Author John Green visited the University of Wisconsin’s Shannon Hall at Memorial Union on Feb. 18 to talk about the upcoming release of his new book, “Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection.” Green was introduced by professor of pediatrics at UW’s School of Medicine and Public Health Dr. James Conway.
“Everything is Tuberculosis” will be Green’s second non-fiction book. Green was formerly known solely for his young adult fiction, but this changed with the release of his 2021 non-fiction debut “The Anthropocene Reviewed.”
Green focused his lecture on health inequities and the urgent need to combat infectious diseases as a society. There are about 10,000 active cases of TB in the U.S. every year, according to Green.
Green’s warnings about infectious disease and healthcare come in light of a recent federal funding freeze — now temporarily blocked by a federal judge — that may have ripple effects in the healthcare system, as well as the current TB outbreak in Kansas, with 67 active cases as of Jan. 24, according to AP News.
Green also discussed grief and mortality as he has experienced them, a theme common in many of his books — from “Looking for Alaska,” to “The Fault in Our Stars,” to “Everything is Tuberculosis.”
Green spoke on the inevitability of oblivion, such as the eventual explosion of our sun, and the multiple “apocalypses” happening today — mass extinction, global climate change and infectious diseases.
“All of us, the very idea of us, will cease to exist along with everything we ever did, or made or thought,” Green said.
This is a theme mirrored in his 2012 novel “The Fault In Our Stars,” with the character of Augustus Waters’ very verbalized fear of oblivion.
Green made room for hope in his message, as well. His lecture, largely inspired by his Christian faith, likened the despair and suffering that humans feel in the face of these apocalypses to the parable of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well.
Jesus sought out the well and its sustaining water without any means to withdraw the water, and, today, people must seek refuge in places of hope and light and progress, even if they feel they have nothing to draw it with, Green said.
“Everything is Tuberculosis” focuses on the story of one 17-year-old Sierra Leonean who Green met in 2019 while visiting a TB hospital. Green told The Badger Herald after the lecture about his first encounter with Henry.
“When I got out of the car, he just grabbed me by the shirt and started walking me around,” Green said. “I had no choice. He has the same name as my son, Henry, and he looked to be about the same age as my son, about nine years old. Everywhere we went around the hospital — to the lab, to the kitchen, to the wards — everybody loved Henry.”
Green explained that he later found out Henry was actually 17, but looked nine due to his emaciation.
Green left the audience with two pieces of advice — don’t underestimate the power of collective action and remember that as poet Emily Dickinson mused, hope is in the soul and is a tune that never stops at all.
“Everything is Tuberculosis” will be released March 18.
