Mary Ann Mayer will discuss and read from her poetry collection, Kissing the Shuttle – A Lyric History (Blackstone River Books, 2018), re-enacting the rise of the textile mills, King Cotton, and the spread of tuberculosis at the turn of the 20th century. The title refers to a common weaving practice, nick-named “the kiss of death,” which spread TB. Poetry, research, and archival images explore the nexus between labor and disease, and bring to life the “esprit de corps” of early public health, including the nation’s first “open-air” classrooms in Rhode Island.
Certain books were “banned in Boston” at least as far back as 1651, when one William Pynchon wrote a book criticizing Puritanism.