Summary

In “A Word She Whispers,” when Hernández is six, she visits Tía Dora, her mother’s sister, in the New York City hospital. She hears her mother say the word “Chagas” (1). For years, Hernández would not learn “that Chagas is a parasitic disease” transmitted “to humans by triatomine insects called kissing bugs” (2). Because few people are tested for the disease, few receive proper treatment. The parasite, “Trypansoma cruzi,” can live in the body for “up to thirty years” (2, Hernández’s italics). It is now called the kissing bug disease.

The disease has many possible symptoms, but 30 percent of sufferers experience cardiac issues. Three hundred thousand people with the disease live in the United States, many of whom are immigrants like Tía Dora (3). The disease is also called Chagas after Carlos Chagas, “the Brazilian...