The AIDS epidemic, a contemporary triptych, and funeral rules

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At first, I only experienced Tony Kushner’s play Angels in America in snippets.

My acting teacher often assigned scenes in class, so I knew the drama involved Mormonism, homosexuality, politics, drug use, the AIDS epidemic, and death. I wasn’t sure how angels fit in until I saw the full play, both parts in one day, at Actor’s Express in Atlanta in February 2018.

What I remember most about the play now is how it depicted the brutality of being a young gay man dying of AIDS in the 1980s, not only the physical suffering but also the stigma associated with an HIV diagnosis.

Victims were shunned by their families, politicians failed to adequately address the crisis because it was primarily affecting the gay community, and a generation was decimated as a result.

I’ve run across a lot of stuff about the US AIDS epidemic recently, so I thought I’d make that the theme of this month’s roundup post.

Here’s what I recommend checking out:

Listen

• My mom turned me on to the This is Love podcast a few years ago. Episode 32: Among the Oak Trees tells the story of Ruth Coker Burks, a woman who acted as a caregiver to many young men dying of AIDS who’d been abandoned by their families. Due to a dispute between her mother and her uncle, Burks had inherited over two hundred empty cemetery plots, and she used this land to give the men she cared for a final resting place.

Look

• When I was in New York City in January, I visited the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. In one of the chapels, I came across a modern triptych called The Life of Christ by the artist Keith Haring (1958-1990). Jesus is depicted in the center panel, and angels surround him on the side panels. Below all of these figures, a crowd of people reaches up towards the heavens. This piece is a tribute to those who died of AIDS, and Haring himself passed away from the disease shortly after completing the work.

  

  In the same chapel, there was a quote from Haring taken from this Rolling Stone interview. This excerpt (which is shorter than what was shared at the church) was part of Haring’s response to the question, “Do you make time for life outside of work?”:

Part of the reason that I’m not having trouble facing the reality of death is that it’s not a limitation, in a way. It could have happened any time. If you live your life according to that, death is irrelevant. Everything I’m doing right now is exactly what I want to do. -Keith Haring (May 3, 1989)

Read

• The topic for this month’s roundup post was mainly inspired by a couple of books I’ve read recently. Both stories touch on the AIDS epidemic and the devastation it caused among the population of young gay men in the US. Both novels had compelling protagonists and conveyed the broader impact (in terms of stigma and loss) that the crisis had on close knit communities. Although it was entirely based on when my library holds became available, I’m glad I read these back to back:

  • The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne

  • The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

Watch

• I was a kid in the 1980s, and I don’t remember too much about the AIDS crisis. The first time I can remember being made aware of it was watching Pedro Zamora on The Real World in 1994. Recently, I was reminded of this while viewing National Geographic’s docuseries Rewind the 90s. The episode that focuses on Zamora and his outreach efforts on behalf of people living with HIV was Episode 6: What is Love? The whole series is worth a watch if you’re craving 90s nostalgia.

A tiny memory

When I was in seventh grade, which would have been around the mid-90s, my religion teacher, Sr. Diane, posed a simple question to our class, “How do you acquire A’s?”

Only what we all heard was “How do you acquire AIDS?”

Eventually, one boy raised his hand, cheeks blazing, and answered, “Sex.”

And on an unrelated note

A cemetery friend shared this reel with me recently: Visuals for my funeral rules. As soon as I saw it, I knew I wanted to pass it along in my next roundup post. It doesn’t have anything to do with the US AIDS crisis, but the reel does remind me of my childhood activities around the same era. My friends and I used to make videos with Barbies, including an epic parody of the movie Titanic. Sidenote: the 112th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic is coming up this month, and my sister, who’s involved in the Titanic history community, is going to be contributing a post about how we can remember victims. Look for that later this week.

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