The Beauty in Breaking

“Most of the time my job is to keep death at bay. When I am successful, I send the patient back out into the world. When I’m not, I am there as life passes away.” 

Harper emphasizes the stakes of working as a physician as often being someone’s one and only hope to survive. For a doctor, a razor-thin line separates success and failure, which often translates to life or death, and Harper’s personal connection to these stakes are undeniably real. 

“As a black woman, I navigate an American landscape that claims to be post-racial when every waking moment reveals the contrary, an American landscape that requires all women to pound tenaciously against the proverbial glass ceiling, which we’ve since discovered is made of palladium, the kind of glass that would sooner bow than shatter.” 

Harper embraces her identity as an African American woman, navigating not only the delusion of a post-racial America but also the constant expectation to batter the glass ceiling that exposes the income and opportunity gaps for women across virtually all professions.

“The previously broken object is considered more beautiful for its imperfections. In life, too, even greater brilliance can be found after the mending.” 

Here, Harper compares her life to the Japanese art of Kintsukuroi, which consists of repairing broken pottery with precious metals, such as gold, silver, or platinum. The philosophy behind the practice equates brokenness to value. For Harper, her personal brokenness, through the complicated landscape of both her childhood and adult traumas, is in essence an act of Kintsukuroi.