Bettina Judd facts for kids
Bettina Judd is an African-American writer, scholar, artist, and performer who works in many different fields.
Early Life and Education
Bettina Judd was born in Baltimore and grew up in Southern California. She went to Spelman College and earned her first degree in 2005, studying Women's Studies and English. She then continued her studies at the University of Maryland, where she received her master's degree in Women's Studies in 2007. In 2014, she earned her PhD from the same university.
Her PhD research explored how Black women's art expresses important ideas about their experiences. She looked at how Black women's creative work can be a powerful way to share their thoughts and feelings. Bettina Judd has shared that her early inspirations for poetry came from her grandmother (who was also a poet), her mother, and the famous writer Maya Angelou.
Artistic and Scholarly Work
As a poet, Bettina Judd has been recognized as a Cave Canem fellow multiple times. Her poems and other writings have appeared in several literary magazines and collections, like Torch, Meridians, and Mythium. Her work in Mythium was even nominated for a Pushcart Prize, which is a special award for writers. She has also received fellowships from places like the Five College Consortium and the Vermont Studio Center.
Bettina Judd is also a singer and has performed for audiences across the United States and around the world.
Her Book: Patient.
In 2013, Bettina Judd's collection of poems, Patient., won the 2013 Black Lawrence Press Hudson Prize. The book was published in 2014.
Patient. explores the history of how some medical practices in the 1800s involved unfair treatment of Black women. The book looks at how these past actions influenced the development of modern gynecology. Through her poems, Judd shares her own experiences with the medical system and how she has felt treated unfairly. She also uses her writing to highlight the stories of Black women from history, like Henrietta Lacks, whose lives were impacted by these practices.
The poems in Patient. switch between the voice of a modern Black woman researcher and the voices of historical figures. These historical voices include women like Anarcha Wescott, Lucy Zimmerman, and Betsey Harris, who were part of experiments by J. Marion Sims, sometimes called the "father of modern gynecology." The book also includes the voices of other historical Black women who faced exploitation, such as Saartjie Baartman and Henrietta Lacks. Part of the inspiration for the book came from Judd's own experiences at a teaching hospital.
Bettina Judd has explained that she wanted to "humanize these women" in Patient. She wanted to tell their stories and make sure people knew they existed. She asks, "Who gets to survive and tell the stories of Black women?" She notes that some of the women she writes about were enslaved and were meant to be forgotten. By writing in their voices, she helps readers understand their experiences and connects them to the experiences of Black women today.
On February 16, 2016, Bettina Judd was a guest on NPR's Hidden Brain Podcast. The episode was titled "Remembering Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey: The Mothers of Modern Gynecology." During the show, she read poems from Patient. and discussed the important topics in her book.
