Black Medicine The morning after her hundredth birthday party my mother perches on a chair in her room at the nursing home, and talks as she always has, without interruption. When the Nigerian male nurse comes to the door to offer her lunch, she sends him away. Her recollection takes her back to the nineteen twenties while outside the building midsummer heat shimmers over a green expanse where voices are calling and figures dressed in white stand still and then move. To take in that grassy vista one has to enter a code into a keypad at the door—my mother’s…
Subscribe to get access to all online articles
Already a member?
Sign in to read this article
Digital Subscription
$98/ YR
Get the latest ideas from Australia’s most insightful writers.
- Digital Subscription includes
- Online editions of Quadrant Magazine
- Printed editions of Quadrant Magazine
- iPad ready PDF
- Access to Quadrant Archives
Printed & Digital Subscription
$118/ YR
For avid readers of leading ideas
from Australia’s brightest.
- Printed & Digital Subscription includes
- Online editions of Quadrant Magazine
- Printed editions of Quadrant Magazine
- iPad ready PDF
- Access to Quadrant Archives
- Quadrant Patron includes
- Online editions of Quadrant Magazine
- Printed editions of Quadrant Magazine
- iPad ready PDF
- Access to Quadrant Archives
- All new editions of Quadrant Books
- Exclusive invitations to Quadrant Dinners, book launches and events.