Susan Currie
When she was six years old, Susan Annah Currie spent fifteen months as a patient in the Preventorium Hospital in Magee, Mississippi, where children were allowed visits from parents only twice a month, and adhered to a strict daily routine, called “the Fresh Air Method.”
Susan is a native Mississippian, born in Jackson in 1953. She obtained a B.A. in English from Belhaven College, and attended graduate school for English Literature at the University of Mississippi. In 1979, she moved to Ithaca, New York, and obtained a Masters in Library Science from the University of Buffalo. She was an academic librarian for close to thirty years, including Cornell University and SUNY Binghamton University Libraries. In 2009, she was chosen to be the director of the historic Tompkins County Public Library in Ithaca, NY and retired as the Finger Lakes Library Director of the year in 2017. In 2021, she returned as interim director for four months, guiding the library in restoring hours and services as the county reopened after Covid and as the search for a new director began. Susan was a panelist at the 2022 Mississippi Book Festival and the 2022 annual Spring Writes Literary Festival in Ithaca, NY. In 2023, in addition to working on her next writing project, she will be serving her local community as a Tompkins County Legislator. |
The Preventorium
Memoir
Opened on February 17, 1929, the Mississippi State Preventorium operated until 1976. The Mississippi Preventorium, like others throughout the country, was an institution for sickly, anemic, and underweight children. The name preventorium meant a place of preventing disease as there was a fear of children contracting TB. The Mississippi Preventorium was one of the last, if not the last, of these special hospitals for children. In this memoir, Currie details her fifteen-month stay. From her arrival in May 1959 at six years old, Currie vividly explores the unique and isolating world that she and children across the country experienced. The strict and exacting routine erased created both a sense of community among the children and a deep sense of loneliness. From walking silently single file through the cold, narrow halls of the hospital to nurses recording every detail of their bathroom habits to limited visitation from family, Currie’s time at the preventorium changed her and those around her, leaving an indelible mark even after their return home. Currie’s memoir opens to readers a lost history largely forgotten. Told in evocative prose, The Preventorium explores Currie’s personal trials, both in the hospital and in the echoes of her experiences into adulthood. FRONT & BACK COVER VIEW |