Review: Transplant: A Memoir by Bernardine Watson
Transplant: A Memoir by Bernardine Watson, which won the first annual Washington Writers' Publishing House Creative Nonfiction Award (2023), is a frank and emotional memoir that chronicles a decades-long struggle with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS) and kidney disease as a Black woman in the U.S. healthcare system. In some cases there is no known cause for FSGS.
Watson’s journey through the healthcare system and her own care is one that every American should read. While she was priveleged enough to have good health benefits from her employer, not many people do, which will leave them vulnerable to serious financial expenses. As she observes how many Black Americans are on dialysis and how she is now one of them too, it is clear that not enough has been done to address kidney disease and its treatments in one of the richest nations of the world.
Watson is an independent, “South Philly” woman by choice and by circumstance when her father essentially tells her to leave his home after becoming pregnant. This fractured relationship and the loneliness/separateness she feels permeate the story from how she handles her diagnosis and treatment to how hard it is for her to accept her sister’s gift even when she needs it the most.
The medical story never seems overly depressing or weighed down by the uncertainty she faces, even as she breaks down from the weight of the secrets she keeps. Watson’s tone remains hopeful and forward-looking, and her point of view/mindset, meditation, and yoga are one reason everyone should read this book. How can you stay positive and hopeful in the face of a disease that can kill you by causing kidney failure?
Watson provides the answers that worked for her, but she also had a support system (even if she was reluctant to rely on them) that gave her the additional strength she needed. Her observations about doctors, care, and processes in the U.S. healthcare system remind us that more work needs to be done.
Transplant: A Memoir by Bernardine Watson is definitely a page-turner and fascinating, but at its heart it’s about hope and recovery, love, and making the best of some really awful situations.
Rating: Quatrain
About the Author:
Bernardine (Dine) Watson is a nonfiction writer and poet, originally from Philadelphia, but who now lives in Washington, D.C. She has written on social policy issues for numerous major foundations, nonprofit organizations, and for The Washington Post Health and Science section and She the People blog. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals and anthologies, including Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Rising Voices/ University Professors Press, Sanctuary/ Darkhouse Books, and The Great World of Days/ Day Eight Arts. Dine is a member of the 2015 class of the D.C. Commission on Arts and Humanities Poet in Progress Program and was selected to participate in the 2017 and 2018 classes of the Hurston Wright Foundation’s Summer Writers’ Workshop for Poetry. She is a member of Day Eight Art’s Board of Directors. Her memoir, Transplant, is available at Amazon and Bookshop.org.