John-Manuel Andriote

This book was... fine? It wasn't anything that took my breath away, though I did read it for a Project which invariably means that it doesn't give me exactly whatever I want to get out of it. Andriote spends a lot of time like... trying to suss out why gay male culture was the way it was at the time, and it reads like this really odd political choice that he was making. He seems to anticipate pushback for it, and maybe he deserves some (I'm not a gay man, I can't speak to intracommunity issues,) but it was just very weird to reflect on. In a lot of ways, it made me think about the essay by Allan Bérubé about AIDS, how trying to assign any meaning to it is just a pointless and very painful exercise. Otherwise, I had no real qualms about the book--it starts off as heavily costal, but he brushes up against responses to AIDS in Oklahoma, Chicago a little bit, Minnesota a little bit. It's still definitely coastal-heavy, but there are clear attempts to avoid an NYC and SF-specific story.

The most interesting chapter for my purposes was the one about memorialization--again, it's nothing super groundbreaking, but it is a decent sweeping look at the way that people grapple with death, so for an introduction for someone who is looking for more, I found it pretty decent. And that was kind of how I felt about the entire book? It was broad without being like a repetition of the other HIV/AIDS history books, though I think it helps to have a basic understanding of the timeline of the epidemic before you dive in, as it does rely on you having some previous knowledge. Overall, it was nothing that blew me away, but it did its job.… (more)