Structure

The Kissing Bug: A True Story of a Family, an Insect, and a Nation’s Neglect of a Deadly Disease is divided into a series of titled sections and chapters. The chapter “A Word She Whispers,” is placed prior to the text’s opening section. This chapter acts as a pseudo introduction, is written in the present tense, and introduces the reader to the narrative parameters and stakes of Hernández’s story. The chapter’s opening page presents a scene from Hernández’s childhood. This scene is followed by a paragraph break and Hernández’s retrospective considerations: “No one in the hospital that day, or for many years after, told me that Chagas is a parasitic disease . . . The illness has come to be known in English as the kissing bug disease” (2). These opening pages, therefore, introduce the reader to Hernández’s overarching style...