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Title details for The Storm by Christopher Zyda - Available

The Storm

One Voice from the AIDS Generation

by Christopher Zyda
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Christopher Zyda confronts the long-buried and painful memories of his harrowing fifteen-year journey in The Storm: One Voice from the AIDS Generation, a heart-wrenching love story and coming-of-age tale during the early years of the AIDS crisis in Los Angeles.
It all begins in the spring of 1983, when Chris, a twenty-one-year-old UCLA English Literature major and aspiring writer, risks ostracism when he comes out of the closet to his fraternity brothers just as the AIDS pandemic is beginning to explode in gay communities across the United States. Soon afterward, Chris meets and falls in love with Stephen, a graduate of Yale University and Law School, and the two of them build a life together as their friends start to fall sick and die from the spreading storm of AIDS.
Stephen begins showing symptoms of AIDS in early 1986, and Chris faces a difficult choice as he is certain that he, too, eventually will be stricken by the disease. He abandons his writing career and attends the UCLA business school so that he can earn enough money to pay for healthcare during Stephen's illness.
The Storm is filled with heart, optimism, and love, interspersed with Los Angeles history, gay and lesbian history, AIDS history, and the backdrop of the 1980s and 1990s. It is an unflinching and, at times, raw memoir of perseverance, integrity, forgiveness, the power of love, spiritual growth, Carpe Diem, dreams, and, most of all: survival and ultimate triumph.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    November 10, 2020

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781644281888

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781644281888
      • File size: 7244 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      November 1, 2020
      A gay man chronicles his experiences with the devastating AIDS epidemic. Los Angeles native Zyda was in his 20s when hints of the impending crisis began emerging, which coincided with his decision to come out to his UCLA fraternity brothers. While working for a local newspaper during college, life became complicated by a "sketchy and terrifying" virus that was making its way through the gay community. Soon, he writes, around 1983, "people simply just disappeared." Young and vulnerable, Zyda was petrified of the infectious "gay cancer" looming over his newfound community. But when he met Yale Law graduate Stephen at a West Hollywood gym, their whirlwind romance blossomed briskly despite a 12-year age difference and Stephen's conservative political leanings. Woven throughout the narrative are generous details about the author's family history and a youth spent gravitating toward a beloved, now-deceased lesbian sister who acted as a second mother. Zyda effectively sets his personal story against the backdrop of 1980s-era homophobic discrimination, experimental AIDS therapies, and precarious social, political, and clinical climates across LGBTQ+ communities. He conjures an authentic vibe for a pivotal era during which he established himself as both an out gay man and a brave, compassionate partner, particularly when Stephen's health waned with a harrowing barrage of AIDS-related infections at age 35. Along with crushing statistical data, the author paints these personal scenes with palpable devastation, recalling the heartbreaking reality of his bedside vigil with Stephen and the alarming horror that he may have contracted the virus himself. Zyda's deft navigation of the "AIDS Vortex of Insanity" makes the text an emotionally charged account well-suited for readers who may have survived that fraught period themselves. It's also a moving, informative, and ultimately uplifting narrative for younger LGBTQ+ readers yearning to understand the magnitude of the AIDS epidemic. Searing and empowering reflections from a dark, defining era in LGBTQ+ history.

      COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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