Fighting to Breathe

A gripping story of one nurse's fight against racism in the medical industry, set against the horrific backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ever since Ginger Kim was a young child, she followed her calling to become a nurse. After surviving the Gwangju Massacre in South Korea, she eventually follows her brother to U.S. shores in pursuit of her own "American Dream"- to become the finest nurse in her field. But Ginger's dream quickly becomes a living nightmare as she confronts blatant racism at her first nursing job in Alaska. She quickly realizes the most prized shifts and promotions go to Caucasian nurses, along with the easier patients. To Ginger's disgust, she and her other colleagues of color are publicly disparaged, verbally harassed, and openly discriminated against throughout every shift, with no part of the hospital holding staff accountable for this behavior. Ginger changes jobs at hospital after hospital, hoping against hope to finally gain acceptance and be treated fairly, only to encounter the same misbehavior. She can only find understanding in her brother and her best friend, Autumn.Things take a turn for the worse when COVID-19 descends on the world in March 2020. Ginger's hospital, like so many others, is desperately short of supplies and protective gear for their staff, so Ginger and her fellow nurses are forced to forgo PPE on their shifts. Within days, Ginger contracts and falls grievously ill of the virus, hospitalized in critical condition as her brother can only stand by and watch. Ginger's care falls under another Korean-American nurse named Hyun, who takes the reader through her own experiences with racism and mistreatment. Hyun's present-day narrative of looking after Ginger and Ginger's past vignettes collide in a riveting story of finding shared humanity amid racism, bigotry, and discrimination that is, even today, horrifyingly rampant in the medical field.
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