STILL POSITIVE

An HIV diagnosis expands a young mother’s community and purpose in Lewis’ memoir.

In 1990, doctors could not tell the author, a young mother, why she was growing increasingly exhausted. A comment from her mother about HIV seemed outlandish in light of the lack of credible information available about the new virus; “a white, heterosexual, young mom was not what they were looking for, even when her history and symptoms matched this infection,” she writes. Lewis observes that the stigmatization of HIV/AIDS as a “gay man’s disease” imposed an unfair hierarchal scale on who did or didn’t deserve empathy and marginalized the large population of people who contracted the disease through infected blood supplies, heterosexual relationships, and birth. Not until a phone call from her physician in 1990 did she find out that, by receiving a blood transfusion after the birth of her daughter in 1984, she had unknowingly joined that population. The author chronicles the effect of her diagnosis on her mental, physical, and spiritual well-being and its collateral impact on her family and immediate community. She also describes the community of care that would support the HIV/AIDS cause through education and advocacy. With Koenig’s assistance, Lewis recounts striking moments along the trajectory of her treatment, such as her nurse consulting her notes for giving HIV tests as she administers both her and Julie’s very first (“Opening it up she read the protocol, word for word. She appeared visibly nervous, continuing through the lengthy notebook in the most awkward way imaginable. Clearly, I was the first person she had ever tested”). While Christianity plays a big part in her life and is evident in her testimony, Lewis does not burden the narrative with religiosity. She recognizes the contradictions present in some Christian communities and does not hesitate to call them out. As a “high thinker, low feeler,” the author has crafted a narrative light on emotion; however, the outlook suggested by the double meaning of the title carries the reader through.

Life, education, and advocacy supersede placing blame in this cleareyed chronicle of HIV.