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All the Young Men: How One Woman Risked It…
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All the Young Men: How One Woman Risked It All To Care For The Dying (2020 original; edición 2021)

por Ruth Coker Burks (Autor)

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1737156,521 (4.21)18
Biography & Autobiography. LGBTQIA+ (Nonfiction.) Nonfiction. HTML:

All The Young Men, a gripping and triumphant tale of human compassion, is the true story of Ruth Coker Burks, a young single mother in Hot Springs, Arkansas, who finds herself driven to the forefront of the AIDS crisis, and becoming a pivotal activist in America's fight against AIDS.

In 1986, 26-year old Ruth visits a friend at the hospital when she notices that the door to one of the hospital rooms is painted red. She witnesses nurses drawing straws to see who would tend to the patient inside, all of them reluctant to enter the room. Out of impulse, Ruth herself enters the quarantined space and immediately begins to care for the young man who cries for his mother in the last moments of his life. Before she can even process what she's done, word spreads in the community that Ruth is the only person willing to help these young men afflicted by AIDS, and is called upon to nurse them. As she forges deep friendships with the men she helps, she works tirelessly to find them housing and jobs, even searching for funeral homes willing to take their bodies â?? often in the middle of the night. She cooks meals for tens of people out of discarded food found in the dumpsters behind supermarkets, stores rare medications for her most urgent patients, teaches sex-ed to drag queens after hours at secret bars, and becomes a beacon of hope to an otherwise spurned group of ailing gay men on the fringes of a deeply conservative state.

Throughout the years, Ruth defies local pastors and nurses to help the men she cares for: Paul and Billy, Angel, Chip, Todd and Luke. Emboldened by the weight of their collective pain, she fervently advocates for their safety and visibility, ultimately advising Governor Bill Clinton on the national HIV-AIDS crisis.

This deeply moving and elegiac memoir honors the extraordinary life of Ruth Coker Burks and the beloved men who fought valiantly for their lives with AIDS during a most hostile and misinformed time in America.… (más)

Miembro:Teresa40
Título:All the Young Men: How One Woman Risked It All To Care For The Dying
Autores:Ruth Coker Burks (Autor)
Información:Trapeze (2021), 368 pages
Colecciones:Books read 2021, Tu biblioteca
Valoración:****
Etiquetas:Ninguno

Información de la obra

All The Young Men por Ruth Coker Burks (2020)

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» Ver también 18 menciones

Mostrando 1-5 de 6 (siguiente | mostrar todos)
This book made me cry, charting Ruth's years of becoming an unofficial support system for people with AIDS in her home town, starting from one act of kindness to a stranger in hospital. ( )
  mari_reads | Oct 7, 2023 |
Sassy, dedicated. The early HIV/AIDS days were hard. ( )
  cathy.lemann | Mar 21, 2023 |
In 1986, in Alabama, Ruth Coker Burks made a name for herself as one of the first people to actively help young men diagnosed with AIDS, this included medical staff who were inclined to turn their backs.

Given that in the early days of AIDS, no one knew much about it, where it came from, how it was spread etc, and as a result people were scared. Ruth, helped hundreds of sufferers find housing, get social security, and other services. She arranged funerals and contacted their families, more often than not, being told that their sons "died years ago" and she "could do what she wanted with the body".

The stories that Ruth shares and compelling, disturbing and so sad. At the same time the book is hopeful, that maybe, just maybe that the world will stop crucifying people who don't 'fit the norm.' Not just the gay community, but people with Parkinsons disease, or Down Syndrome or people who dress differently. I'll get off my soapbox now. ( )
  Steven1958 | Oct 23, 2022 |
Ruth Coker Burks, a single mother and brassy blonde, took on her bigoted hometown in Arkansas in the 1980s to care for the hidden community of young men dying from AIDS. While visiting her friend in hospital, she met Jimmy, ostracised by his family and even the medical staff, who refused to enter his room and left his meals on the floor outside the door. Despite knowing nothing about him or the disease that was soon to take over her life, Ruth sat with him until he died, found a funeral home who would agree to take an AIDS victim, and finally buried his ashes in her own family cemetery. He was the first of hundreds of similar cases, mostly strangers who would turn to her when they returned home to Arkansas, sick and alone, but some of the men became her friends too. This woman, who raised her daughter in the company of drag queens but also grew up with Bill Clinton and alerted him to the AIDS crisis in Arkansas, is a true inspiration.

I knew Ruth's story would break my heart, but the bigotry - not fear, nor ignorance, just plain bigotry - she and 'all the young men' faced also disgusted me and made me so mad. And why are supposed 'Christian' communities always the biggest hypocrites? Mothers disowning dying sons, doctors refusing to offer basic treatment, pharmacists withholding potentially life saving drugs, and all because they thought that the 'gay plague' was a punishment from God. Ruth fought back, though - verbally, actively, legally, forcefully. She would help the men get benefits when they couldn't work to support themselves, stock up on AZT pills, hold their hands and even bury their remains. Her friends and her church turned against her, treating her like a pariah simply for caring, but she kept on and got braver and louder, and with a sense of humour:

'Have you heard about the pizza and pancake diet for AIDS patients?' I asked him. 'You just slide 'em under the door. It's more than your staff is doing.'
'Well, I don't want 'em in the hospital.'
'They don't want to be here.'
'Well, if I get an infection from one of them -'
'Wear a condom when you go in.'


Ruth's personal life at the time was also a bit of a battleground, with memories of a gaslighting mother, an ex husband and terrible in laws who refused to help with raising her young daughter, living hand to mouth while putting the health and welfare of strangers before her own, and even having crosses burned on her lawn! She and daughter Allison found a second family with the drag queens at 'Our House', only to lose most of them too.

I can't recommend this book enough, as an introduction to AIDS for readers who might not understand the prejudice gay men faced in the 1980s but also as a powerful autobiography from an incredible woman. ( )
1 vota AdonisGuilfoyle | Aug 17, 2021 |
An amazing book! ( )
  Dianekeenoy | Jun 11, 2021 |
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Biography & Autobiography. LGBTQIA+ (Nonfiction.) Nonfiction. HTML:

All The Young Men, a gripping and triumphant tale of human compassion, is the true story of Ruth Coker Burks, a young single mother in Hot Springs, Arkansas, who finds herself driven to the forefront of the AIDS crisis, and becoming a pivotal activist in America's fight against AIDS.

In 1986, 26-year old Ruth visits a friend at the hospital when she notices that the door to one of the hospital rooms is painted red. She witnesses nurses drawing straws to see who would tend to the patient inside, all of them reluctant to enter the room. Out of impulse, Ruth herself enters the quarantined space and immediately begins to care for the young man who cries for his mother in the last moments of his life. Before she can even process what she's done, word spreads in the community that Ruth is the only person willing to help these young men afflicted by AIDS, and is called upon to nurse them. As she forges deep friendships with the men she helps, she works tirelessly to find them housing and jobs, even searching for funeral homes willing to take their bodies â?? often in the middle of the night. She cooks meals for tens of people out of discarded food found in the dumpsters behind supermarkets, stores rare medications for her most urgent patients, teaches sex-ed to drag queens after hours at secret bars, and becomes a beacon of hope to an otherwise spurned group of ailing gay men on the fringes of a deeply conservative state.

Throughout the years, Ruth defies local pastors and nurses to help the men she cares for: Paul and Billy, Angel, Chip, Todd and Luke. Emboldened by the weight of their collective pain, she fervently advocates for their safety and visibility, ultimately advising Governor Bill Clinton on the national HIV-AIDS crisis.

This deeply moving and elegiac memoir honors the extraordinary life of Ruth Coker Burks and the beloved men who fought valiantly for their lives with AIDS during a most hostile and misinformed time in America.

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