What's Wrong?: Personal Histories of Chronic Pain and Bad Medicine

By Erin Williams

"The narratives of those marginalized by Western medicine—and how they've suffered from discriminatory medical systems—are told through watercolors and digital art in this touching collection." —New York Times

“A humane and gripping work that illuminates how (and why) our treatments of chronic illness fail, and a devastating portrait of the ways our society fails to protect the bodies of its most vulnerable members.” —Melissa Febos, author of Girlhood, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award

"Utterly riveting, deeply moving, absolutely molecule-rearranging exploration of pain—individual and collective—suffused with wit, wonder, and mourning; textured by compassion and curiosity, and vibrating with the humanity of its dynamic subjects. Williams' sharp, nimble, tender prose, and her searing art--humming with insight and imagination--speak to veins of human experience so difficult to articulate we often shy away from speaking them at all. But in these dark places, she finds vitality, collectivity, and hope. This book and its subjects will live inside me forever." —Leslie Jamison, author The Empathy Exams

What’s Wrong? is author, illustrator, and scientific researcher Erin Williams’s graphic exploration of how the American health-care system fails us. Focusing on four raw and complex firsthand accounts, plus Williams’s own story, this book examines the consequences of living with interconnected illnesses and conditions like