In this episode, historian Keri Leigh Merritt explores how a pandemic exacerbated simmering inequalities in American society to produce mass death at an unprecedented scale. The book she co-edited with Rhae Lynn Barnes and Yohuru Williams, "After Life: A Collective History of Loss and Redemption in Pandemic America," is a collection of essays where authors explore the damage that grief and fear had on our collective psyche. We discussed the impact that politics, race and class had on who died and on who was left behind.
Keri Leigh's website can be found at https://kerileighmerritt.com/
More information about "After Life" can be found at https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1927-after-life
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