The Viral Underclass

March 1, 2022

The inaugural Daniel H. Renberg chair at Northwestern University, the world's first journalism professorship focusing on LGBTQ research, Thrasher has long studied the racialization and policing of HIV. Here he transfers that understanding to a new realm, showing that COVID-19 does not affect all people equally. The better-off can often work safely from home, with necessities delivered, but others are less fortunate. Those more directly in the virus's sights include essential workers, with occupations ranging from healthcare to grocery clerking to transportation; those in more crowded communities; those without health insurance or jobs; older people viewed as expendable; and people with disabilities that put them at special risk. Members of this "viral underclass" are more likely to be infected and less likely to survive, which ultimately reveals deep fractures in our society. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

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Starred review from June 13, 2022
Thrasher, a professor of journalism, public health, and queer studies at Northwestern University, debuts with a powerful look at “the relationship between viruses and marginalization.” Contending that “marginalized populations are subjected to increased harms of viral transmission, exposure, replication, and death,” Thrasher identifies 12 “social vectors”—including capitalism, racism, ableism, and “the liberal carceral state”—at the root of the problem. The story of Michael Johnson, “a gay, Black, sexually active wrestler with learning disabilities,” who was sentenced in 2015 to 30 years in prison for “recklessly transmitting” HIV to a white man and exposing four other sexual partners to the virus, provides a through line as Thrasher documents how minority groups are more susceptible to diseases and more likely to be stigmatized and punished for carrying them (in the late 19th century, he notes, fears of bubonic plague led to the quarantining of San Francisco’s Chinatown and the extension of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act). Elsewhere, Thrasher profiles a transgender Latinx activist who died of Covid-19 in March 2020, examines the links between ableism and antivaccine rhetoric, and argues that “capitalism’s economic goals at odds with human health.” Rigorous scholarship and intimate portraits of life and death on the margins make this a must-read. Agent: Tanya McKinnon, McKinnon Literary.

Starred review from August 1, 2022
In his exemplary examination of America's recent viral history with HIV and COVID-19, journalist and Northwestern University professor Thrasher explains how these viruses hit Black, Latinx, and Native American people along with the poor, the incarcerated, the queer, and immigrants particularly hard. Members of this ""viral underclass"" have a top-heavy death rate from COVID-19. Thrasher identifies 12 major social vectors contributing to the creation of the viral underclass, including austerity, borders, capitalism, the law, racism, shame, and unequal preventive measures. The stories he recounts of affected individuals provoke anger, sympathy, and sometimes misty eyes. The chapter, ""Disability as Disposability: Ableism,"" skillfully juxtaposes a tender telling of the passing of Thrasher's former editor from COVID-19 in a nursing home with the refuted, outlandish myth that the MMR vaccine is linked to autism (prompting Thrasher to deduce that ""many parents would rather increase the likelihood that their children died from a preventable disease like measles . . . than face the possibility of parenting a child with autism""). Thrasher suggests viruses can teach us many lessons: how important it is to acknowledge our vulnerability, ""how connected our struggles are,"" and how essential it is to express our humanity. A compelling and compassionate analysis of health disparities that delivers both wake-up call and gut-punch.

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Starred review from July 1, 2022
A renowned journalist and scholar lays bare the unequal effects of viral pandemics and the ways in which capitalist power structures exploit--and indeed, create--a viral underclass. In this riveting book, Northwestern professor Thrasher, who holds "the first journalism professorship in the world created to focus on LGBTQ research," blends critical theory, engaging storytelling, and memoir to tell the stories of human beings whose lives and bodies are subject to a manufactured vulnerability sustained by classism, racism, and stigma. Through on-the-ground reporting from across the globe, the author deconstructs the entanglement among poverty, population density, policing, and viral illness, demonstrating that "viruses interact with the power structures already at play in our society so that those who are already marginalized are left even more susceptible to danger, exacerbating existing social divides. But more important...it is social structures that are the drivers, while viruses merely amplify." Thrasher is masterful in his ability to contrast vivid anecdotes with carefully crafted, meticulously researched prose to shine a light on a few of the many people subjected to this feedback loop as well as the heroes who devote their lives to defending their communities against structural inequality and police violence. The author's own role is significant: Through his reporting and activism, he altered the discourse surrounding the criminalization of HIV and helped free a Black man from a 30-year prison sentence, an ordeal that demonstrated "the overlapping maps of racism and policing and viruses." Throughout this insightful and unflinching book, Thrasher is unafraid to let his anger shine, but he also consistently deploys love and compassion. In a text marked by mistreatment and loss, the author encourages hope: "Viruses have the potential to help us make a world predicated upon love and mutual respect for all living things, not just in the here and now, but across time and space." Powerful and revelatory, this is an essential, paradigm-shifting book.

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