As powerful as it is various, this collection compiles essays, letters, diary entries, memoir fragments, and brief anecdotes in an effort to collect and broadcast the many experiences and emotions surrounding HIV/AIDS in America. By compiling the voices of teenagers with nearly no knowledge of the disease with writers whose life work has become an attempt at understanding it, and setting up the writing of doctors alongside the writing of victims, activists, and individuals in mourning, Marie Howe and Michael Klein put together an anthology which is at no point repetitive, and which is at every moment necessary and compelling.

Taken together, the voices here represent uncountable experiences with HIV/AIDS, and a portion of our history which should be noted and remembered even as we continue to deal with HIV/AIDS. Expressing every emotion imaginable--from humor to grief, from anger to confusion to love--the works here are compelling acts of witness and writing, doing a work which is worth reading and sharing.

Recommended. ( )