Take My Hand

Take My Hand (2022) is American author Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s third novel. Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by many publications, it was awarded the 2023 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work-Fiction and the 2023 BCALA Award for Fiction. It was a finalist for a Goodreads Choice Award and was named a Top 20 Book of the Year by the Editors at Amazon, and the audiobook version was named a Best of 2022 by Audible. The American Bar Association named Take My Hand a finalist for its prestigious Silver Gavel Award, which recognizes an “outstanding work that fosters the American public’s understanding of law and the legal system.”

Perkins-Valdez often grounds her themes in historical fact. Her first novel, Wench (2010), was based on an Ohio resort where white plantation owners vacationed with their enslaved mistresses, and her second novel, Balm (2015), tells the stories of a Black woman, a Black man, and a white woman as they attempt to rebuild their lives after the civil war. Take My Hand is inspired by the true story of two young Black girls who were surgically sterilized in 1973 in Montgomery, Alabama, without their consent, and the ensuing lawsuit that exposed the US government’s regular practice of sterilizing poor women and girls, especially women of color.