A Labor of Love to Improve Health and Human Connection

Duke faculty member Wylin Wilson is associate professor of theological ethics. Her work lies at the intersection of religion, gender and bioethics, and she’s particularly interested in rural bioethics and Black church studies. 

We caught up with Wilson to ask a few questions about her research and her new book, “Womanist Bioethics: Social Justice, Spirituality, and Black Women’s Health.” Below are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Hard Topics

My work is a labor of love, I mean it in all honesty. It’s beautiful, because I get to work on hard topics — those really hard things for people to talk about, and hard things for people to deal with, like health inequities.

I get to talk about the ways that people suffer because of how they are vulnerable. In our culture we prize being invulnerable, because vulnerability for us is associated with weakness or failings. But in my work, what I get a chance to really dig into and look at is the ways that vulnerability is created through these historical ways that we’ve structured society, created through relationships that are unequal, created through institutions and through policies — all of these ways that we create circumstances that disadvantage some while advantaging others. I get to look at those hard situations through the lens of a “theologian as artist.”

Womanist Bioethics

Image

What I really want people to take away from my book is this sense of connection to one another.

The work that I do in my research is like excavation, digging in and trying to uncover and recover stories of folk who are vulnerable, who are on the margins, folk who we usually don’t read about in our history books. To be able to center the narratives of people who are not normally centered is important, because when we get a chance to do that, we get invited into these different worlds of people around us. 

I have various stories of African American women who suffered from health disparities, not just historically but even now. I want to invite people in because we are all connected. I hope that people can see that my story is your story, and your story is my story. There really is no disconnect between us, and we all have a hand in the health and the healing of one another. This book is not just for Black women. 

One story that I really like is Adeline’s, and it’s a most devastating one. Adeline was a woman who was enslaved. She’s a mother, she has her little baby and she’s standing on the auction block about to be sold. She’s one of the people that were called breeders during enslavement. Dr. Sharla Fett and Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens have done research showing the connection between the Black maternal and infant health crisis that you see now and enslavement. 

Some people may say that sounds like a far stretch and they may not see that connection. But as you dig in and read throughout history, about ‘breeders’ and about the Black maternal health crisis, it’s wild to see. 

It’s interesting because in our healthcare system we don’t often think about it, but there were medical doctors right there at the slave auctions. Medicine was always right there collaborating in the system of enslavement. It was an economic system, yes, but it had to be propped up by a medical system, because the enslaved folk had to have the stamp of approval saying that this was a good investment. You had to have the doctors there to examine and to say, yes, this is a healthy animal. Because they weren’t considered human.

It’s fascinating to see why that connection is made when you dig into it and see how medicine has developed, and how thoroughly we are such a racialized society. 

Every time I give a talk about my book or about Black maternal health, there are always women that come up to me, minoritized women, who say please tell people to just listen to us. It’s such a problem that the CDC even has a campaign called Hear Her, saying to listen and trust a woman. She knows her body. If she’s telling you something is wrong, please hear her.

Another thing that’s important about the book is how I lift up the stories, the voices and the experience of people in rural places in the U.S. If we’re going to talk about vulnerable people and health disparities, we have got to address rural health.

Rural Health and Maternal Mental Health

I’m working on a project now with some colleagues. We’re trying to address policy as it has to do with rural health and maternal mental health. We’re trying to help communities, but also churches — there are a lot of faith communities that don’t want to deal with this issue, and you have people suffering in silence. 

I’m working on public scholarship so that we can help to address the issue of maternal mental health. A couple of colleagues and I have a new article, and we’ve been working on a framework for congregational care. I am super excited about that, because we want to equip our institutions, our faith communities, with the tools that they need to help address human suffering.

Taking Risks for Human Connection

The thing that I wish for all of us is to lean into caring for one another. Just check on your neighbor, wave and speak to people. Something so simple as speaking to people is just acknowledging the humanity of others so that people can feel less isolated. Take the risk. And it feels like risking all sometimes just to speak to another human, you feel like, oh, I can’t do it!, you get nervous and your heart beats a little faster but it is absolutely worth it. You’ve acknowledged the humanity of that person with one word, “hello.” Let’s take some risks out there.