March Narrative Medicine Rounds with Joshua Prager
“THE FAMILY ROE: An American Story,” a conversation moderated by Dr. Carolyn Westhoff.
For our March Narrative Medicine Rounds, we are excited to host Joshua Prager, author of THE FAMILY ROE: An American Story, in a conversation moderated by Dr. Carolyn Westhoff.
Despite her famous pseudonym, “Jane Roe,” no one knows the truth about Norma McCorvey (1947–2017), whose unwanted pregnancy in 1969 opened a great fracture in American life. Journalist Joshua Prager spent hundreds of hours with Norma, discovered her personal papers—a previously unseen trove—and witnessed her final moments. The Family Roe presents her life in full. Propelled by the crosscurrents of sex and religion, gender and class, it is a life that tells the story of abortion in America. Called “an honest glimpse into the American soul” by The New York Times, and “prodigiously researched, richly detailed, sensitively told” by The New Yorker, the book was named one of NPR‘s best books of 2021, A New York Times notable book of 2021, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Award for Nonfiction. Prager is also the author of The Echoing Green (a Washington Post Best Book of the Year) and 100 Years, a collaboration with Milton Glaser, the graphic designer who created the I NY logo. Prager has written for the Atlantic, Vanity Fair, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He was a Nieman fellow at Harvard and a Fulbright Distinguished Chair at Hebrew University, and has spoken at venues including TED and Google. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and two daughters.