A Pandemic in Residence: Essays from a Detroit Hospital

by Selina Mahmood

A debut essay collection of remarkable breadth and erudition by a young Pakistani-American doctor and writer.

During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Selina Mahmood—in the middle of the first year of her neurology residency—found scraps of time between grueling shifts to write. The resulting A Pandemic in Residence: Essays from a Detroit Hospital is her personal and meticulous document of an unprecedented year in medicine, and the debut of a young and uncommon talent. In the tradition of writers like Oliver Sacks and Paul Kalanithi, Dr. Mahmood takes the science of neurology and spins it into poetry, exploring theories of the mind, Pakistani-American identity, immigration, family, the history of medicine, and, of course, the challenges of becoming a physician in the midst of a global health crisis. Skipping nimbly across continents and drawing inspiration from an array of sources ranging from Thomas Edison to Yuval Harari to Beyoncé, she has with this collection crafted an elegant, incisive, utterly original investigation.

A Pandemic in Residence is a must-read for anyone seeking insight into our universal search for meaning.

Selina Mahmood was born in Detroit and serves as a second-year neurology resident there. She has also lived in Lahore, NYC, and Ann Arbor. She graduated with a major in history from the University of Michigan in a previous life before pursuing medicine. Her work has appeared in The Manhattanville Review, Squawk Back, Blood and Thunder—Musings on the Art of Medicine, The Conglomerate, and others. She has also blogged book reviews on HuffPost and worked as a reader for Boulevard, Bellevue Literary Review, and Frontier Poetry. When she isn't busy diving into the brain, she's trying to swallow her way out of it.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, History, Medicine, Medical, Memoir

134 pages, Paperback

First published May 18, 2021

Reviews

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thoughts soon.

[Alan Stamm]

Dr. Mahmood, a neurology resident at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, is a gifted observer of behavior, emotions (hers and others') and connections across time and cultures as she starts her medical career during a crisis year.

This book transcends medicine as she reflects philosophically on the human condition, on history, on "time as a primary enemy" and on personal growth and resilience. This young, sensitive physician is a literary scholar and stylist who quotes classic books and drops sentences such as this: "I’m curious to see the standing edifice of this pandemic once the blood and confetti settles."

You feel her sense of exhaustion, uncertainty and being overwhelmed at times, and also her confidence, growth and optimism. I'm grateful that her profession has sensitive, well-balanced practitioners such as this doctor-author.

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to really like this but I felt like it was ALL over the place .

[Andrea · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was hoping it was going to give more a view on the pandemic but as another reviewer said, it is all over the place, digresses a lot but never really comes back. At the end there is a whole section on Yuval Noah Harari's "insights" and that just lost me completely (how people that studied history love his sensationalist populist science is beyond me*). It started OK but did not deliver :(
* Before his fans come at me, there is serious critique on what he presents as history and facts, example https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/0....

[Toriah · Rating 3 out of 5]

“If it feels like an end, it isn’t the end.”

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Given the title, I expect this book to be more focused on the experience of being a doctor during the beginning of the pandemic. Rather, this is a memoir of a woman who happens to be a doctor during the beginning of the pandemic. Many of her other musings are interesting, but they were just not what I was expecting from this book.