Must-Read
Best Books About the AIDS Crisis
Forty years after the first ACT UP demonstrations, the American AIDS crisis has produced a small but extraordinary body of contemporary literary work. These three are the books our editors recommend most when readers want to understand what the 1980s and 1990s actually were inside the queer American community.
3 books on this list.
The Great Believersby Rebecca Makkai
5.0“The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai 2018 review. Two parallel narratives - Yale in the 1980s AIDS crisis in Chicago and Fiona in 2015 Paris. National Book Award finalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist 2019.”
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeousby Ocean Vuong
5.0“On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong 2019 review. A young Vietnamese-American man writes a letter to his illiterate mother about his Hartford childhood and the OxyContin crisis that takes his first love. Vuong's debut novel.”
A Little Lifeby Hanya Yanagihara
4.0“A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara 2015 review. Four college friends in New York, slowly narrowing onto Jude St. Francis and what childhood trauma does to the rest of an adult life. Man Booker Prize shortlist and the most-discussed contemporary American doorstop.”