
13. Medical Apartheid
14. Caring for Equality: A History of African American Health and Healthcare
15. Just Medicine: A Cure for Racial Inequality in American Healthcare
16. Making a Place for Ourselves: The Black Hospital Movement, 1920-1945 (this is a bit pricey, but you may be able to check it out from your school or local library)

for further reading

Black History Month: A Medical Perspective: Selective Bibliography

 

Related: Journey to MD