Abstract
ABSTRACT In this article, I examine All the Young Men: A Memoir of Love, AIDS, and Chosen Family in the American South by Ruth Coker Burks. The memoir contains Burks’ recollections of caring for people living with HIV/AIDS in Arkansas from the last half of the 1980s until the mid-1990s. I argue that the book fits within a category of texts known as caregiver’s memoirs, which hold transformative potential as public memorials if interpreted using analytic strategies based in a theory and praxis of care. Accordingly, I conduct a productive reading of All the Young Men that identifies the varied ways Burks uses personal narrative to perform her individualized memories of caregiving. I find that, by inviting readers to publicly memorialize the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic in the U.S. South, Burks establishes a relationship between storyteller and audience rooted in a mutual ethics of care and conducive to a more caring future.
Published Version
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