Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story

Carson’s wife provides the Introduction, a retelling of the dramatic moments in the operating room as Carson’s highest profile case—separating two craniopagus Siamese twins joined at the back of the head—reaches a critical climax: both children’s brains were bleeding and all of the available type-specific blood had been used up. She tells how members of the seventy-member operating team offered to donate blood and how more blood was finally found at the city blood bank, allowing the surgeons to stop the bleeding, which required them to use “every skill, trick, and device known in their specialties,” and complete the surgery (10). She concludes by revealing that “The exhausted primary neurosurgeon who had devised the plan for the operation was a ghetto kid from the streets of Detroit” (10)

When Sonya Carson tells the younger of her two sons, eight-year-old Bennie, that his father is leaving their Detroit home, she is careful to explain that it is not Bennie’s fault. But she only goes so far as to say that Bennie’s father did “bad things. Real bad things,” without going into detail (11). It is 1959, and Curtis, Bennie’s older brother is ten. Both boys love their father, who has been good to them, and Bennie does not understand; he “couldn’t imagine a life without Daddy” (12). His pleas to his mother do no good, and it is only later that Bennie and Curtis learn that their father is a bigamist, with another “wife” and children, about whom they have known nothing (13). Without their father in the household, there is less money and real economic hardship, but by the time he is eleven, Bennie realizes that praying for his parents to get back together does not make sense: the three of them are happier without Mr. Carson. Although Bennie and Curtis become more at peace with the situation, the financial strain continues. Their father does not provide the court-ordered child support, and their mother gives up seeking it, but at the same time, does not indulge in blaming him or speaking negatively about him. Instead, she instills a sense of confidence in her children that she will ensure their security and well-being. Carson concludes the chapter with a tribute to the success of her efforts. “My mother, Sonya Carson, was the earliest, strongest, and most impacting force in my life. It would be impossible to tell about my accomplishments without starting with my mother’s influence” 16).

Because, as Carson explains, telling his own story “means beginning with” his mother’s story, he interrupts telling about his experiences at age eight to discuss some key actions and choices Sonya Carson made in bringing up her sons, each story indicating both a facet of her personality and a lesson for her boys (16). For example, when Curtis is in junior high, his counselor slotted him for vocational education in high school, Mrs. Carson goes to the school, confronts the counselor, and gets Curtis into the college preparatory program. She instills in her sons that they “really could do anything [they] chose to do with the Lord’s help” (18). Carson contrasts his mother’s capable handling of finances, planning for the family’s future, and emphasis on academic achievement for her sons with his father’s interest in appearance and a macho lifestyle, despite serving a small Baptist church as its minister.

Mrs. Carson suffers from mental confusion and depression as a result of her divorce and the gossip about her in the neighborhood; when she feels overwhelmed, she makes arrangements for her sons to stay with neighbors and checks herself into a mental institution, telling them that she is “going to see some relatives” (20.) Later in 1959, unable to maintain the family home in Detroit, Mrs. Carson rents it out, moving her sons to her older sister’s home in Boston, where her sister and brother-in-law take care of the boys when Mrs. Carson needs “to visit relatives.”

Carson describes the unwanted wildlife in the Boston tenements where his aunt and uncle lived (rats, roaches, and snakes), as well as the winos and drunks on the street, and the “broken glass, trashed lots, dilapidated buildings, and squad cars racing up the street”—a notable change from their environment in Detroit (24). Despite the environment, Carson feels secure and enjoys being eight years old. He remembers the year as including his best Christmas (he received a chemistry set) and his first religious experience, following a sermon describing the exploits of a missionary doctor and his wife, which leads him to seek baptism and also is the source of his decision to become a missionary doctor.

The family stays in Boston from 1959 to 1961, at which point Mrs. Carson moves them back to Detroit. Although they are not able to afford to move back into the home they own, they are able to afford the top floor of a multifamily dwelling. Mrs. Carson does domestic jobs—both cleaning and child care—learning new skills as she needs to, and teaching her sons how the successful people for whom she works behave.

For Bennie and Curtis, returning to Detroit means a new school. Bennie had had a good start with three years in the Detroit public schools before their move to Boston, but the private church school they attended in Boston turns out, in retrospect, not to have been of the quality they had believed it to be. Back in Detroit, Bennie finds himself failing every subject in fifth grade and subject to the taunting of his classmates. This experience is the foundation for Bennie’s opinion “that Black kids just were not as smart as White ones” (30). The most painful experience he recounts is when he reports his score on a math test of thirty problems by mumbling, “none,” which his teacher mistakes for “nine,” whereupon she congratulates him, but is cut off by another student who tells the class that he got none right. Carson reports that two things prevented him from becoming cynical, but he leaves their explanation to the next chapter.