The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness

O’Rourke’s memoir Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness is published in 2022 as the world still reels from the global pandemic of COVID-19. As anyone who lived through this time will know, one of the main mysteries of COVID is the mechanism by which the virus impacts individuals in completely different ways. Some people contract COVID and feel like they have a cold, while others contract COVID and die. Then, there is the subset of people who contract COVID and go on to experience symptoms of long COVID. Society has had to confront the cultural and economic significance of dealing with huge numbers of people who have mysterious, unknowable symptoms that cannot be cured. The historical and social context of the COVID pandemic is essential for understanding how O’Rourke’s book might be received by readers in 2022, as opposed to those living in a pre-pandemic world. The pandemic brought words like “autoimmunity,” “chronic illness,” and “incurable disease” to the forefront of people’s consciousness, raising general awareness that many people have weaker immune systems, and the inherent invisibility of this vulnerability means that those with chronic illness and autoimmunity have had to advocate for their own protection in the presence of a rapidly spreading, barely understood virus.