If God Is a Virus

March 1, 2021
Yasmin, author of Viral BS: Medical Myths and Why We Fall for Them (2021), draws on her remarkable experiences as a physician, Emmy Award-winning journalist, and Epidemic Intelligence Service investigator in this stunningly forthright, inventive, and timely poetry collection. Using the language of medicine to forge a searing poetics of protest laced with indicting wit, she calls out the myriad forms of racism and sexism, and Islamophobia and homophobia endemic in health care, from personal confrontations to systemic inequities. She mocks inadequate efforts to combat highly contagious viruses and chides anti-vaxxers. One visual (or concrete) poem is titled "Self-Portrait as Virus," and in one iteration of the title poem she informs us that "We are literal cousins of pathogens / wretched offspring of pandemics." Her clinical descriptions of the ravages of viral diseases are utterly unnerving, but she is also mordantly funny, as in "A Virus Pens a Self-Help Book." Scalpel-sharp and unflinching, Yasmin ponders adaptation and mutation, dispassion versus compassion, and criminal medical biases and neglect, forging a whole new meaning for antibody as we continue to struggle with COVID-19.

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