cover image AIDS: The Women

AIDS: The Women

. Cleis Press, $9.94 (251pp) ISBN 978-0-939416-21-9

This is a remarkable collection of short, personal essays on the modern plague of AIDS by an international group of women. ``I don't have the virus but I have the disease. . . . It's a disease that tells people about Tom's past and therefore mine. I feel tainted and ashamed,'' states the resentful wife of an AIDS patient. But most of the anger in this volume is directed toward lethargic government and unresponsive public-health policies. ``I often wonder if this isn't another Holocaust,'' writes an infected heterosexual woman who had had only three lovers in the past 14 years. ``It's just like beforeeveryone knew . . . but chose to just sit back and ignore it.'' And while a physician discovers that ice cream, sunshine and a shopping trip sometimes are valuable prescriptions, a health educator learns to ``talk dirty,'' sans flinching. Without raising a specter of imminent death, terrifying but informative statistics are dropped; without limning grotesque details, pain is communicatedoften with a dose of humor. The editors are freelance journalists. (Dec.)