A True Story of a Family, an Insect, and a Nation’s Neglect of a Deadly Disease

FEATURING DAIZY HERNANDEZ – As Americans cautiously emerge from a global pandemic, many of us are wondering what’s the next front in the war to protect public health? My next guest writes about a disease most of us have never heard of but that devastated her family and impacts hundreds of thousands of people in the...

FEATURING DAIZY HERNANDEZ – As Americans cautiously emerge from a global pandemic, many of us are wondering what’s the next front in the war to protect public health? My next guest writes about a disease most of us have never heard of but that devastated her family and impacts hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. alone. Chagas disease, cause by a parasite is widely prevalent across Latin America. But it has been one of the most neglected diseases by governments, the medical establishment, and the pharmaceutical industry. 

Find more about the book here: https://tinhouse.com/book/the-kissing-bug/.

Daisy Hernandez, former reporter for The New York Times and has been writing about the intersections of race, immigration, class, and sexuality for almost two decades. She has written for National Geographic, NPR’s All Things Considered and Code Switch, The Atlantic, Slate, and Guernica, and she’s the former editor of Colorlines, a newsmagazine on race and politics. Hernández is the author of the award-winning memoir A Cup of Water Under My Bed and co-editor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism. She is an associate professor at Miami University in Ohio. Her new book is The Kissing Bug: A True Story of a Family, an Insect, and a Nation’s Neglect of a Deadly Disease.