Daisy Hernandez

Daisy Hernandez headshot - credit Bosch studios

The Kissing Bug: Race and Disease Explored

Superstition Review
The Kissing Bug cover
The Kissing Bug by Daisy Hernandez (Tin House Books 2021)

Check out past contributor Daisy Hernández’s new book, The Kissing Bug, to join Daisy as she unravels family and medical secrets surrounding a disease that led to her aunt’s death. While researching for the book, Daisy spoke to patients, doctors, epidemiologists, and veterinarians, all the while uncovering the impact of Chagas – also known as the kissing bug disease – on the Latinx community. The Kissing Bug: A True Story of an Insect, a Family and a Nation’s Neglect of a Deadly Disease explores how the confluence of infectious disease, racism, and for-profit healthcare systems have relegated Chagas to the dark.

Hernández raises damning questions about which infectious diseases get attention and whom we believe to be deserving of care.

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An engaging, eye-opening read for anyone looking to learn more about the human suffering caused by the collision of a tropical parasite and years of neglect by the United States’ medical system.

Kris Newby, author of Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons

The Kissing Bug was published in June by Tin House Books and you can by it from Bookshop or IndieBound. Daisy’s was interviewed for Issue 16 of SR and she is also the author of the memoir A Cup of Water Under My Bed and coeditor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism. To learn more about Daisy, visit her website or follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

SR Pod/Vod Series: Writer Daisy Hernandez

Leah Newsom

Today we’re proud to feature Daisy Hernandez as our eleventh Authors Talk series contributor.

This interview with Daisy Hernandez was conducted in person at the Nonfiction Now conference in Flagstaff, Arizona by Interview Editor Leah Newsom. Of the process she said, “Daisy’s memoir, A Cup of Water Under My Bed is engaging and intelligent. I am so fortunate to have had to opportunity to talk to her about it, as it is a very necessary piece of writing.” In this interview, Daisy talks about the role of memory in nonfiction, the role of sharing stories via social media, and the potential concern of writing about other people.

You can download the video on our iTunes Channel.

You can read Daisy Hernandez’s interview in Superstition Review, Issue 16.

 

More About the Author:

Daisy Hernández is the author of A Cup of Water Under My Bed: A Memoir and coeditor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism. She has written for The Atlantic, ColorLines, The New York Times, and NPR’s All Things Considered and CodeSwitch, and her essays have been published in the Bellingham Review, Dogwood, Fourth Genre, Gulf Coast, and Hunger Mountain. She teaches creative writing at Miami University in Ohio. To see more of her work, visit www.daisyhernandez.com.

About the Authors Talk series:

For several years, we have featured audio or video of Superstition Review contributors reading their work. We’re now establishing a new series of podcasts called Authors Talk. The podcasts in this series take a broader scope and feature SR contributors discussing their own thoughts on writing, the creative process, and anything else they may want to share with listeners.