Professor Haki Madhubuti goes on record in the introduction by saying:
“Like most misinformed, confirmed heterosexuals, I was convinced that AIDS was a white middle-class homosexual disease that, at worse, would only touch Black homosexuals…. As the saying goes ignorance is bliss. Well, in this case ignorance kills” (page ix).
Some could argue that these opening comments come across as clinical, detached and, in some regard, as emotionless. Granted these statements according to Madhubuti were written in 1991, but those times of the late 1980’s and early 1990’s were exactly those things ––– clinical, detached and emotionless ––– in regards to HIV/AIDS. One wonders if Madhubuti is trying to tap in a timeframe of misinformation and lack of education that encircled HIV/AIDS, as well as the other myriad problems I have already discussed not counting countless other hurdles. Or is Madhubuti trying to convey the urgency we as a society, culture and as an overall American people did not convey. Is he speaking to Reagan’s lack of action? Or is it possible that Madhubuti is speaking of the throngs of young men who formed ACT Up and Queer Nation. Ignorance truly was killing us, and in many regards is still killing countless others. The lack of feeling in Madhubuti’s choice of words in my thinking speaks to these issues without even having to say the words. But, Madhubuti’s words spoken in 1991 also speak to our issues of still dealing with HIV/ADIS some thirty years later. Ignorance is still killing us.
The introduction, written by the authors, brings to our attention what their true intention for this literary work is by saying:
“A hope to compile an anthology that could speak to both the church folks and to the flamboyant queens. We also wanted it to resonate with adolescents infected with HIV, as well as with men just released from prison” (pg. xxiv).
One wonders why in 2007 the editors felt this need to still categorize those of us living with AIDS. I say this because of this need to attempt to draw the attention of all of these “folks’. Why couldn’t they speak about HIV/AIDS from the human experience alone? Why is there this need to still label those of us living with HIV/AIDS some thirty years later? Is there a true difference from the church choir director who got AIDS from a blood transfusion and the street whore who got it from her “john” or the gay/ down low brother who got it from sleeping with men? They all have AIDS. They are all people. Nothing more, nothing less and what they did or didn’t do to contract HIV/AIDS is really none of our damn business. But here we are, all this time later, still labeling those of us who happen to be living with it. One prose piece, very early on, in the collection attempts to speak to this idea of people living with HIV/AIDS as just merely people.
“When I found out I had AIDS, my family came and stood by me. From the day I knew, they knew. I didn’t hold onto the secret as some people do, where the secret becomes such a fear and burden it becomes bigger than life… my nieces can’t wait for Uncle Gerald to hold their babies” (page 13).
There is a sense of lightness to Gerald Ribeiro’s words. Perhaps the lightness comes from the tone in which Ribeiro writes those words. Maybe, the lightness lies in the style of his words. The tone and style of his words are that of everyday conversation. It is the type of speech we would use over lunch with a friend that we trust. Could it be that Ribeiro trusts us, as his readers to not only be his readers but to be his friends, perhaps. Maybe that trust is the entire key to reason we as writers write. We trust our readers to garner what we want them to, which they believe our characters and stories. We as writers believe our readers will join us on the journey we have created. Ribeiro speaks to this trust in a way that welcomes us to know that not every HIV/AIDS “coming out” story ends in disaster and grief. He speaks to the loving caring families that some of us are blessed to have.
Besides this sense of trust and lightness that Ribeiro presents us, Randi Triant presents us with a multifaceted face to HIV/AIDS with his characters of Monica and Carolyn. Monica is “a six foot-four man with a blonde wig, dressed in a tube top and red leather skirt” (page 28) while Carolyn is the “tall striking blonde with contact enhanced blue eyes, who belongs in some country where they sip glogg” (page 27). Just based on these descriptions Triant sets up a story that we know as readers will be something in style similar to “Sex and the City”, and in my opinion that is exactly what we get. Carolyn is coming back to Boston for the funeral of her best friend Dean. Dean also turns out to be Monica’s lover. Monica and Carolyn can’t stand each other. The plot is light considering the subject matter of Dean’s death, which in this case is not the driving narrative. This is a nice twist to the “standardized” AIDS funereal story, and there are a million of them. But what Triant does is make the focus on Monica and Carolyn who are both dealing with their own grief. What I felt made this story unique from so many others is that focus was on those who survived. The focus was on how they were surviving and how they were dealing with their own personal grief.
“I feel the vodka I drank on the plane reflux up the back of my throat. I’ve known for months that Dean wasn’t leaving his estate to me… it was the least he could have done; Monica got him for five years” (page 28).
The jealousy between these two is very obvious but what I find intriguing is the word “jealousy” is never said. Sometimes the lack of a word speaks more to the sense of a feeling or emotion than saying that word; and in this case it’s jealousy. There is a power to this idea of implying something without ever really have to say it. Triant uses his dialogue and a sense of implied body language that is also present in his work. What I mean by that is you can see, in your mind’s eye, how the character would gesture or sit, or move about as they speak their lines. For example:
“I’m not doing it for her. I’m doing it for Dean. I could care less what Monica appreciates” (page 28)… when Monica gets revved up, you never know what the outcome will be. It’s better to put road blocks up early in the day” (page 29).
You can feel the tension and the animosity that the two feel for each other and again those words are never really spoken but the dialogue and “non-visual” gestures are. You just know Carolyn is exasperated with Monica. You know Carolyn is probably rolling her eyes, has let out a long sigh and more than likely is on the verge of talking rapidly with her hands just to get her point across. There is also this sense of walking on eggshells between the two of them and the only glue that holds them together was their individual love for Dean. But now that Dean is dead there are no barriers holding back their true opinions or is there?
“Hard! Who’s my wearing an orange chiffon dress going to be hard for? Dean loved that dress. Dean bought me that dress. Dean –––“ Monica has gotten herself worked up, she starts to cough” (page 30).
The plot and the storyline unfurls because of this simple, orange dress. The characters attitude shift toward a more “bitchier” tone for a period. The characters seem to develop more at this stage and we see inside each of them and what makes them tick, if you will. Again this aspect of the characters is done in dialogue and setting. The settings change, and change easily which add to the realism of the narrative text. This insight allows us to understand the direction of not only the characters but the plot as well. Both grow, change and the characters, as well as we come to not only understand each other but also accept each other.
This idea of internal dialogue is pushed even further, and possibly with more success than Triant with the inclusion of James Cherry’s narrative titled “ Code of Honor”. The main character Teresa Randolph, not even two pages into the plot says:
“From this vantage point she could survey the 29 years of her life, measure goals against accomplishments, failures and victories, family and future” (page 50).
This literary honesty takes us much deeper than any other submission in this book simply because we as the readers are looking inward to issues or concerns that the author may or may not want us to see. There is a sense of vulnerability and trust. A trust that built on the idea that the reader will not pass judgment or a sentence based off the authors actions. Instead what we as writers ultimately want is not only sympathy but empathy. The whole idea that we, as readers, understand your (the author’s) pain; not only do we understand that pain but that understanding has changed us. Isn’t this the whole idea to reading in the first place? That reading transports us to a time and place other then the one we are in. Reading is to expand our world and our mind. Reading is the purest opiate there is. We can get lost with pages, characters, plot and scenes so much so we lose track of not only time but also whatever is going on in our own lives. All we have to do is read the words on the page, and turn the page. No bad side affects, no withdrawals, no need for rehab and all we need for our next “fix” is another book. The stories we as authors write, in many cases, are the stories we are passionate about. The stories we write are the stories we want to read. These stories are the universal experience. We all share more in common than most of us realize. Cherry draws from this knowledge about us being similar to make this one story on HIV/AIDS relatable. He tries to make the “unknowing” reader familiar with those of us living and struggling to live with HIV/AIDS.
The culmination of this literary work, and of this essay, comes to a glorious conclusion with the work of Ifeanyi Ajaebo in “Laughter Lost in the Hills” where a man dying from AIDS is evicted from his African village to die away from them in an attempt to keep them “clean” and HIV/AIDS free. Pain drips in every written word. Emotions do not hover above us, they are instead consuming us, much like AIDS is consuming Dim ––– the main character. If you, as the reader, have ever lost anyone to this horrific disease the words written within this masterpiece bring all of those old raw emotions to a surface. But not only are those emotions at the surface they are “bubbling” over as we relive not only our personal pain and loss, but also that of the death of Dim. The height of this comes near the end of the text when Ajaebo writes:
“As I rose from the bed, I heard his last words about our laughter; ‘My laughter is here… with you.’ He had lied and told the truth at the same time. My laughter had died with him, but his would remain with me till the darkness also took me” (page 103).
We’ve lost the lightness of Ribeiro and Triant. We’ve gone beyond the honesty of Cherry. What we know have is the all too horrific truth that within death we all lose something very near and dear to us. It is in death that there is no future, no hope, no escape and no second chances. We as those who deal with the loss of a loved one struggle deeply with how we are going to survive and this is the only key to life that matters ––– how do we survive. I wish I knew. For me it was as if I was given one day more, I was grateful. Those days became weeks, weeks became months, months have become years and now those years have become nearly three decades of living with a terminal disease and the loss of my soul mate. Ajaebo though condenses all of that time down to “till the darkness arrives” (page 103). But what if to some degree the darkness already surrounds us? What if it is trying to already consume us, by stealing not our bodies but our souls? AIDS for so many not only ruins our “physical temple” but our emotional and spiritual well being. AIDS has left so many of us empty vessels with nothing left to give, nothing left to receive. But yet, even within this despair there is hope and that lies in the ability that it took for those writers to simply write. For within the written word lies hope.
No comments:
Post a Comment