Before we get to the good, the bad, the ugly, I need to state something. I apparently did not read the subtitle of this book correctly. The subtitle is “how contagion, class, and captivity shaped us from Cholera to Covid-19”. To me, class is economic and I read the captivity part as isolation during pandemics. This is not what the author meant. I am not trying to get into the racial thing and will avoid it as much as possible, but this book is heavily about racial issues. Where the author sees racial issues, I see class issues (economic ones). We simply have different perspectives.

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

The Good: I learned a number of things about plagues. The author provides some real insight into how doctors worked in the african nations in the early 1900s to identify and treat disease. It was some pretty interesting historical narratives. The author did some similar historical context around HIV and women’s prison populations.

I also thought the author did a nice job of framing Covid-19. She took three people and interviewed them and gave us some great perspectives on what the pandemic meant to different people. It was interesting to see the different points of view and really interesting to see a point of view that wasn’t American. The societal responses to the pandemic and the effects it had economically, politically, and mentally on people were pretty profound.

The Bad: There was quite a bit of straying from what I considered the topic. I don’t feel like I am any smarter about Cholera or its impact on populations. I felt like the author used “plagues” to speak to a different agenda. The first look we got was of a plantation. The author does talk about disease and how it impacted slaves, but then veers off that topic. The author goes to a discussion and example of a slave, Harriet Jacobs, who was enslaved and pregnant and what that meant. It was a really interesting and heartbreaking story, but it was about the plauge of slavery.

There is one point in the book where the author states, “Apart from a student loan of $140,000, the trauma of Black life keeps me away from the United States.” Then later says, “From Berlin, I was afforded space to write, breathe, and be debt-free.” (page 217) At best, this is rather poorly constructed. I can either believe she is not paying her student debt or that she just didn’t write this section well. I reread it a number of times and couldn’t decide which was accurate.

The Ugly: I wanted to read a book that showed the generation, life-cycle, and ramifications of plagues. Specifically, I wanted to read about six different plagues and how they affected life and echo into today. While there were some really great historical parts that provided new information and insight, I largely found a book that inserted a great deal of projection on the subject. Shame on me for not understanding what I was getting into, I think the title invoked an idea that was vastly different from what I got.