Cover of Beauty in Breaking

Beauty in Breaking

"A series of connected personal stories drawn from the author's life and work as an ER doctor that explores how we are all broken—physically, emotionally, and psychically—and what we can do to heal ourselves as we try to heal others"—

Read more

Michele Harper is a female, African American emergency room physician in a profession that is overwhelmingly male and white. Brought up in Washington, D.C., in an abusive family, she went to Harvard, where she met her husband. They stayed together through medical school until two months before she was scheduled to join the staff of a hospital in central Philadelphia, when he told her he couldn't move with her. Her marriage at an end, Harper began her new life in a new city, in a new job, as a newly single woman. In the ensuing years, as Harper learned to become an effective ER physician, bringing insight and empathy to every patient encounter, she came to understand that each of us is broken—physically, emotionally, psychically. How we recognize those breaks, how we try to mend them, and where we go from there are all crucial parts of the healing process.

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 304 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked Beauty in Breaking? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Beauty in Breaking. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Escape from Slavery: The Boyhood of Frederick Douglass in His Own Words Shares African American, biography
  2. Distant Lover Shares African American, women
  3. Malcolm X: The Man and His Times Shares African American, biography
  4. Thicker Than Water 3 Shares African American, women

“If you want more of the same (biography about african american), start with these.”

  1. Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History (Vashti Harrison)
  2. Somebody's Daughter
  3. Papa Jack
  4. Speak, So You Can Speak Again: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston

“If it was the African American that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. Wendy's Got the Heat
  2. Still Thicker Than Water
  3. Misty: Double Dippin' 5
  4. Jayden's Passion

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Silent Treatment
  2. On Call: A Doctor's Days and Nights in Residency
  3. Waking the Spirit: A Musician's Journey Healing Body, Mind, and Soul
  4. First, Do No Harm