Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing Up with the AIDS Crisis

Queer people who came of age in the wake of the AIDS epidemic reflect on their experiences in this moving but inconsistent essay collection. Novelist and memoirist Sycamore (The Freezer Door) presents 36 essays linked by the writers’ awareness “that desire intrinsically led to death,” and their “internaliz[ation of] this trauma as part of becoming queer.” The pieces include a candid conversation between a Black, HIV-positive gay activist and a fellow activist who is white and HIV-negative. Trans women testify to the importance of chosen family, while a gay Mexican man, knowing that his family won’t accept him, “dissolve[s] into the everyday heterosexuality I lived in.” Abstinence-only sex education, hookup apps, testing anxiety, sexual assault, and the wariness of settling for prophylaxis drugs rather than a cure are all explored. Unfortunately, the impact of the collection’s most powerful stories (some of which describe the challenges of finding acceptance in rural communities) are dulled by uneven writing and repetition (two different essays trace the divergent paths of two pairs of gay cousins), and the generational theme is blurred by wide age gaps between contributors. Still, LGBTQ readers will appreciate the frankness of these personal reflections on what it means to live in the shadow of AIDS. (Oct.)