22 July 2019 VIRAL: THE FIGHT AGAINST AIDS IN AMERICA by Ann Bausum, Viking, June 2019, 176p., ISBN: 978-0-425-28729-0

“‘You know Toad,’ said Frog, with his mouth full, ‘I think we should stop eating. We will soon be sick.’

‘You are right,’ said Toad. ‘Let us eat one last cookie.’

Frog and Toad ate one last cookie. There were many cookies left in the bowl. 

‘Frog,’ said Toad, ‘let us eat one very last cookie, and then we will stop.’

Frog and Toad ate one very last cookie.

‘We must stop eating!’ cried Toad as he ate another.”

--From FROG AND TOAD TOGETHER by Arnold Lobel, who died of AIDS at age 54

“Ooh love ooh loverboy

What’re you doin’ tonight, hey boy

Set my alarm, turn on my charm

That’s because I’m a good old-fashioned lover boy”

-- Freddy Mercury, who died from AIDS at age 45 

“‘We didn’t know we were dancing on the edge of our graves,’ New York transplant Rodger McFarlane later observed. ‘It was the headiest experience I’ve ever had in my life. And it is unrivaled still.’ Life before Stonewall had been filled with oppression, and life after Stonewall, for many gay men, overflowed with liberation. But that was before what came next.

And what came next was AIDS.”

VIRAL: THE FIGHT AGAINST AIDS IN AMERICA is a powerful, engaging read for young people about a tragic time in America that began nearly forty years ago. For those of us who lost friends, relatives, colleagues, and/or lovers, it’s hard to believe that it’s already that long ago. My more fortunate gay male friends have been spending the balance of their lives trying to stay healthy and taking mountains of expensive prescription drugs to keep their HIV infections in check. But the majority of the gay male friends I once had, during my early years in the San Francisco Bay area, died more than thirty years ago, and are now memories of a bygone era. It’s so long ago, before the digital age, that I can’t find photos or obits for people  who were once part of my circle of friends.

“Who had it? Who might? Who knew someone that had been infected? What the hell could be causing it? What in heaven could be done to stop it?”

The most moving aspect of VIRAL is the presentation of bits of life stories of those who succumbed to AIDS. These stories are told in the words of the victims themselves; by their friends and lovers; and through the individual squares of the AIDS memorial quilt. By the luck of the draw, these stories could have readily been about any of us who might have happened to come of age as gay men or be hemophiliacs in those years. 

“Among the thousands of panels was a new one that read: ‘My name is Duane Kearns Puryear. I was born on December 20, 1964. I was diagnosed with AIDS on September 7, 1987 at 4:45 PM. I was 22 years old. Sometimes, it makes me very sad. I made this panel myself. If you are reading it, I am dead.”

As author Ann Bausum explains, scientists, physicians, gay activists, and support groups like ACT UP struggled mightily through the 1980s and into the 1990s to understand the spread of AIDS, to slow down its deadly toll, and to pressure the US government to fund research that could stop the pandemic. 

“There was no shortage of theories. Maybe there’d been a bad batch of poppers, and gay men had become ill from using the illegal inhalant. Maybe a microorganism was lurking in the plumbing of the bathhouses. Maybe gay men had worn out their immune systems. Maybe they had developed resistance to antibiotics by overusing them. Maybe excessive promiscuity itself had somehow triggered the outbreak.”

We came to understand that the circle of infection included gay men, heroin users, hemophiliacs, and then-recent Hatian immigrants. VIRAL reveals how too many of those holding political power just weren’t bothered by the mounting death toll. By the end of the book, it’s easy to conclude that if the circle of infection had instead focused primarily on straight old white men, the crisis would have been addressed many times more rapidly and effectively. 

By 1984, HIV had been identified as the pathogen and early tests were being developed to detect the virus in people. But it wasn’t until after President Ronald Reagan’s friend Rock Hudson had developed AIDS that the Reagan administration even mentioned AIDS or proposed doing something about the catastrophe. 

“Men still sought refuge on Fire Island, but the specter of death followed them there, too. ‘Suddenly it was common to see former stars of the beach bumping down the boardwalks in wheelchairs or tapping along with the aid of white canes,’ Steve Bolerjack wrote years later about his experience of living in New York during the AIDS crisis.”

Given the fact that well over half a million Americans have died of AIDS (over 35 million worldwide), this distinguished book for young people about the AIDS crisis is way overdue. Ann Bausum has done an extraordinary job of researching and writing about the first decades of the pandemic, and I trust that the American Library Association’s Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award committee will give it the attention that it deserves. 

I am not surprised that some professional journals are playing it safe by recommending VIRAL for grades 9 and up. But having spent years in middle school classrooms, I believe that, as with SPEAK, it will be a great public service to also make VIRAL available to middle schoolers before they get to high school.  

Richie Partington, MLIS

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