Coverart for item
The Resource All the young men : a memoir of love, AIDS, and chosen family in the American South, Ruth Coker Burks & Kevin Carr O'Leary

All the young men : a memoir of love, AIDS, and chosen family in the American South, Ruth Coker Burks & Kevin Carr O'Leary

Label
All the young men : a memoir of love, AIDS, and chosen family in the American South
Title
All the young men
Title remainder
a memoir of love, AIDS, and chosen family in the American South
Statement of responsibility
Ruth Coker Burks & Kevin Carr O'Leary
Creator
Contributor
Author
Subject
Genre
Language
eng
Summary
"In 1986, twenty-six-year-old Ruth visits a friend at the hospital when she notices a door to one of the rooms is painted red. Nurses are drawing straws to see who will tend to the patient crying for his mother on the other side, all of them unwilling to help. Ruth immediately steps into the quarantined space herself, comforting the young man in his last moments. Before she realizes 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. Shuttling from patient to patient, Ruth forges deep friendships with the men she helps: Paul and Billy, Angel, Chip, Todd and Douglas, working tirelessly to find them housing and jobs, and burying their ashes in her own family's cemetery. She teaches sex-ed to drag queens after hours at secret bars and defies local pastors and nurses to help the men she cares for, ultimately advising then-Governor Bill Clinton on the national HIV-AIDS crisis and becoming a beacon of hope to an otherwise spurned group of ailing gay men on the fringes of an intensely conservative state. This moving and elegiac memoir honors the extraordinary life of Ruth Coker Burks and the beloved men with AIDS who fought valiantly for their lives during a most hostile and misinformed time in America"--
Assigning source
Provided by publisher
Biography type
autobiography
Cataloging source
DLC
http://library.link/vocab/creatorName
Burks, Ruth Coker
Dewey number
  • 362.19697/920092
  • B
Index
no index present
LC call number
RC607.A26
LC item number
B86 2020
Literary form
non fiction
http://library.link/vocab/relatedWorkOrContributorName
O'Leary, Kevin Carr
http://library.link/vocab/subjectName
  • Burks, Ruth Coker
  • AIDS (Disease)
  • Caregivers
  • Gay men
  • AIDS (Disease)
Label
All the young men : a memoir of love, AIDS, and chosen family in the American South, Ruth Coker Burks & Kevin Carr O'Leary
Instantiates
Publication
Carrier category
volume
Carrier category code
  • nc
Carrier MARC source
rdacarrier
Content category
text
Content type code
  • txt
Content type MARC source
rdacontent
Control code
on1200038067
Edition
First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition.
Extent
pages cm
Isbn
9780802157249
Lccn
2020043724
Media category
unmediated
Media MARC source
rdamedia
Media type code
  • n
System control number
(OCoLC)1200038067
Label
All the young men : a memoir of love, AIDS, and chosen family in the American South, Ruth Coker Burks & Kevin Carr O'Leary
Publication
Carrier category
volume
Carrier category code
  • nc
Carrier MARC source
rdacarrier
Content category
text
Content type code
  • txt
Content type MARC source
rdacontent
Control code
on1200038067
Edition
First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition.
Extent
pages cm
Isbn
9780802157249
Lccn
2020043724
Media category
unmediated
Media MARC source
rdamedia
Media type code
  • n
System control number
(OCoLC)1200038067

Library Locations

    • Menasha Public Library (Elisha D. Smith)Borrow it
      Elisha D. Smith Public Library 440 First St, Menasha, WI, 54952, US
      44.2029583 -88.4479345