9781469626383-1469626381-Unspeakable: The Story of Junius Wilson

Unspeakable: The Story of Junius Wilson

ISBN-13: 9781469626383
ISBN-10: 1469626381
Edition: Reprint
Author: Susan Burch, Hannah Joyner
Publication date: 2007
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Format: Hardcover 320 pages
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Book details

ISBN-13: 9781469626383
ISBN-10: 1469626381
Edition: Reprint
Author: Susan Burch, Hannah Joyner
Publication date: 2007
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Format: Hardcover 320 pages

Summary

Unspeakable: The Story of Junius Wilson (ISBN-13: 9781469626383 and ISBN-10: 1469626381), written by authors Susan Burch, Hannah Joyner, was published by The University of North Carolina Press in 2007. With an overall rating of 4.0 stars, it's a notable title among other Black & African American (Cultural & Regional, People with Disabilities, Specific Groups, United States, Historical, State & Local, United States History) books. You can easily purchase or rent Unspeakable: The Story of Junius Wilson (Hardcover, Used) from BooksRun, along with many other new and used Black & African American books and textbooks. And, if you're looking to sell your copy, our current buyback offer is $0.71.

Description

Junius Wilson (1908-2001) spent seventy-six years at a state mental hospital in Goldsboro, North Carolina, including six in the criminal ward. He had never been declared insane by a medical professional or found guilty of any criminal charge. But he was deaf and black in the Jim Crow South. Unspeakable is the story of his life.

Using legal records, institutional files, and extensive oral history interviews--some conducted in sign language--Susan Burch and Hannah Joyner piece together the story of a deaf man accused in 1925 of attempted rape, found insane at a lunacy hearing, committed to the criminal ward of the State Hospital for the Colored Insane, castrated, forced to labor for the institution, and held at the hospital for more than seven decades. Junius Wilson's life was shaped by some of the major developments of twentieth-century America: Jim Crow segregation, the civil rights movement, deinstitutionalization, the rise of professional social work, and the emergence of the deaf and disability rights movements. In addition to offering a bottom-up history of life in a segregated mental institution, Burch and Joyner's work also enriches the traditional interpretation of Jim Crow by highlighting the complicated intersections of race and disability as well as of community and language.

This moving study expands the boundaries of what biography can and should be. There is much to learn and remember about Junius Wilson--and the countless others who have lived unspeakable histories.

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