Books

I’ve written two books that use my experiences during medical training to explore complex, emotionally-charged issues within medicine.

Facing the Unseen

The Struggle to Center Mental Health in Medicine.

As much as we all might wish that mental health problems, with their elusive causes and unsettling behaviors, simply did not exist, millions of people suffer from them, sometimes to an extreme extent. Many others face addiction to alcohol and other drugs, as overdose and suicide deaths abound….

Black Man in a White Coat

A Doctor's Reflections on Race and Medicine.

When Damon Tweedy begins medical school, he envisions a bright future where his segregated, working-class background will become largely irrelevant. Instead, he finds that he has joined a new world where race is front and center. The recipient of a scholarship designed to increase black student enrollment, Tweedy soon…

  • "Dr. Tweedy is one of the most important voices in psychiatry today.”

    — Anna Lembke, M.D., author of Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence

  • “Tweedy is an excellent storyteller, making the people whom he treats unforgettably visible in all their complexities”

    — BookPage

  • “In this fascinating, heartbreaking memoir, Tweedy documents his experiences as an African American doctor in a medical system that can be 'just as sick as its patients."

    — O, The Oprah Magazine

  • “An arresting memoir that personalizes the enduring racial divide in contemporary American medicine."

    — Kirkus Reviews

  • “Tweedy’s vulnerability makes him a vivid and engaging narrator”

    ― The Boston Globe

  • “It's a book that deserves a very long shelf life.”

    ― Essence Magazine

  • “A sincere and heartfelt memoir about being black in a mostly white medical world. Essential reading for all of us in this time of racial unrest.”

    ― Sandeep Jauhar, M.D., author of Intern: A Doctor's Initiation and Doctored: The Disillusionment of an American Physician

     

  • “An eye-opening and compelling examination of medicine's continued discomfort with race.”

    ― Danielle Ofri, M.D., PhD, author of What Doctors Feel: How Emotions Affect the Practice of Medicine

  • “Tweedy expertly weaves together statistics, personal anecdotes, and patient stories to explain why 'being black can be bad for your health'... A smart, thought-provoking, frontline look at race and medicine.”

    ― Booklist, starred review

  • “An arresting memoir that personalizes the enduring racial divide in contemporary American medicine.”

    ― Kirkus Reviews

  • “Eye-opening...Tweedy nicely unravels the essential issues of race, prejudice, class, mortality, treatment, and American medicine without blinking or polite excuses.”

    ― Publishers Weekly

  • "A revealing, moving, and courageous examination of racism in American health care."

    ― The Daily Beast

  • “[A] heartfelt account... Black Man in a White Coat is a commentary on challenges and lessons [Dr. Tweedy has] encountered as a physician of color, offering first-hand truths about the medical issues and racial divides in health care plaguing our community.”

    ― Ebony

  • “Fascinating… An engaging, introspective memoir that will force readers to contemplate the uncomfortable reality that race impacts every aspect of life, even medicine”

    ― USA Today