Interview With Kaylee Lamarche

 

The first story for the zine is one that centers the current pandemic with a view of the historical moment of the AIDS epidemic in NYC from 40 years ago and the relationship between disease, community activism, Latinidad, perception, and arts/culture. To learn more about that, I reached out to Gallatin student speaker Kaylee Lamarche (BA ’22) whose concentration, Plagues, Epidemics, and Disease, sought to deconstruct the idea of contagiousness and understand the social category of the ill. The transcript of our brief conversation (about 20 mins) from the afternoon of July 13, 2021 is below. It was live-generated by Otter.ai and has been lightly edited for clarity. 

LG: I read the profiles on the on the graduation speakers, and I read yours was centered on the concept of contagiousness and how that can affect identity and social structures and that really piqued my interest. I’m a curious: walk me through the process of how that works.

KL: I share all Gallatin students come in doing something completely different. It was the same for me. I started with more physics and dance and I was like “okay I want to do something with science and the body.” And, of course, it’s natural to realize that there is this whole field of anthropology, sociology, studying human behavior and how we interact with other people. And that really interested me.

And so, I started thinking about those larger questions about human beings and our dynamics with each other and how we’ve organized into society, specifically looking at infectious diseases and how the true nature of humanity can be illuminated by the experience of mass contagiousness, because at that point, everyone has a vested interest in containing disease because we can all be impacted by it; as we’ve seen with this pandemic.

So for me, it was really interesting to think about infectious diseases and how that alters your standing in society when people realize that you are sick, or what your disease could mean for the way that you understand yourself and how you shape your identity in our society. So I was really grateful to be able to really dive into those questions and get a better understanding of our society through the perspective of disease and then further how our notions of being sick dictate the way that we go out treatment, and what it means to be cured in our society and if that actually is solely based on the biological content of being cured versus the larger societal notion of being functioning in society as a form of being cured.

LG: That is very interesting. When you were talking a couple of moments ago, you said you were a dancer. I’m  curious about that and the relationship of these two halves because they’re very different fields. How has dance informed this idea of contagion?

KL: So for me, I grew up as a dancer. I started dancing when I was four, and then when I came to college I knew that it’s something I wanted to continue doing, so Gallatin seemed like the perfect place to allow me to do both my academic interest and also more artistic ventures as well. So I did a lot of dancing with the Tisch open arts program, which is really cool.

But what helped me really think about this is I started taking classes that weren’t just technique based; we had lectures and also a performance aspect to kind of really dive into why we move the way that we do, and what that means for the way we interact with other dancers in a space and so dance then became a tool to understand these larger concepts that I was looking at with my concentration where I was like, “well now as a dancer, you’re taking up physical space on the stage and you’re interacting with other dancers around you.”

And even in the context of a pandemic when we have new regulations where you couldn’t actually be close to other dancers, what does that mean for the way that you construct the performance if you’re limited in how close you can be to someone else you have masks you can’t touch each other?

So in a really weird way, it did really solidify a lot of the ideas that I’ve been thinking about. Disease does play a big role in in dance, and it was really cool to be able to study that, especially through the pandemic and taking dance classes. My only in person classes were dance classes so it was really, really interesting.

LG: That is interesting. Having studied pandemics, what would you say is your biggest takeaway from living through an actual pandemic?

KL: It was such a shock to go from taking only historical incidences of disease to inform my concentration or even looking at global diseases and things that have a certain distance from my lived experience as the basis of my concentration until the pandemic.

And then, I think my biggest takeaway was that these questions are worth asking and worth looking into because they do matter in the larger scheme of things.

Being able to experience a pandemic is something I never really would have imagined, but it allowed me to really hone in on what kinds of questions I wanted answers to. And also, determine what I want to do for my future and you’re like “yeah I’m doing the right thing that I want to do to help people in the future.”

But it was definitely a strange variance. 

LG: I remember reading you’re from the Bronx, is that true?

KL: Yeah. 

LG: Oh, ok. Did you spend the pandemic in the Bronx, or did you move elsewehwere?

KL: Yeah I did.

LG: Gotchu. So, when you were talking, I was reminded of this New York Times article that was talking about where the hardest-hit places were where there’s people of color, or Latinx people. So I was curious to hear your thought on how your particular neighborhood made it through the pandemic .

KL: Yeah, so I was an RA. I was living on campus until they sent us home and then I was back in the Bronx, and it was definitely, really interesting to see how people experience a pandemic very differently. Even when we had regulations of curfews and there was really nothing to do because everything was closed, in people who were living in Manhattan still had open air places to walk around. 

Urban planning is a big thing, like we don’t have as many parks in the Bronx. So, the activities that people started taking up to cope with the pandemic weren’t as accessible for people who live in the outer boroughs. Like in my neighborhood, it’s mostly homes and stores, so there’s no open air places to sit outside.

Those are little things that that I’ve always known, but when you’re limited in your ability to go to Central Park because you can’t really take the subway, it really hits you, those disparities really stand out a lot more.

I was working in hospitals, at the time in the summer after the spike of cases here in New York City and I visited hospitals all over New York, like around 20 of them in all different boroughs and even that really showed the disparities. The protocols that were in place were supposed to be the same all throughout, but because of limiting factors like resources, space in the hospitals, and different demographics, these rules that you set manifest very differently, and obviously that impacts patient care. And when you think about which areas were getting hit hardest, their hospitals were completely flooded. And so, it was a big reminder to really take into account how historically-neglected communities are even more impacted when we’re in a crisis like this.

LG: Yeah, definitely. And actually, I was reading something similar about the HIV/AIDS pandemic during the 90’s in the LES. I was reading about how Puerto Rican immigrants from that part of town, especially gay Puerto Rican immigrants were doubly affected because they couldn’t access healthcare because of the language and cultural barriers. And then, because of the kind of the taboo and the stigma…

KL: Yeah, yeah. All these things intersect. It’s not just the experience of disease in isolation, it’s compounded with existing problems and that’s what really interests me about looking at social structures and their connection with diseases. You can’t just see it as a pure biological diagnosis, because that’s not how it manifests for everyone because of existing prejudices like racism, different language barriers, different accessibility to health care. The experience of disease is a lot more dynamic than I think a lot of people are willing to acknowledge.

LG: Yeah, I definitely thought that. Especially when the President got COVID a couple months ago and he was like, “I’m fine. Everyone can beat this.” And I’m like, “can you, though?”

KL: Yeah, he has access to the best hospitals in the world, like don’t compare.

LG: Actually, my next question for you is actually along these lines. I’m thinking specifically about this idea of Latinidad and how it’s compounded. I was just curious if you seen anything interesting happening between this idea of Latinidad and this idea of like contagion.

KL: I think it’s really interesting, I worked as a Spanish interpreter at a free clinic so I got to see a lot of Latino patients in the medical setting. And it was interesting that this is a free clinic because these are all uninsured adults. And that’s another big issue that a lot of people from Latin America who immigrate here don’t have access to insurance right away because of legality and different barriers to citizenship. So it’s interesting that the demand for a Spanish interpreter was so high in this setting, specifically.

But even in the context of working and translating between the doctors and nurses and different medical staff, I found it really interesting that there is a lack of awareness of how Spanish language works or how Latinx culture works.

I’ve seen with a lot of my family members that when you’re in pain, you use a lot of hyperbole, and vague metaphors to describe your symptoms. And so, there’s a loss of communication when you’re talking to a white American doctor who has no idea what you’re talking about and you tell him you feel like you just got stabbed by 10 knives and there’s just no cultural sensitivity there.

And so I realized that even if they did take Spanish in college, they don’t have the training to understand cultural nuances that don’t come with just learning vocabulary. So the role of Spanish interpreter wasn’t just translating the words directly, but translating the meanings behind this that they were saying. And so, I realized that that’s another barrier in the medical field and that I didn’t really think about too much.

It’s a language barrier, but it’s also cultural, because even if they understand the words, they don’t get it unless they have that understanding of the way that our culture works. And so, I was thinking about that in the experience of disease where it discourages people from going back to the hospitals when they’re treated a certain way or feel misunderstood or unheard.

And I think that that just adds to the stigmas of, well, you don’t want to be sick, because then you have to confront all of these long-standing historical inequities in health care. So a lot of people I feel like are less willing to engage with the medical system.

LG: … which doesn’t help when you’re in a global pandemic. 

KL:  Yeah, it’s fear. I work in public health now, but a lot of the mission and the signage and the encouragement towards getting vaccinated and going to the doctor, I feel like oftentimes don’t consider where these fears come from, or why these people aren’t represented in the statistics that people who get vaccinated, etc.

LG: That’s actually super interesting. Could you say more?

KL: Yeah. I feel like when you’re creating interventions in public health to incentivize a certain behavior, if you’re not understanding why people are acting the way that they are your intervention is not gonna be effective.And I feel like because there’s not enough people working in medicine or in public health, who actually come from these backgrounds of underrepresented people, there’s a big miscommunication a big disconnect.

And I feel like, if you don’t understand why these people are afraid to go to the doctor in the first place you can’t encourage them to go, because obviously, they want to do what’s best for themselves and what’s best for their families; caring for other people is at the heart of Latin American culture.

But that looks a little differently when your experience in the healthcare setting is different. And I’m sure they think they’re doing the right thing by protecting their family from from doctors or the potential of getting into  legal trouble if they end up in the emergency room. And so, I feel like there just is a lot more nuance that’s necessary in these disciplines.