Doctor Says, “There’s No Textbook for Dealing With a Global Pandemic.” I Disagree.

(Photo is from one of Octavia E. Butler’s journals at the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA.

Photo description: It is a picture of a notebook with Butler’s handwriting in blue ink. It reads: “Today or tomorrow Gore will conceed, at which time he will proclaim Bush “his president” as well as the nation’s. He said he would, and he probably will. And Bush will wait eagerly for Jan. 20, 2001 to put the country up for sale in every way he can. So Reagan sort of inspired not only XGs [Xenogenesis, another of her books] but The Parables. What might the appallingly inadequate and amoral Bush inspire? Vultures,” Both XG and Parables are underlined.

I have chosen not to “correct” Butler’s prose to honor the working of her mind. Photo credit: Therí A. Pickens)

Reuters just published a story about a doctor, Thomas Krajewski, working at a hospital in New Orleans, LA. The news outlet, in its Alexa distillate and in online media, focused on the 31-year-old’s emotional fatigue emphasizing his fear, his inability to play with his infant son and the gravity of speaking to someone in their last moments. On Alexa, Krajewski deadpans, “We’re kind of writing the book as we go. There is no textbook on how to deal with a global pandemic.” I disagree.

I am a college English professor who teaches Black literature, Arab American literature, Disability Studies, and Literary Theory and who, for the past three years, is the chair of the program in Africana. (For those who are unfamiliar, a chair is the person who manages and sometimes supervises.) For years, I have written letters of recommendation for students desiring to be doctors. I write letters of recommendation for students who have taken courses from me and completed substantial intellectual work (this does not mean that they have earned an A), students who have worked for me as research assistants or summer associates, and/or thesis students or advisees. In order to craft a strong recommendation, I should know them fairly well. The more substantive our intellectual interaction, the stronger their letters are.

I have also refused to write for students. When I refuse to write for students applying to medical school, it often boils down to one reason. They have not demonstrated an ability to take seriously the culturally specific traditions and concerns of literature by people of color. I’ve had to, in some nice professorial way, tell them to tuck in their anti-Black and/or anti-Arab racism, white supremacist leanings, misogynistic tendencies, or ableism and it keeps reappearing like a maladjusted slip or a 1990s thong (shout out to Sisqo). Please note: I wrote “they have not demonstrated.” That means it is a learned skill — a quantifiable, tangible skill — that one learns in an English class that takes for granted the opinions, experiences, and traditions of people of color.

I make no comment on Thomas Krajewski’s educational background or his English bonafides. In these times and given his position, this is a wholly appropriate time to consider compassion fatigue. And, thank you — BIG thank you — to all the first responders for their work. Fact: this is and is not about Krajewski. It is about his statement that there is no textbook for a global pandemic. I can imagine he and other physicians are thinking of something that tells you how to deal with a shifting medical reality, an upswing in patients, the onerous task of dealing with death and grief, and how to appropriately make crucial decisions. I would venture that some of that is in the archival materials from the 1918 pandemic, ones that historians of medicine, librarians, archivists, and others may have laid bare. I also disagree with him.

Octavia E. Butler wrote two books that speak to the time we’re in: the Parables series, including Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1998). The first, set in the 2020s, introduces us to Lauren Oya Olamina who lives in an America ravaged by poor political leadership, natural disaster, a fledgling economy, and human ego. The president in Lauren’s America had as his slogan “Make America Great Again.” (Not kidding!) Don’t stop if it begins to sound too familiar. We follow Lauren’s dangerous trek up the California coast, her founding of a new community, appropriately called Acorn, and her founding of a new faith, Earthseed. In the midst of all this, she connects and reconnects with people, is betrayed, falls in love, navigates her disability, and fights for equity and justice. Parable of the Talents oscillates between Lauren and her daughter’s perspectives on the aftermath of Acorn, their present relationship, and the future of Earthseed. They each navigate this complex mother/daughter dynamic with the background of Lauren’s brother’s religious zeal.

This is what I would call a textbook for dealing with a global pandemic. First, Butler’s novels — inspired as they are by the 1980s — drill home how unoriginal this generation’s problems are. Deftly, she recognizes the consequences of the confluence of demagoguery, cowardice in politics, natural disaster, economic downturns, and humanity’s greed and meanness. Second, the emphasis on a main character and her intimate relationships (masterful use of the first person) allows a reader to examine how the personal and political are intertwined. We do not exist alone. We are part of larger enclaves. Third, Lauren’s disability is hyperempathy — the literal feeling of others’ pain or pleasure. She feels in her body when others get shot or die. She feels in her body when others have sex. Far from being simply a metaphor about how we are all connected, Butler depicts Lauren’s disability as a crucial part of her identity — along with her Blackness and womanhood — that governs how she understands and interacts with a changing world. Moreover, it is from her disabled Black womanhood that she crafts a faith, a new logic, for how to create change in the world. A lesson for our times indeed. Cite Black women. Nothing for us without us.

Before anyone decries that the books do not explicitly deal with global pandemics, let me warn you to not follow the path of a wayward student. Butler’s creative vision crafts a world where we can understand the human compulsions that will emerge and the dynamics that will exacerbate or correct our world in the coming times. And, to be fair, Butler wasn’t alone. There are other Black and Brown writers whose knowledges we ignore at our own peril. These are the skills this reading teaches: how to take seriously the concerns of people of color which precede and are exacerbated by the global pandemic, how to learn from and not appropriate the literary traditions that take for granted a sense of ‘been knowing’ about this country, when to quiet oneself and feel and listen. Feel. Listen. Read. Learn. Do.