
Illness is fluid. It can cross bodily boundaries, across space and time, and permeate entire families and communities. This is especially apparent in places where people have come to rely on one another in order to withstand austerity and state disregard. Here I share a creative revision of field notes from home visits with a family living with debilitating illness in rural Guatemala. Through their experience, I contemplate how vulnerability and illness are not merely hardships to be endured but can also be conditions productive of collective action, resistance, and new forms of belonging.