Transplant: A Memoir
A BOOK WE LOVE by NPR Books
One of the '5 over 50' debuts in 2023 by Poets & Writers magazine
Transplant: A Memoir, is a page-turning, personal journey into one Black woman's battle with kidney disease and the American medical system. Bernardine Watson's book is at once a truth-telling and an affirmation of the life force propelling us all toward love and hope. A vibrant, powerful portrait of what it means to be Black, female, and confronting a deadly disease in today's America. Winner of the first annual Washington Writers' Publishing House Creative Nonfiction Award, 2023.
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"We think of a transplant as a surgical procedure, but Bernardine Watson's memoir makes it clear that it's also a journey. Transplant: A Memoir transports the reader along the path of hopes dashed, then revived, despair, courage, faith, and love. Watson's strikingly visual prose is also intimate. We're always in the same space with her, seeing, hearing, and feeling exactly what she does. It's a journey toward life."
Kojo Nnamdi
Host, The Politics Hour with Kojo Nnamdi WAMU-FM, National Public Radio
"Bernardine Watson has written a beautiful memoir about the struggle to maintain health while living with a potentially lethal disease. But Transplant: A Memoir is mostly a book about becoming: a woman, a mother, a member of a family she learns to love better, and a loved and treasured soul mate. Through her struggle, she becomes much more than her disease and bigger and braver than she could have imagined."
Marita Golden
Author, Creative Writing Coach, Literary Consultant
"African Americans represent 13% of the US population but account for nearly 35% of people with kidney failure in the US. Bernardine Watson's account of living with a rare kidney disease depicts just how real these statistics are. It is vital that patient advocacy organizations like NephCure and patients like Watson continue to raise awareness and fight for more innovation in the kidney disease space."
Kelly Helm, Executive Director of Patient Engagement at NephCure
"Bernardine Watson has delivered a brave, inspiring memoir of resilience against long odds, of her struggle to stay healthy and hopeful as she battled a rare, incurable kidney disease. In Transplant: A Memoir, Dine's spirit--and sometimes her anger--leaps off the pages, grabs you, holds you, and ultimately, lifts you. This is a story for all of us.
Kevin Merida
co-author, Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas
With honesty and humor, Bernardine Watson takes us on her personal journey to conquer kidney disease, a health condition disproportionately affecting Black people and other people of color in the US. Transplant: A Memoir is also an adult love story, celebrating the power of care and kindness in building a strong relationship.
Louis Massiah
Documentary Filmmaker, Martin Luther King, Jr. Scholar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
