An AIDS Memoir

Monette clearly knows that human beings as individuals and in groups are moved to political action not by a recitation of ethical theory or statistical analysis but rather by emotional involvement, by compassion and empathy. He knows, and demonstrates in this book, that the injustices involved with the AIDS crisis can be expressed best through personalizing the disease, through putting a human face on it. Just as the political and ethical landscape was changed in the 1960s through the personalization process of the civil rights movement, so is the fight against AIDS being changed through such humanizing accounts as Monette's. The reader with any human feelings will see not only the destructiveness of the disease to the victim and those who love him, but also will understand the evilness of the prejudice against gay men which has hindered the struggle against the disease. Certainly a central part of the argument for a political and ethical change in the fight against AIDS is that if the disease did

. . .
he might stave off death from AIDS for a while longer. The emotions which lead a person to become politically aware and active are empathy and rage. Both emotions are stirred in the reader by Monette's focus on the injustices involved in the medical treatment of AIDS victims. Because the medicine which treats AIDS is either unavailable in the United States, or is offered at such a high price that patients must go out of the country to purchase it, the reader must see that this is an injustice which must be corrected. The empathic reader identifies with the suffering of Monette and experiences rage at a system which has institutionalized bigotry against homosexuals. Of course, many non-gays suffer from AIDS, but, again, if gays were not the major victims of AIDS, the political support for the fought against the disease would undoubtedly be much greater. There is simply no way for Monette to describe his experiences without indicting the prejudices and inhumanity of a system which treats its citizens as the United States has treated AIDS victims, the victims of "gay cancer" (3). From the beginning, the treatment of AIDS by the political/medical community (for money and power are behind both politics and medicine) was clearly hi
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Approximate Word count = 1622
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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