Book Post 1
I selected to read from the first-person memoirs All the Young Men by Ruth Coker Burks and Kevin Carr O’Leary. All the Young Men recounts Ruth Coker Burks years spent looking after Aids patients in Little Rock, Arkansas in the 1980s. I thought from The Guardian’s list of the “Best biographies and memoirs of 2021” it seemed more interesting than the rest. First, because the article’s description of the book made it very clear what it was about and what you would get out of it. And second, because I think it differs from other options in that it’s not only about someone who had an extraordinary life but it happened in the wake of extraordinary circumstances and events. This allows the reader to not only gain further understanding of the person who the memoir is about but gives understanding of a historically important time and place. I think this will make it an easier and more enjoyable read because the time and place context will allow the story to be told in a more narratively rich way. In my experience – which to be fair is not that extensive – many memoirs feel like a timeline of accomplishments and facts. All the Young Men seems like it will be told in a more dramatically compelling way than other “book report autobiographies”. I also have a very limited knowledge of the AIDS crisis which was a historically important event that impacted an incredible amount of people so I am interested in learning more about it. Finally, the description given by The Guardian paints the novel as a clear-eyed account of finding “light in the darkness as it reveals the love and camaraderie of a hidden community fighting for its life” (Sturges). I think that emotionally charged writing allows the reader to become more invested in the work so the uplifting themes of compassion and camaraderie appeal to me.
The first chapter captivates an audience by immediately introducing the setting and Ruth Coker Burks with a very difficult and emotional moment. Ruth’s origination as an ally to those affected by the AIDS crisis is told in the novel’s first pages. She was helping care for a friend who was recovering from cancer treatment in the hospital when she encountered a dying young man with AIDS. In a hallucinatory state, he mistakes Ruth for his mother in his last moments. This is a heartbreaking scene that allows the reader to understand the life-and-death stakes that the novel deals with. It also gives powerful insight into the type of person that Ruth is: her compassion, fearlessness, and soft heart. The young man is someone who has been ostracized by society and discarded even by the hospital that he is taking temporary residence in. By showing that Ruth is willing and eager to care for him and help ease his pain in his final moments is a huge testament to her character and is effective in giving the reader an understanding of who she is. Instead of telling us that Ruth is a compassionate person, we as readers immediately get to see that she is one. In regard to the writing style, it is noticeably easy to read: sentence length variation, common language, and descriptive. The author uses a lot of comparisons that make it easier to picture the events. For example, one sentence that I thought was really memorable was “She was a redhead, wearing a lipstick so purple you knew she didn’t have a good friend to tell her it wasn’t right for her” (Coker Burks 8). This also uses humor to combat the darker setting to create a more balanced tone to introduce the reader to the novel. Overall, I have enjoyed the beginning of the novel and am looking forward to reading about the relationships that she develops with other people in the book since right now I have mainly only read about her.
Coker Burks, Ruth, and Kevin Carr O'Leary. All the Young Men. Grove Press, 2020.
Sturges, Fiona. “Best Biographies and Memoirs of 2021.” TheGuardian, Guardian, 4 May 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/dec/04/best-biographies-and-memoirs-of-2021.
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