Sonata for a Damaged Heart

Sonata for a Damaged Heart is one Black woman’s story of a near-death experience following her second pregnancy—and the racial disparities in the healthcare industry that contributed to it.

Cardiovascular disease is the #1 cause of maternal mortality in the United States, accounting for over one-third of maternal deaths, with Black women having among the highest maternal mortality rates. Why is childbirth such a risky condition for U.S. women’s health, especially for Black women—and what can be done about it?

Wakisha (Kisha) Stewart’s memoir is both a moving, lyrically told story of a decade-long struggle to survive a near-fatal heart attack with dignity and a clarion call for community-wide mobilization to guarantee health care equity.

Realizing that if she hadn’t insisted on being seen by a doctor, and if one nurse hadn’t grasped how serious her symptoms were, she would “have been counted among the scores of women who’d died of SCAD” the year of her attack. Kisha becomes determined to make a difference with the second chance at life she’d been given by telling her story and advocating for change.

“During my years of struggle with trauma, research became my closest ally, a guiding light that helped me find a way out of despair,” Kisha writes. Her research revealed “women experiencing a cardiac event wait 20-30% longer than men to go to the hospital and 30% longer to be treated. This was especially true for women of color, who were less likely to be examined thoroughly or admitted to the hospital.”

Sonata for a Damaged Heart recounts the complicated professional and emotional journey that Kisha takes from heart failure to being selected in 2022 by the American Heart Association (AHA) as 1 of 12 spokeswomen advocating for women’s heart health in its national education campaign, Reclaim Your Rhythm.