... a compelling and well-researched dual biography.

[A] new masterpiece of revisionist history.

Double biographies are fairly unusual and tend to be about people who were linked together in the minds of their contemporaries. But Anarcha was not associated with Sims in the public mind because Sims took great pains to ensure that she would not be—not because of any shame he felt about exploiting an enslaved woman but because the recurrence of her fistulas belied Sims’s narrative. Hallman’s determination to bring Anarcha out of obscurity restores her humanity and allows readers to reexamine the corrupt foundations of women’s health care..

Truman Capote referred to works like Say Anarcha as nonfiction novels. Hallman uses that material and much more to write a broad if complicated narrative rich in detail about the times and world in which Sims lived.

Though Hallman goes overboard in this graphic, exhaustive, tangent-prone exposé, his righteous passion and galvanizing prose are commanding and affecting; the realities he reveals are harrowing, tragic, and grimly relevant..

Hallman corrects a huge omission in women’s health history in this innovative and riveting study of Anarcha.

Hallman has drawn from almost 5,000 sources, and he includes a four-page list of 'all the formerly enslaved persons whose narratives contributed to the re-creation of Anarcha’s story'.