Writing Beyond the Archive to Hear Within the Narrative: (Re)Imagining Disaster Response in Five Days at Memorial

ABSTRACT: I posit Sheri Fink’s Five Days at Memorial fails to articulate the connection between the social discourse of anti-Black racism and the systemic violence enacted by Memorial Medical Center doctors who sought to expedite their own evacuations via ending the lives of disabled patients in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Bringing Saidiya Hartman’s concept of “critical fabulation” into conversation with disaster studies and medical humanities, I argue we must challenge the limitations of the archive to (re)imagine equitable disaster responses. In conclusion, I underscore the need for intersectional, patient-centered care networks for harm reduction widely, and within disaster specifically.