Ward describes losing her 33-year old husband in the early days of COVID when transmission wasn’t well understood and treatments were non-existent. The essay opens with a loving tribute to his individual attributes, a useful move to personalize the statistics on COVID deaths. She puts her loss in conversation with the plot of a novel she is writing about an enslaved woman who loses family and with protests in response to the murder of George Floyd.
The short essay is accompanied by a 14:27 minute audio reading.
This essay could be used in a course to prompt discussion about health disparities in COVID and the connection between those and a larger history of systemic racism. It also gives insight into grief and loss, both individual and communal, and the ways in which story is a way of processing and acting upon it.
Access
- Link: https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2020/08/jesmyn-ward-on-husbands-death-and-grief-during-covid
Details
Language: English
Type of Story: Newspaper or Magazine and Brief story
Medium: written and audio
Contributed by: Health Story Hub Team ( health-storyhub@uiowa.edu )
Citation:
Ward, J., & Rawles, C. (2020, September 1). Jesmyn Ward on her husband’s death and grief during COVID-19. Vanity Fair. https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2020/08/jesmyn-ward-on-husbands-death-and-grief-during-covid