From Library Journal
This is a difficult book to read in one sitting, yet it must somehow be read. Seventy-seven writers (some well known, some not) contributed these essays and poems as tributes to friends, lovers, spouses, colleagues, and children who have died from AIDS. They are intimate and sometimes funny and also terrifyingly graphic in detail about the lives and deaths of ordinary people?who were extraordinary to those who loved them. This work will make readers reexamine their ideas on living and dying. Newman states: "Editing this book reminded me that anyone can contract HIV and develop AIDS, and anyone who does is not guilty of anything, except perhaps one thing: being a human being." Recommended for all types of libraries.?Lee Arnold, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Diary entries, poems by and for the dead, memorial essays, and general reminiscences for "those who died too young ever to use Grecian Formula" make up the 77 pieces in this anthology. Their subject matter encompasses spinal taps; surgeries; catheters; experimental drug tests; diarrhea; skin cancer; falls from toilet seats by those too weak to sit unaided, too proud to mess their bedding; the wasting away of young, athletic bodies; caregivers who patiently feed, diaper, bathe, and comfort; and newly found belief in angels. Abstract suffering is made personal by such situations as that of a white psychoanalyst in pajamas wandering the streets in the grip of AIDS dementia, followed by his black lover who dares not forcibly return him to bed because passersby might think he is mugging the confused man. A special poignancy is conjured as a sister helps her brother let go, reminding him he'll be reunited with all the past family dogs, particularly his favorite, which he'd rescued from the pound. Whitney Scott
