05/22/2023
Still Positive is the moving story of Lewis’s transformation from AIDS patient to AIDS activist and AIDS survivor. In the summer of 1990, Lewis discovers she is HIV positive, the result of a blood transfusion given during childbirth six years earlier. At the time, the diagnosis was bleak, with AZT the only drug available—and, with it, debilitating side effects. As Lewis reminds readers, discrimination and prejudice ran rampant, and misinformation was commonplace, even amongst medical professionals. But Lewis refused to lie back and take all this quietly. Now an AIDS survivor of over thirty years, she has raised awareness and helped countless people all over the globe.
This affecting memoir benefits from Lewis giving more than a straight recitation of her life. She introduces friends, family, doctors, and partners in activism, and offers heartbreaking stories of friends who at first look thinner than usual, then face hospitalization until finally the calls that everyone dreaded go out from a partner or family member. Readers feel the frantic dread of trying to raise three kids, and take care of yourself, not knowing what the next week or month will bring. A new generation of protease inhibitors and antiretrovirals brings new optimism that they will extend her life and others infected.
Later, on a trip to New York City, suffering fatigue and illness while trying to see Broadway shows, Lewis writes “I suddenly had the urge to throw up…I spent the performance focused on the orchestra pit, trying to decide where the best direction to puke would be. Trumpets looked easier to clean than cellos.” Such self-effacing humor keeps readers on their toes, a sign of a survivor’s resilience, finding something to laugh about even in dark moments. Another sign: her belief in God, a source of strength even if some of the individual churches she has belonged to were not. Still Positive lives up to its title.
Takeaway: An enjoyable and empowering memoir of HIV, strength, and survival.
Comparable Titles: Andrew Faulk’s My Epidemic, Ruth Coker Burks and Kevin Carr O’Leary’s All The Young Men.
Production grades Cover: A Design and typography: A Illustrations: N/A Editing: A Marketing copy: A
2023-05-02
An HIV diagnosis expands a young mother’s community and purpose in Lewis’ memoir.
In 1990, doctors could not tell the author, a young mother, why she was growing increasingly exhausted. A comment from her mother about HIV seemed outlandish in light of the lack of credible information available about the new virus; “a white, heterosexual, young mom was not what they were looking for, even when her history and symptoms matched this infection,” she writes. Lewis observes that the stigmatization of HIV/AIDS as a “gay man’s disease” imposed an unfair hierarchal scale on who did or didn’t deserve empathy and marginalized the large population of people who contracted the disease through infected blood supplies, heterosexual relationships, and birth. Not until a phone call from her physician in 1990 did she find out that, by receiving a blood transfusion after the birth of her daughter in 1984, she had unknowingly joined that population. The author chronicles the effect of her diagnosis on her mental, physical, and spiritual well-being and its collateral impact on her family and immediate community. She also describes the community of care that would support the HIV/AIDS cause through education and advocacy. With Koenig’s assistance, Lewis recounts striking moments along the trajectory of her treatment, such as her nurse consulting her notes for giving HIV tests as she administers both her and Julie’s very first (“Opening it up she read the protocol, word for word. She appeared visibly nervous, continuing through the lengthy notebook in the most awkward way imaginable. Clearly, I was the first person she had ever tested”). While Christianity plays a big part in her life and is evident in her testimony, Lewis does not burden the narrative with religiosity. She recognizes the contradictions present in some Christian communities and does not hesitate to call them out. As a “high thinker, low feeler,” the author has crafted a narrative light on emotion; however, the outlook suggested by the double meaning of the title carries the reader through.
Life, education, and advocacy supersede placing blame in this cleareyed chronicle of HIV.
