All the Young Men: A Memoir of Love, AIDS, and Chosen Family in the American South

In this plainspoken memoir, Burks recalls the grim early years of the AIDS epidemic, when she was dogged by discrimination and harassment in her hometown of Hot Springs, Ark., for providing end-of-life care to gay men carrying HIV. In 1986, the 26-year-old single mother visited a hospitalized friend and felt compelled to become an activist. Witnessing nurses neglecting a young man crying “mama” in a room marked “Biohazard,” she sat with what would become her first dying patient.” Word spread of “this insane woman” and though she was not a nurse, local hospitals began to call her in to offer comfort to the dying; Burks even surreptitiously buried men’s ashes in her family-owned cemetery. She became a fixture in the gay community, where she helped men obtain testing, find housing, and apply for Medicaid. With neither training nor funding, Burks dumpster-dived for food for patients, cajoled prominent citizens and civic groups for support, and lobbied a childhood friend: governor “Billy” Clinton. Anecdotes of small-town gay bars and drag queen rivalries add levity to tales of hardship and sacrifice—crosses set ablaze on her lawn, her young daughter ostracized at school. When AIDS advocacy turned into a big-money business, she writes, she was left out, and advances in medicine rendered her role “obsolete.” This worthy account offers as much bitter as sweet. [em]Agent: Albert Lee, UTA. (Dec.) [/em]