Macy explores opioid crisis
When you think about it, a lot of good narrative journalism is sought by readers already sharing the writer’s views and wishing to understand more. A genre that might be slighted as “preaching to the choir” is potent for readers seeking to organize their thinking and contribute to solving social problems.
Beth Macy’s “Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis” is another remarkable book of this sort, bursting with lucid and crucial argumentation.
Macy’s 2018 book, “Dopesick,” offered a relentless, deeply researched account of the legal pursuit and case against the Sackler family, who tried to protect the billions of dollars they made dominating the market for painkillers by misrepresenting OxyContin as hardly addictive.
“Raising Lazarus,” the companion volume to “Dopesick,” celebrates an admirable handful of humble practitioners fighting against this commercially administered plague. Its heroes include officials in state and federal regulatory apparatus; and nurses, doctors and former addicts who have organized harm-reduction measures such as informal clean-needle exchanges, testing for hepatitis and distribution of Naloxone and Buprenorphen, which have been shown to ease the painful withdrawal (“dopesickness”) that keeps addicts addicted.
Macy’s books offer frank “advocacy journalism” of the refreshing sort that calls out selfish lies. The straight-up flavor of her writing is delightful if you believe her, and it’s hard not to.
“Dopesick” and “Raising Lazarus” are reverse Pandora’s Boxes. They are not only fascinating reading but also powerful
guides to remedying widespread sickness, misery and death. — Mark Kramer, Minneapolis Star Tribune
Growing up gay in rural Louisiana, Casey Parks
always felt like a misfit. When she came out as a lesbian in college to her Southern evangelical family, it did not go well. Her pastor asked God to kill her. Her mother was so distraught that her grandmother had to step in.
“Life is a buffet,” she scolded her daughter. “Some people eat hot dogs, and some people eat fish. (Casey) likes women, and you need to get the (expletive) over it.” Later that day, Parks’ grandma will tell her a story that will haunt her for decades — she grew up across the street from a woman who lived as a man. Not only that but for a time, that neighbor, Roy Hudgins, was the most important person in her life. Eventually, she moved away, but she always wondered what happened to him.
Years after Parks came out, when she was scrambling to make a name for herself as a reporter in Oregon, she decided that Roy’s story was exactly the kind of “good Southern tale” that could jump-start
her career.
She made trips to Louisiana. She dug through records; she knocked on doors. Gradually, she came to realize that Roy gave her “a reason to go home” at a time when she was struggling to reconcile her strict Christian upbringing with her new queer identity. Meanwhile, her mother knew all along. “My daughter is gay, and this is a journey of self-acceptance,” she says to one of Parks’ interview subjects.
The book that Parks wrote about her experience, “Diary of a Misfit,” combines the mystery of Roy with a memoir about Parks’ tempestuous relationship with her mother and ambivalent feelings about religion and the South. When she finally gains access to a trove of Roy’s diaries, she writes, “I didn’t allow myself to acknowledge it that night, but of course I was still looking at Roy searching for signs of myself.”
Parks, who covers gender and family issues for the Washington Post, is an indefatigable reporter. But her decision to blend Roy’s story with her own journey of self-discovery bogs down the narrative and takes the focus off Roy’s singular and heartbreaking life.