Celadon Books
Paperback
384 pages • $19.99
ISBN: 9781250796646
The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide
Steven W. Thrasher
“The pandemic brought America’s health inequities into stark relief, but The Viral Underclass illustrates that the problem isn’t new, and that it is embedded more deeply than many of us realize . . . Thrasher, a gay Black man, brings figures from the viral underclass to life in this engaging, enraging read.”
—Jennifer Latson, The Boston Globe
Having spent a groundbreaking career studying the racialization, policing, and criminalization of HIV, Dr. Steven W. Thrasher has come to understand a deeper truth at the heart of our society: there are vast inequalities in who is able to survive viruses and the ways in which viruses spread, kill, and take their toll are much more dependent on social structures than they are on biology alone. Told through the heartrending stories of friends, activists, and teachers navigating the novel coronavirus, HIV, and other viruses, Dr. Thrasher brings the reader with him as he delves into the viral underclass and lays bare its inner workings. In the tradition of Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste and Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, The Viral Underclass helps us understand the world more deeply by showing the fraught relationship between privilege and survival.
© C.S. Muncy
Steven W. Thrasher, Ph.D., is the inaugural Daniel H. Renberg chair at Northwestern University’s Medill School, the first journalism professorship in the world created to focus on LGBTQ research. He is also a faculty member of Northwestern University’s Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing. His writing has been widely published by The New York Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, The Journal of American History, BuzzFeed News, The Village Voice, and Scientific American. A recipient of grants from the Ford and Sloan foundations, Dr. Thrasher was named one of the hundred most influential and impactful people of 2019 by Out magazine for his research on HIV/AIDS.
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