Pandemic and Narration

<p>'Pandemic and Narration: Covid-19 Narratives in Latin America' sheds light on how as Covid-19 spread infecting and killing millions across the world life not only continued to be experienced but also continued to be narrated. </p><p>By putting together this volume we help understand what happened in the region from a perspective in which unlike most of what we saw during the health emergency numbers statistics and percentages are not at the centre of the analysis. The essays gathered here foreground something else: the manifold ways Covid-19 was subjectively and collectively narrated in the news government reports political speeches NGO communications social media literature songs and many other media. From a wide range of disciplinary approaches the contributors to this edition pay attention to how fictional and non-fictional stories official discourses as well as personal and political accounts documented represented and shaped the health crisis laying bare how -in Latin American countries- the spread of the virus intersected with corruption gender-based violence inequality and exclusion as with community solidarity and hope. </p><p>Readers will find that the focus on narrative provides an alternative source of knowledge on Latin America's Covid-19 experience. Our perspective contrasts with the usual emphasis on death tolls infection rates weekly cases vaccination counts and the plethora of statistics that illustrated the gravity of the situation in the build-up to during and after the peak of the crisis. While extremely important to understand the situation numbers do not tell the whole story. A comprehensive picture of the pandemic can only be achieved when the stories of the virus are accounted for. Health after all is no stranger to narrative. And neither is Latin America.</p>