cover image The Beauty in Breaking: A Memoir

The Beauty in Breaking: A Memoir

Michele Harper. Riverhead, $27 (304p) ISBN 978-0-525-53738-0

In this compassionate memoir, Harper, an African-American ER physician, reflects upon her career, sharing stories that take the reader “into the chaos of emergency medicine.” Growing up as a member of Washington, D.C.’s “black elite,” Harper, whose father was also a physician, lived with the dark secret of his domestic abuse, her days “routinely punctuated by bursts of violence.” When her brother John’s hand is injured in a fight with their father, she takes him to the ER. Seeing the ER, a place “so quiet and yet so throbbing with life,” inspires her to become a doctor. Upon graduating from Harvard, Harper lives and works in New York City with her husband (also a Harvard grad), but when she accepts her first post-residency in Philadelphia, the marriage dissolves when her independent filmmaker husband declares that he needs to focus on his career and “find himself.” While devastating, the divorce allowed her to immerse herself in her position as the director of performance improvement in the ER. Taking on the painful topics of trauma, domestic abuse, and the “ubiquitous microaggressions faced by people of color,” especially in the medical profession, Harper seeks to understand the human condition and persistent societal issues that impact care in urban hospitals. Harper witnesses the resilience of the human spirit of her patients and begins her own process of self-healing through yoga and meditation. This powerful story will resonate with readers, especially physicians. (July)