A brutally frank memoir about doctors and patients in a health care system that puts the poor at risk.
No Apparent Distress
begins with a mistake made by a white medical student that may have hastened the death of a working-class black man who sought care in a student-run clinic. Haunted by this error, the author—herself from a working-class background—delves into the stories and politics of a medical training system in which students learn on the bodies of the poor. Part confession, part family history,
is at once an indictment of American health care and a deeply moving tale of one doctor’s coming-of-age.