Pandemics: AIDS

Description

It’s Not Easy Being Me  |  by J. David Abbott

AIDS takes the microphone as a vain celebrity recounting its rise from an obscure 1981 medical report to a worldwide pandemic. J. David Abbott uses savage theatrical satire to expose delayed action, political silence, unsafe blood practices, famous victims, and the disease’s indiscriminate hunger for attention.  The epic story of the travails and triumphs of a hard-fought and well-earned career is revealed to the audience through the eerie personified voice of a world-famous entertainer.

Satori in the Castro  |  by J. David Abbott

A young man leaves the religious certainty of Memphis for San Francisco just as AIDS devastates the Castro. Watching one sick man tenderly pushed in a wheelchair, J. David Abbott’s speaker reaches an awakening stronger than doctrine or judgment: suffering is real, devotion is sacred, and love is love. “Satori in the Castro” is an allusion to the Beat Generation author, Jack Kerouac, and his novel Satori in Paris, this poem recounts the events culminating in the spiritual awakening of a young American living in San Francisco at an early pinnacle of the AIDS epidemic.