Growing a Race

By Cecily Devereux,

Book cover of Growing a Race: Nellie L. McClung and the Fiction of Eugenic Feminism

Book description

A controversial study of the alleged racism in the fiction of Nellie McClung

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Why read it?

1 author picked Growing a Race as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Nellie McClung, one of the “famous five,” is a well-known name in Canadian history for her role in fighting for the vote for women. But it turns out she was also a eugenicist. This book does a great job of knitting those two elements together and explaining not just why so many early feminists also believed in eugenic principles but how those principles were part of the same thinking. One of the challenges in understanding eugenics is answering the question of how it was that ideas, which we find repugnant today, had such power a hundred years ago. Devereux’s Introduction…

From C.'s list on how eugenics came to Canada.

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