The Pox Lover
is a personal history of the turbulent 1990s in New York City and Paris
by a pioneering American AIDS journalist, lesbian activist, and
daughter of French-Haitian elites. By turns searing, hectic, and funny,
Anne-christine d’Adesky’s memoir remembers “the poxed generation” of
early AIDS sufferers—their lives, their battles, and their determination
to find love and make art in the heartbreaking years before lifesaving
protease drugs arrived.
D’Adesky
takes readers through a fast-changing East Village, when squatter
protests and civil disobedience led to all-night drag and art-dance
parties, the fun-loving Lesbian Avengers organized dyke marches, and the
protest group ACT UP staged public funerals. She travels as a
journalist to Paris, trolling the Seine through the night, uncovering
her aristocratic family’s roots in Vichy France and colonial Haiti, and
encountering waves of exiles fleeing violence in the Balkans, Haiti, and
Rwanda.
Read more here.
