num_pages: 308
description: Growing up in a New Jersey factory town in the 1980s Daisy Hernndez believed that her aunt had become deathly ill from eating an apple. No one in her family in either the United States or Colombia spoke of infectious diseases and even into her thirties she only knew that her aunt had died of a rare illness called Chagas. But as Hernndez dug deeper she discovered that Chagasor the kissing bug diseaseis more prevalent in the United States than the Zika virus. Today more than three hundred thousand Americans have Chagas.Why do some infectious diseases make headlines and others fall by the wayside? After her aunts death Hernndez begins searching for answers about who our nation chooses to take care of and who we ignore. Crisscrossing the country she interviews patients epidemiologists and even veterinarians with the Department of Defense. She learns that outside of Latin America the United States is the only country with the native insectsthe kissing bugsthat carry the Chagas parasite. She spends a night in southwest Texas hunting the dreaded bug with university researchers. She also gets to know patients like a mother whose premature baby was born infected with the parasite his heart already damaged. And she meets one cardiologist battling the disease in Los Angeles County with local volunteers. The Kissing Bug tells the story of how poverty racism and public policies have conspired to keep this disease hiddenand how the disease intersects with Hernndezs own identity as a niece sister and daughter; a queer woman; a writer and researcher; and a citizen of a country that is only beginning to address the harms caused by Chagas and the dangers it poses. A riveting and nuanced investigation into racial politics and for-profit healthcare in the United States The Kissing Bug reveals the intimate history of a marginalized disease and connects us to the lives at the center of it all. 
language: English
title: The Kissing Bug: A True Story of a Family, an Insect, and a Nation's Neglect of a Deadly Disease
publisher: Tin House Books