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WORK TITLE: A History of the World in Six Plagues
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WEBSITE: https://www.ednabonhomme.com/
CITY: Berlin
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COUNTRY: Germany
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PERSONAL
Born in Miami, Florida.
EDUCATION:Reed College, B.A. (biology); Columbia University, M.P.H, (public health practitioner); Princeton University, Ph.D. (history of science), 2017.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Scholar, writer, biologist, historian. Taught at Princeton Prison Initiative, 2012, and Drexel University, 2016, 2017. Taught undergraduate and graduate courses at Bard College, Berlin; Free University, Berlin; Humboldt University; and Universität der Künste, Berlin.
AVOCATIONS:She creates multimedia artwork that has been featured at galleries, ARIEL Feminisms, Austrian Association of Women Artists, Gwangju Biennale, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, and Savvy Contemporary Galerie.
MEMBER:National Book Critics Circle, Author’s Guild, and National Writer’s Union.
AWARDS:Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for History of Science; fellowships from Ludwig Maximilian Universität, Camargo Foundation, Baldwin for the Arts, Robert Silvers Foundation, and Andy Warhol Foundation.
WRITINGS
Co-editor of After Sex, a literary anthology about reproductive justice.
Contributor of articles to periodicals, including Al Jazeera, Atlantic, Baffler, Berliner Zeitung, Esquire, Frieze, Guardian, London Review of Books, The Nation, Washington Post.
Contributor of academic articles to journals, including Africa Is a Country, Contretemps, Der Freitag, Jacobin Magazine, Mada Masr, and Viewpoint Magazine.
SIDELIGHTS
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Edna Bonhomme is a Haitian American scholar, writer, biologist, and historian who studies plague, pestilence, sanitary imperialism, and traditional medicine. Her writings about the commercial and geopolitical effects of plague, contagious outbreaks, medical experiments, reproductive assistance, and African diaspora have appeared in numerous publications. She also creates multimedia artwork, and she co-edited After Sex, a literary anthology about reproductive justice.
In 2024 Bonhomme published A History of the World in Six Plagues: How Contagion, Class, and Captivity Shaped Us, from Cholera to COVID-19, which exposes the inequality along racial, ethnic, class, and gender lines of epidemic diseases. Spurred by her own bout of typhoid fever in 1988 when she was confined at Jackson Hospital in Miami, FL, Bonhomme describes the alienation, confinement, systemic violence in public health, and racial inequality of diseases and epidemics. She begins with white physicians’ belief during the 19th century in the inferiority of the Black race, which allowed for medical experimentation on black and brown bodies, incorrect assumptions on the causes and treatment of diseases, and the toxic treatment of enslaved and indigenous peoples. From cholera, to sleeping sickness, Ebola, the Spanish flu, HIV/AIDS, to Covid-19, she traces the spread of disease during colonization, the access to cures in modern hospitals but not for indigenous peoples, and stigmatization of people with disease.
Monica Teresa Ortiz remarked in BookPage that Bonhomme writes not only about “stigmatization, confinement and captivity but also survival, resistance and liberation… The language of captivity and reverberating violence of confinement is an integral part” of her book. Writing in Kirkus Reviews, a critic called the book “A searing attack on historical injustices.”
In an interview with Robert Lee Brewer in Writer’s Digest, Bonhomme explained that she wrote the book “to understand the history of modern epidemics and how societies have fueled their spread through forced labor, confinement, and austerity… I also want to highlight how the threat of infectious diseases and the efforts to overcome that threat have played and will continue to play an essential role in shaping the modern world.”
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BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
BookPage, https://www.bookpage.com/ (March 11, 2025), Mónica Teresa Ortiz, review of A History of the World in Six Plagues: How Contagion, Class, and Captivity Shaped Us, from Cholera to COVID-19.
Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2025, review of A History of the World in Six Plagues.
ONLINE
Authors Guild, https://authorsguild.org (March 27, 2025), “Member Spotlight: Edna Bonhomme.”
Edna Bonhomme homepage, https://www.ednabonhomme.com/ (August 1, 2025).
Writer’s Digest, https://www.writersdigest.com/ (March, 13, 2025), Robert Lee Brewer, “Edna Bonhomme: I Was Committed to Embodying the Identity of a Writer.”
Edna Bonhomme is a historian of science, culture writer, and journalist based in Berlin, Germany. She writes cultural criticism, literary essays, book reviews, and opinion pieces. Her writing explores how people navigate the difficult states of health—especially subjects that discuss contagious outbreaks, medical experiments, reproductive assistance, or illness narratives. Edna’s writing has appeared in Al Jazeera, The Atlantic, The Baffler, Berliner Zeitung, Esquire, Frieze, The Guardian, London Review of Books, The Nation, Washington Post, and others.
A graduate of Princeton University’s Ph.D. program in History of Science, she held awards and fellowships from the Max Planck Institute for History of Science, the Ludwig Maximilian Universität, the Camargo Foundation, Baldwin for the Arts, the Robert Silvers Foundation, and the Andy Warhol Foundation. Edna is the author of A History of the World in Six Plagues (Simon & Schuster; Dialogue Books; Ullstein Verlag) and the co-editor of After Sex (Silver Press), a literary anthology about reproductive justice.
Her dissertation, “Plagued Bodies and Spaces,” examined the origins and progression of epidemics in North Africa during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As a historian, her research examines contagion, epidemics, and toxicity by asking: what makes people sick? As a writer, she is committed to critical storytelling. She invites her readers to sit with the messiness of contagion, the discomforts of disorders, and the power of embodied knowledge while finding people’s desire to heal. Edna’s writing about illness and health draws on her education, which includes a bachelor of arts in biology from Reed College, a master's in public health from Columbia University, and a doctorate of philosophy in the history of science from Princeton University.
In addition, Edna’s multimedia artwork has been featured at the alpha nova galeria futura, ARIEL Feminisms, Austrian Association of Women Artists, Gwangju Biennale, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Savvy Contemporary Galerie, Kunstverein Hildesheim, Digital Prater Gallery, and other creative spaces. Edna co-hosts, As We See It, a radio show with Refuge Worldwide that explores the political and cultural scene in Berlin. In recent years, she has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in Germany (Bard College Berlin, Free University Berlin, Humboldt University, and Universität der Künste Berlin) and the United States on cinema, race, global medicine, and pandemics.
Collective power is vital to her; as such, she is a member of the National Book Critics Circle, the Author’s Guild, and the National Writer’s Union. If you want to read her reflections about history, science, and culture, consider signing up to Edna’s Substack newsletter, Mobile Fragments. For those who are dying to know, Edna was born and raised in Miami by cheeky working-class folk. Like her parents, Edna is always on the move, and she is currently based in Berlin, Germany. She is represented by Ian Bonaparte at Janklow & Nesbit. For literary queries, please contact him directly.
Edna Bonhomme
USA
PhD in History of Science
Princeton University
Edna Bonhomme is a Haitian American scholar, writer, and former biologist. She is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for History of Science where she is working on her book manuscript Ports and Pestilence in Alexandria, Tripoli, and Tunis which addresses the convergence of sanitary imperialism and traditional medicine during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In addition to her book project, she is collaborating with Berlin –based artists and writers who are using decolonial methodologies and diachronic practices in order to upend uneven power dynamics in archives, pedagogy, and science.
She completed her PhD in history/history of Science at Princeton University in 2017. Using a historical materialist approach, her dissertation, “Plagued Bodies and Spaces: Medicine, Trade, and Death in Ottoman Egypt, 1705-1830 CE,” examined the commercial and geopolitical trajectory of plague and as its direct links to commercial, provincial, and imperial policies in several North African port cities. In addition to her historical training, she studied biology at Reed College (BA) and public health practitioner at Columbia University (MPH).
In addition to her academic interests, she writes for publications including but not limited to Africa is a Country, Contretemps, Der Freitag, Jacobin Magazine, Mada Masr, and Viewpoint Magazine. She has previously taught for the Princeton Prison Initiative (2012), Drexel University (2016, 2017), and Humboldt University (2018).
Alumni
Edna Bonhomme
Postdoctoral Fellow (2017–2020)
Dept. III
PhD
EBONHOMME@MPIWG-BERLIN.MPG.DE
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Edna Bonhomme earned her PhD in History of Science at Princeton University. Her doctoral research, “Plague Bodies and Spaces: Medicine, Trade, and Death in Ottoman Egypt, 1705–1830 CE,” examined the ways that North African port cities not only functioned as liminal spaces for trade, but were also laboratory spaces for trade and imperialism. During her PhD studies, she was a lecturer at Drexel University in Philadelphia where she taught courses on the intersections between race, colonialism, and cinema. She was awarded the Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowship (2012/2014), the Princeton Center for African American Studies Dissertation Research Fellowship (2013), and a New York Public Library Research Scholar.
Edna is currently completing her manuscript Ports and Pestilence, which traces epidemics, public health, and scientific practice in Alexandria, Tripoli and Tunis. Her new project critically interrogates epidemics, surveillance data, and climate change in the 20th century, especially the ways that knowledge is represented and embodied in colonial and postcolonial contexts. Using North Africa and the Middle East as a case study, she goes to show how categories of disease and data collection are linked to postcolonial conceptualizations of health and power produce new bionic beings. Since becoming a Postdoctoral Fellow at MPIWG, Edna has been a lecturer in global histories of the subaltern at the Humboldt University in Berlin for the “Diversities of Knowledge Programme,” an initiative that encourages innovative teaching as well as Bard College Berlin where she taught a course on science and colonialism.
Edna’s work engages with digital humanities and critical media through various collaborative projects and performances. In 2020, Edna Bonhomme and Nnenna Onuoha premiered their exhibition “Cartographies of Care,” which charted the experience of African diasporic health in Berlin within and outside the German healthcare system. By engaging with the five senses, the visual artists showed how these people found solace and restoration in Black healing: Cartographies of Care – alpha nova & galerie futura. In 2018, she was co-awarded a grant by the Vereinigung bildender Künstlerinnen Österreichs (Austrian Association of Women Artists) to curate and produce critical media for “Scan the Difference: Gender, Surveillance, and Bodies” which was exhibited in Vienna, Austria. Moreover, she has engaged in various performance lectures including “Technologies of the Body” in Prague, Czech Republic and “Reparative Archaeologies” in Berlin, Germany.
At the MPIWG, she was the co-organizer for the “Critical Global History of Medicine” (2017–2019) and she is currently a co-organizer for the “Troubling the Epistemes and Postcolonialism” reading group (2019–Present). Edna has also co-organized a conference, “Power in Medicine” with the MPIWG through a joint partnership with EUME. Moreover, she co-created the podcast, “Decolonization in Action,” which explores the term “decolonial” and how it gets applied today by artists, researchers, and scientists. In addition to her academic and creative publications, she has written about surveillance, feminism, and the African diaspora for publications such as Africa is a Country, Analyses & Kritik, Contretemps Revue de Critique Communiste, Der Freitag, Mada Masr, and The Nation.
Plagues, Power, and Public Health: Uncovering the History of Disease and Its Lasting Impact with Edna Bonhomme
March 21, 2025by Adam
In A History of the World in Six Plagues, historian Edna Bonhomme delivers a searing examination of how disease outbreaks—far from being equalizers—have long been shaped by systems of power and inequality. From cholera to COVID-19, Bonhomme traces the global legacy of six major plagues, revealing how public health crises are entangled with race, class, and political policy. Spanning continents and centuries, this urgent and beautifully crafted work is both a meticulous history and a call to rethink how we respond to future pandemics.
We emailed with Bonhomme about the hidden stories behind the world’s deadliest diseases, the intersection of science and social justice, and why history’s greatest epidemics are never just about medicine.
What made you write about the diseases through history that shaped our world?
During the initial days of the COVID-19 lockdown, I was fascinated by the use and misuse of scientific language. I was captivated by how people sought to understand outbreaks, regardless of their familiarity with public health terminology. Phrases such as “ herd immunity “ and “ mass vaccination “ became part of our vocabulary, even as large sections of the world coped with a new reality of confinement. Writing the book allowed me to reflect on the ubiquity of health discourse in our society and explore the evolution of medical discourse in literature, philosophy, and beyond. As a former biologist with a master’s in public health and a doctorate in the history of science, I aimed to examine several case studies where epidemics were tied to varying conditions of confinement and where the language of pathology was also shaped by culture.
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A History of the World in Six Plagues blends memoir, history, and reportage. How did your personal experiences shape the way you approached this research?
This book is both personal and philosophical. I explore the conditions for epidemics and how illness is constructed—not just at the physiological level but also in terms of its social implications and bodily experiences. I consider the history of modern epidemics not only a tale of medical intervention but also reflects how we organize contemporary society. It narrates the rise of industrialization as much as it addresses the responses of novelists to the flu outbreak in 1918. I present historical examples that reveal, to some extent, the punitive mechanisms that produce the ‘repressive’ effects of public health and the individual and collective struggles to resist captivity. My research is extensive; I read pandemic novels, sifted through archival newsletters, examined early twentieth-century laboratory reports, and more. I conducted interviews and analyzed peer-reviewed scientific articles. My personal experience is a significant element, demonstrating how outbreaks spark my curiosity. However, as a writer, I believe my work cannot conclude with mere wonder; I must consult archives and an array of resources that can help enliven my texts.
As we approach the fifth anniversary of the COVID-19 lockdowns, what do you think governments and public health institutions have learned—or failed to learn—from the pandemic?
The pandemic reveals what the next epidemic might look like and what we can do to prevent it. Some diseases have not circulated in their regions for millions of years, and in some cases, since before humans existed to encounter them. Our immune systems would not know how to fight back when these prehistoric plagues emerged from the ice. What concerns epidemiologists more than ancient diseases is that existing scourges have relocated, rewired, or even evolved due to warming. During the latter half of the twentieth century, infectious diseases were on the decline: the eradication of smallpox serves as a constant reminder that we should accept nothing less. The last case of smallpox was reported in 1978. The eradication of smallpox is a testament to the power of public health policies when we exercise goodwill and distribute medical resources globally.
In your book you touch on Robert Koch, who is often celebrated as a pioneer in bacteriology, but you highlight the darker aspects of his legacy. I’m always curious and sometimes struggle with how to celebrate complex and sometimes outright people who did great things but lived awful lives. How do you balance navigating honoring legacies like that?
For me, the writing process involved extensive reading and delving into the archives to connect with the evolution of disease fully. Although my book focuses on epidemics from the nineteenth century to the present, reacquainting myself with ancient diseases was beneficial. I was particularly fascinated by diseases that have not circulated in the world for millions of years and, in some cases, existed before humans encountered them- illnesses that evolve. Simultaneously, science has equipped us with tools that have helped some infectious diseases decline, showcasing the brilliance achievable through human innovation. Specifically, vaccines and antibiotics accounted for half of the declines in death rates in developing countries through the late 1970s. Whether one is a literary giant or a scientific luminary, nobody is above criticism. I aimed to understand the history of modern epidemics and how societies have propelled their spread through forced labor, confinement, and austerity.
You discuss how incarceration has exacerbated public health crises, particularly with HIV/AIDS in Bedford Hills and cholera outbreaks in Haitian prisons. What lessons should modern public health policymakers take from these cases?
Angela Davis once noted, “Prisons do not erase social problems; they erase human beings.” What she and many prison abolitionists have established through their work is that forced confinement not only denies people their time and freedom but can also lead to social atrophy. Similarly, prisons, as I argue in my book, can be detrimental to people’s health. The risk of contracting infectious diseases such as HIV, hepatitis C, and tuberculosis is higher in prison than among those who are free. In the United States, the quality of healthcare in prisons is not only substandard but often fails to meet patients’ needs. As the Prison Policy Initiative has pointed out, incarceration can exacerbate both chronic and infectious diseases, contributing to a lower life expectancy in the country. Several policies must be implemented. First, access to healthcare in prisons must be improved, including free psychological support. Ultimately, however, the best way to reduce the spread of both short- and long-term diseases is through decarceration. This can be achieved not only by providing more funding to decrease the prison population but also by creatively exploring abolitionist practices. One way to accomplish this is to provide more extensive support services to individuals and their communities upon release from prison. This includes ensuring that formerly incarcerated people have access to fulfilling employment and adequate housing without discrimination. While these policies may seem ambitious, a humane and just social policy that restores dignity to those temporarily discarded by society can enhance overall public health.
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The relationship between war and disease is a recurring theme in your book. How did World War I’s influenza outbreak shape the way we understand pandemics today?
Jean-Paul Sartre once noted, “When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die.” In times of war, the poor not only disproportionately suffer from the violence of militarization but also become more vulnerable to infectious diseases. While my book discusses this in the context of influenza, we can observe how contagious diseases, such as cholera, have re-emerged in disaster zones like Yemen and Haiti, primarily due to the damage done to medical facilities and sanitation systems. In Sudan, the recent conflict has reignited outbreaks of malaria, cholera, and measles. Moreover, the 2024 polio outbreak in Gaza is believed to have spread due to the destruction of the water treatment facilities in the strip. Polio, which is highly infectious, can lead to paralysis and death. These outbreaks illustrate that military conflict and war are incubators for disease because a territory’s sanitation and healthcare systems are subjected to extreme duress. In addition to taking measures to prevent the spread of contagion, war and the physical damage of war highlight how we must be more careful to save precious lives—no matter people’s backgrounds. Moreover, we owe it to people living in conflict zones to operate outside of a framework of crisis or charity, instead, we should build robust healthcare systems to prevent infectious diseases from flourishing in the first place.
Vaccine skepticism is on the rise, with political figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gaining influence. How does historical skepticism toward vaccines inform the current debate?
Vaccine skepticism was long considered a fringe phenomenon. The Anti-Vaccination Society of America was established in 1879, advocating for homeopathic alternatives and launching legal challenges against vaccine mandates. In the early stages of history, anti-vaxxers tended to be left-leaning. However, in recent years, many Republican counties have adopted skepticism toward immunization programs. Worldwide, anti-vaxxers have capitalized on the growing public mistrust of the medical establishment. Some of this mistrust is linked to skepticism of the intelligence community or democratic leaders, while other aspects are deeply emotive, rooted in fear, anger, or indignation.
For example, in Germany, where I live, a surge of anti-vaxxers has been on full display this week, particularly with the participation of Alternative for Germany, a far-right, ethnonationalist party best known for its anti-immigration views. This party has also opposed vaccination mandates and conventional medicine. In the UK, Reform UK, the right-wing party led by Nigel Farage, has sown doubt about vaccines. Richard Tice, a leader of the Reform UK party, publicly stated on X (formerly known as Twitter), “No to compulsory vaccinations and to vaccinating young children.”
In the US, conservatives have cultivated a culture of skepticism toward medical science, prominently promoting the discredited link between childhood vaccinations and autism, as well as other health issues. This viewpoint coincides with the resurgence of measles over the past decade. According to a report published by the Lancet in 2024, titled ” Contribution of Vaccination to Improved Survival and Health, ” over 150 million lives have been saved through childhood vaccination. As we observe during this contemporary period, medical skepticism and the reversal of public health policies may inflict harm for years or even decades.
Your book is ultimately a call to action. What steps must be taken to build a more equitable public health system that prioritizes marginalized communities?
Sigmund Freud once said, “We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love.” If we want to exercise compassion for humanity, we should strive to alleviate ongoing harm in the world through our collective actions. I want readers to be curious about disease, illness, and medicine. At the same time, I hope readers can reflect on how the lack of investment in primary, preventive, and chronic health care has left many of their citizens vulnerable to emerging infectious diseases. I would argue that if we want to be more humane, we must be imaginative about how we organize our societies and think deeply about redistributing health resources on a global scale.
Edna Bonhomme: I Was Committed to Embodying the Identity of a Writer
In this interview, author Edna Bonhomme discusses how forced labor, confinement, and austerity play a huge role in the spread of infectious diseases throughout history with her new book, A History of the World in Six Plagues.
Robert Lee Brewer
Published Mar 13, 2025 12:00 PM EDT
Edna Bonhomme is a historian of science and culture writer based in Berlin. She is a contributing writer for Frieze Magazine, and her work has been published in The Atlantic, The Guardian, The London Review of Books, and The Nation, among others. She is co-editor of After Sex, a collection of essays, poems, and short stories illuminating why people need free and universal access to abortion (Silver Press, 2023). Moreover, she’s the author of A History of the World in Six Plagues, a nonfiction book that explores the relationship between captivity and contagion (Simon and Schuster, 2025). Edna has held fellowships from the Max Planck Institute for History of Science, the Ludwig Maximilian Universität, and the Camargo Foundation. Most recently, Edna received the Robert Silvers Foundation Grant for Works in Progress and the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writing Grant. She holds a PhD in History of Science from Princeton University. Follow her on X (Twitter) and Instagram.
Edna Bonhomme
In this interview, Edna discusses how forced labor, confinement, and austerity play a huge role in the spread of infectious diseases throughout history with her new book, A History of the World in Six Plagues, her advice for other writers, and more.
Name: Edna Bonhomme
Literary agent: Janklow & Nesbit,
Book title: A History of the World in Six Plagues
Publisher: One Signal/Simon & Schuster
Release date: March 11, 2025
Genre/category: History of Science; Literary Criticism; Epidemics
Previous titles: After Sex
Elevator pitch: Starting from the 19th century, this book is about how people worldwide cope with epidemics even when they feel captive.
Bookshop | Amazon
[WD uses affiliate links.]
What prompted you to write this book?
I wanted to understand the history of modern epidemics and how societies have fueled their spread through forced labor, confinement, and austerity. The book is a set of case studies that, to an extent, reveal punitive mechanisms that produce “repressive” effects and individual and collective forms of struggle to resist captivity. This book is both critical and philosophical. I try to consider the conditions of possibility for epidemics and how illness is made—not just at the physiological level but how it is socialized and experienced in the body. At the same time, I also want to highlight how the threat of infectious diseases and the efforts to overcome that threat have played and will continue to play an essential role in shaping the modern world.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
I began writing this book in 2020, during the initial stages of the COVID-19 lockdown Early on during the pandemic, language was significant in how people tried to understand outbreaks, whether or not people knew the meaning of terminology. Herd immunity, inoculation, and vaccination all became part of our vocabulary, which, on the one hand, was exciting, but, on the other hand, coincided with scientific skepticism. Part of my project as a writer is not merely to document what is happening but to go deeper into the discourse that took place. To an extent, I consider how Michel Foucault urges scholars to focus on the spatialization and verbalization of pathology. As such, confinement became the modality that I began to write about because it felt so alive and present in our lives. As I continued thinking and writing about what we went through, literary luminaries, philosophers, the incarcerated, and the formerly enslaved could also offer insight into the history of epidemics.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
There is a healthy body of historical and journalistic texts that discuss epidemics and disease, and within a year of the COVID-19 pandemic, several manuscripts were published. Many of them interview essential workers, medical professionals, and activists. While writing the book, I knew that I didn’t want the text to be strictly a COVID-19 book or a historical text. I tried to oscillate between the past and present, to engage people with childhood memories, the meaning behind statues, and satire. For me, publishing was more than a descriptive process but a creative one, where I wanted to provide more context than the initial headlines.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
For me, the writing process involved reading extensively and digging into the archives to connect with the evolution of disease fully. Although my book focuses on epidemics from the 19th century until now, reacquainting myself with ancient diseases was helpful. For example, I was fascinated by the fact that there are diseases that have not circulated in the world for millions of years, and in some cases since before humans were around to encounter them, illnesses that evolve. At the same time, science has afforded us with the tools for some infectious diseases to decline, which shows the brilliance that is possible with human innovation. That is to say, vaccines and antibiotics drove half of the declines in death rates in developing countries through the late 1970s. At the same time, diseases such as cholera have re-emerged in disaster zones such as Yemen and Haiti. And this is primarily due to broader sociopolitical conflict. My book goes to show how social segregation, war, and confinement can be harmful to one’s health. As such, I had to figure out how to write for a broad audience and connect my readers to institutions and people they were familiar with.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
I want writers to be curious about disease, illness, and medicine. At the same time, I want people to consider how the lack of investment in primary, preventative, and chronic health care in lower-income nations has exposed many of their citizens to emerging infectious diseases. To be more humane, we must be imaginative about organizing our societies and think deeply about redistributing resources on a global scale.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Deborah Levy wrote in Things I Don’t Want to Know: “It’s exhausting to learn how to become a subject; it’s hard enough learning how to become a writer.” Throughout the process of writing this book, I was committed to embodying the identity of a writer as if it were foreign and external to myself. However, as I came to read and reread archival material and fiction, I found that I could be a writer, fully and without apology.
Member Spotlight: Edna Bonhomme
March 27, 2025
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author Edna Bonhomme and her book A History of the World in Six Plagues
Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? Hannah Arendt once noted that “Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.” As an art form, storytelling can be expressed in many ways, yet writing conventions provide me with the best tools to manipulate language and prose for my desired effect. As a historian, I wrestle with language to find the most compelling style. This involves combing through my archival evidence, finding a manageable timeline, and bringing the past to life. When I was young, I fell in love with the public library, viewing it as a depository of books. Whether it was Little Women or Shakespeare, I read because the manuscripts activated my imagination. They took me to places I could not afford to travel to and gave me access to people I would never meet. When it is compelling, writing can provide more meaning and color to our lives.
What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? When I feel blocked, I read poetry. From Mahmoud Darwish to Rita Dove, poetry draws my attention to life’s joys and sorrows through rhyme, brevity, and evocation. When I briefly engage with poetry, especially those experimenting with their structure or themes, I experience a mild catharsis. From there, I might reflect for five minutes, sit with my thoughts, and then free-write. Once I’ve started playing with language, I turn to my primary writing task.
What is your favorite time to write? I write best when I feel tranquil, when my mind is quiet, and I can contemplate without distraction. After giving birth in the summer of 2024, my time was no longer my own, and I had to tend to an infant’s energy, chaos, and vibrancy. Because of this, early mornings are the best times for me to write while my child sleeps quietly. The freshness of the morning and a newfound optimism vibrate through the air when I write in the morning; for this reason, I enjoy the quietude I experience. From here, I can truly exercise my daily writing routine with discipline.
What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? Read. Read for inspiration. Read with envy. Read with an open heart. And read prose that upsets you. Reading can allow you to see what type of writer you want to be in conversation. When writing a science feature, I read a peer-reviewed microbiology text. While working on an exhibition review, I re-read John Berger’s Ways of Seeing. I turn to a nineteenth-century autobiography when compelled to write a personal essay. My writing has been enhanced by other writers, especially when I get to understand their process, whether they walked through a forest to compose their book or if they indulge themselves with reading philosophical treatises.
What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age I am enamored with the ensemble of writers I have come to know over the years and the ways in which I have connected with them online, long before meeting them in person. I love networks that strengthen our connections, even when separated by oceans and land masses. I enjoy learning about new individuals and embracing the energy and hope of various writers.
Edna Bonhomme’s A History of the World in Six Plagues: How Contagion, Class, and Captivity Shaped Us, from Cholera to COVID-19 is out now with Atria/One Signal Publishers.
Bonhomme, Edna A HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN SIX PLAGUES One Signal/Atria (NonFiction None) $29.99 3, 11 ISBN: 9781982197834
Beyond catastrophes.
Accounts of epidemics are a respectable publishing genre, but journalist and science historian Bonhomme uses them as a springboard for exploring inequality. Cholera, a major 19th-century killer, seems to be the subject of the first chapter, yet in a preview of what follows, Bonhomme opens in 1857 New Orleans, where a white physician lectured a meeting of the New Orleans Academy of Science on the supposed inferiority of the Black race. The audience listened respectfully. Although Bonhomme summarizes the nature of cholera, the purported causes (all wrong), and its treatment (always useless, often harmful) according to antebellum medical science, she describes the unspeakable conditions under which enslaved people lived. Readers will realize that this is not a history of epidemics but a fierce polemic arguing that minorities and the poor suffer when diseases rage because governments and the medical profession give them short shrift. The second chapter focuses on Africa during the colonial period. Sleeping sickness was rampant, and European physicians, eager to apply the latest science to conquer it, forced indigenous victims to undergo experiments without their permission, prescribing toxic drugs forbidden in Europe, and failed. The author's discussion of Ebola emphasizes the ravages of colonialism, which left African nations with inadequate medical care systems. Readers may be surprised to learn that Ebola, mostly fatal in Africa, is curable when treated in a modern hospital. The 1918 influenza pandemic, meanwhile, plays a modest role in a compelling account of how authors, notably Virginia Woolf, dealt with illness by writing. "In her letters to family and friends," writes Bonhomme, "she reflected on her pain, noting, 'My hand shakes no longer, but my mind vibrates uncomfortably, as it always does after an incursion of visitors; unexpected, and slightly unsympathetic.' Even when she suffered, Woolf's beautiful prose pulls one to her world."
A searing attack on historical injustices.
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"Bonhomme, Edna: A HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN SIX PLAGUES." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A825128199/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=362291c9. Accessed 29 June 2025.
by Mónica Teresa Ortiz,
As a child in 1988, Edna Bonhomme caught typhoid fever, and she was confined in Miami’s Jackson Hospital for several weeks. The sense of alienation from her family, friends and community has stayed with her for decades and is redolent in A History of the World in Six Plagues: How Contagion, Class, and Captivity Shaped Us, from Cholera to COVID-19. The language of captivity and reverberating violence of confinement is an integral part of Bonhomme’s book, in which she reveals systemic violence in public health, from plantations to the present.
Bonhomme focuses her research on cholera, HIV/AIDS, the Spanish flu, sleeping sickness, Ebola and COVID-19. Mixing historical research with thoughtful cultural analysis, Bonhomme’s frank, timely critique of the Western medical field and our faltering health care system reveals how it is deeply entangled with colonialism and capitalism. She writes, “Captivity is political, and it maps on to the many ways we already deliberately segregate society.”
Bonhomme recounts her parents’ departure from Haiti because of their opposition to dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier. They risked the perilous trek from the Caribbean to the U.S., where they became stigmatized due to the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. Perceived as vectors of the virus, Haitians were denied housing and employment. “Working-class Haitians found themselves marginalized four times over: They were Black and so belonged presumptively to the U.S. underclass; they were poor; they were migrants; they were marked out as diseased.”
A History of the World in Six Plagues is about not only stigmatization, confinement and captivity but also survival, resistance and liberation. Bonhomme writes, “Epidemics have been shaped by the history of forced captivity—one that began on the plantation, in medical experimental camps, racial apartheid, and continues in immigration detention centers and prisons. But in each case, those held captive have resisted. They have always made the choice to be free.”