A Book of AIDS

Unbound
A moving collection of essays that bring poetic insight to the sheer facts of the AIDS epidemic, in an attempt to make meaning from suffering.
$9.99 – $16.95
Unbound is a poet’s intimate account of life in San Francisco in the ’80s and ’90s during the apex of the AIDS epidemic. In his search for meaning, Shurin dives down into the broken-hearted, revelatory core of the social landscape and the lives of friends who both succumbed to and transcended the disease. Twenty-five years after its initial publication, Unbound continues the search, resonating inescapably with the perils of our new pandemic.
Praise
“The famous San Francisco sun has turned to famous rain.” Only when I began to read Unbound did I realize how much this perspective was missing from our shelves. Aaron Shurin brings his massive command of language, and the history of gay poetics, to this frontline eyewitness account of the specificity of AIDS in San Francisco. The work is frank and authentic, emotionally intentional, and it brings us back to the endless shock of coping with the impossible. We need this work to expand our understanding: of both relevant futures and ungraspable pasts.
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Reviews
“… an unmatched account of life in San Francisco in the 1980s and ’90s at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Reflective and deeply meaningful, the book offers an intimate glimpse into the nature of a deadly illness and how it directly affected the queer community through the lives of two men depicted with a poet’s shimmering prose.”