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Mama Might Be Better Off Dead Analysis

Decent Essays

Saradgine Sincere
Sociology of Health and Illness
03/04/16
Melissa MacDonald

Assignment #2

In the book “mama might be better off dead” written by Laurie Kaye Abraham, tells a story of Jackie Banes and her family, and their struggles to hold the family’s health together. Her grandmother Mrs. Cora Jackson, who pretty much raised her, has suffered the amputation of one leg because of uncontrolled diabetes. Jackie’s father, Tommy, who has suffered a stroke because he didn’t care about the consequences of high blood pressure. Jackie’s husband, Robert, who has a progressive kidney disease. Abraham has gone out of her way to find more about the American health care system in North Lawndale, Illinois. Throughout the book she talks about how the health care system in America is so unfair and unsatisfactory to the needs of poor people such as the Banes’s Family. Jackie, the mother of three young children, tries really hard to support her family’s basic health care despite all the challenges she faced. Abraham in the book points out that there is a division of culture in this country where the ethnics lower class gets sicker than middle or high class Caucasians. There are people who get some diseases that are only genetic but with most underclass people, the proper diagnosis and treatment are not always available to them …show more content…

Kind of like in the book “the spirit catches you and you fall down,” by Anne Fadiman. Fadiman described how the Hmong’s and the doctors had different point of views; because of their differences in culture and the language barrier they had trouble communicating and understanding one another. In the Banes family, Jackie was responsible for understanding and pursuing treatments for her grandmother. These treatments were not so easy for Jackie to understand, and often there has been a lack of communication

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