Crisis, Inequity, and Legacy

The stories we tell of our own lives and those of others help us make sense of the world and establish meaningful social connections across space and time. Pandemic stories similarly can shed light on the emotions, relationships, values, and actions that arise in times of crisis and disruption. This book examines how COVID-19 narratives function as models of sense-making, how they connect public and private life, and what they make possible in social worlds. It emphasizes the little heard stories of those struggling with the pandemic's effects, featuring stories from across the world found in literature, social research, media, public health, and science. In doing so, it provides insight into the inequitable social burdens associated with the COVID-19 crisis. Designed to demonstrate the richly nuanced insights that narrative inquiry can produce to understand COVID-19, Crisis, Inequity, and Legacy explores the way in which pandemic narratives are used to create the shared collective memory and cultural legacy of the pandemic. The volume expands the critical frameworks through which emerging COVID-19 narratives - experiential, literary, scientific and their hybrids - can be known, examined, and understood. With contributions from scholars working in Africa, Asia, Australia, the Americas, the United Kingdom, and Europe, the volume furthers dialogue on the pandemic across geographical, cultural, and social diversity and considers how COVID-19 intersects with privilege and inequity in diverse social circumstances. It problematizes perspectives on the pandemic that reduce it to a global monolith or unhelpful North-South comparisons. It reframes the narrative that centered technocratic expert knowledge and a mobilizing emphasis on fear and sacrifice while discounting other values and ramifications. This volume uses narrative to provide forms of evidence, self-reflection, and shared understanding for building more equitable and just post-COVID-19 futures.