Professors may grade me, but I think it’s time I return the favour—and grade them on their literary taste.
Over the fall break, at the recommendation of Film and Media Professor Dan Vena, I picked up John Green’s newest book, Everything is Tuberculosis. For fellow book lovers, Green needs little introduction; he’s the author behind The Fault in Our Stars and Looking for Alaska. But his latest work marks a striking departure from his usual teen romances.
Everything is Tuberculosis is Green’s most mature and ambitious book yet, tracing the global story of tuberculosis (TB) by weaving together historical investigation with personal narrative. At its heart is the real-life story of Henry, a boy from Sierra Leone whom Green met while he was undergoing treatment for TB.
Everything is Tuberculosis is an engaging yet heart-wrenching non-fiction exploration of the social and scientific histories of tuberculosis. At its core, the book makes a powerful case for combating this preventable but deadly disease.
What I admired most about the novel was Green’s ability to draw readers back to their sense of humanity. The emphasis on emotion made the novel very readable; rather than overwhelming us with statistics, Green invites empathy by grounding the global crisis of TB in Henry’s story.
Henry’s narrative is particularly important “because he’s one person. A person, you understand. And anyway, what if he can be the first of many,” Green wrote in Everything is Tuberculosis.
Despite lacking prior knowledge of tuberculosis, I found myself quickly learning. Green’s approach to accessibility mirrors a strategy Vena employs in his own teaching—encouraging students to step beyond their echo chambers and push past their comfort zones.
“[Green] is an excellent role model, right. He’s not a scientist, but he has enough background and understanding and knowledge that he can move through all these difficult intellectual spaces,” Vena said in an interview with The Journal.
As a horror film scholar, Vena explores how stories of disease and illness—like Everything is Tuberculosis—use medicine’s bodily terror not to teach survival, but to help us confront death. “We should work towards a world in which all of us get a graceful death, and I think this is the thing that [Green] is getting at,” Vena said. “These tuberculosis deaths aren’t graceful.”
Vena explains his interest in exploring how art can provoke widespread reactions to injustice, which was why telling Henry’s story was an important move by Green.
All in all, Everything is Tuberculosis is an accessible yet powerful read, using the spread of TB to mirror global inequality. Even if, like me, you’re not usually drawn to stories about illness, it leaves you reflecting on what it means to be alive—and human—in the face of shared vulnerability.
This week, Vena earns himself an A minus.
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Column, John Green, Literature review, Professor reads Eva reviews
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