The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded

the long version

"These poems explore the haunted legacy of the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, an medical institution at the heart of the eugenics movement in the first half of the twentieth century in America. The author, who has cerebral palsy, grew up in the shadow of the former Colony in southwestern Virginia, aware that, had she been born fifty years earlier, she would quite possibly been admitted there, and exposed to a variety of inhumane treatments, including forced sterilization. Her poems give voice to the Colony's chorus of residents, reclaiming for them elements of their humanity" --