I found the story really interesting. It is was a far departure from what I normally read but to experience someone else’s life experiences.

I will say that while I am glad to have gotten an arc of it. I felt that parts were over simplified but it does make me more curious and that is the point of the journey.

A very great read about the AIDS / HIV virus in America. Lynn Curler found a great way to combine his personal experiences and stories as a gay man, but also manages to include scientific information and facts.
It was very sad to read about all the people he has lost to this virus over the past years, but a great way to pay tribute to his friends.
I thought this book was very informative and I enjoyed the personal note - I just wished there’s would’ve been more real life events and a little less historic / scientific facts.

Overall Rating: 4.5/5

Plot/Synopsis: We all know how history repeats itself. We also know that humans tend to have shockingly short collective memories. You see, we’ve forgotten that the Covid-19 outbreak was not our first pandemic. It’s not even the first pandemic to happen in this lifetime. We’ve seen a virus this catastrophic before, but because of time and prejudice and advances in treatment, we’ve forgotten all about it. Lynn Curlee is here to remind us of an important lesson with his devastating but timely memoir The Other Pandemic.

The sudden emergence and major loss of life caused by the AIDS virus in the 1980s rivals the shock and dismay felt in the early months of Covid-19, with one notable exception: at first, HIV seemed to only infect a single, small and already marginalized population. And because a majority of Americans at the time preferred to pretend these people didn’t exist– or worse, didn’t care– the massive, collective effort to find a cure was not set in motion and an entire generation of young gay men with hopes and dreams and flourishing careers was lost. Gone in an instant before they’d really even had a chance to live.

In his memoir, Lynn Curlee draws parallels between the frightening first decade of the AIDS pandemic and the early months of Covid-19, when the questions were endless and the bad news far outweighed the good, and unlike Covid, AIDS was 100% fatal for many years. Few people understand what it’s like to have past decisions come back to haunt you in a way that is both irreversible and completely unfair, or that a medical diagnosis could result in an automatic death sentence. What’s it like to live in a world with so much death you stop counting the number of friends and loved ones lost?

Lynn Curlee lived through those early years of the AIDS pandemic in New York and LA, two epicenters of infection. He knows what AIDS is like all too well, and he shares his experience and memories to remind us that all deadly diseases have a human face, that the people who suffered were loved and valued and worthy of respect, and it is for them that the survivors carry on living and fighting to prevent the worst parts of history from repeating itself.

First Take: I read this book in one day, it was that captivating! As a suburban kid of the 90s, I was spared most of the horror of living through the early years of this terrible illness. By the time I came of age and entered the healthcare profession, HIV/AIDS was no longer a death sentence, but a chronic illness that could be managed well with medications. This memoir is a chilling reminder of what this virus can do and how vulnerable we humans really are, and that collective inaction can lead to the literal disappearance of entire communities. I was immediately gripped by Lynn Curlee’s story, which felt both deeply personal but also educational (in a really good way). It is powerfully moving and sad– how could an AIDS memoir not be– but it is also a love story. It is because of this equal attention to love and loss that I found I didn’t need as many tissues as I thought I would. It’s the kind of book that leaves you sitting in the dark with your feelings for a while because it’s just so much, the kind of story where you find that the precious lives lived within the pages will never truly leave you, both because they are memorable in their heartbreak and the terrible understanding that these people really lived and died.

Praises: Picking up a memoir about the early days of AIDS is a daunting task. If you are interested in this subject matter, you probably already know a bit about it, and likely none of what you know is happy or good. So I was prepared to cry. A lot. And as much as this book is a story of the horror of that time, it is also a tale of one man’s love for his friends and family, his partner, and his way of life. And that love is what shines through the most in this book. I got the impression that Lynn Curlee just wanted to introduce us to all the awesome people in his world, whom we’ll never get to know in person because they were taken from this earth well before their time. I adored how the book included so many pictures of Curlee’s friends and life, the photos made this sense of knowing possible! How could I be sad in the face of so much love? Ok, I totally was, but in a different, less depressing way than I expected. I also appreciated how Curlee took the time to discuss what the culture was like around this time, both within the gay community and in mainstream society. It provides some context for understanding how the HIV virus was able to spread so effectively at that particular moment in time, and why the response to the crisis was so maddeningly slow. In all, this is a great introduction and objective look into the early years of the AIDS pandemic through the lens of one man’s life.

Critiques: Keep in mind that this is a memoir, not a history book (though it does contain a lot of helpful history). As such, the perspective and focus of the historical events and timelines mentioned within the pages relate primarily to the gay community and how it was affected by and responded to the early AIDS crisis, since the author is a member of that community. For more information on the contributions by or perspectives of, say, the lesbian or trans communities– or even mainstream society– you’ll want to look elsewhere.

Prose: We learn in the book that the author is also a writer of several children’s books, and it makes sense in that it seems to me that he might have written this book with his usual audience in the back of his mind. That’s not to say that his prose is juvenile, not at all! Rather, it is written in a way that feels appropriate and relatable for everyone, including younger people. I could easily see teenage me picking up this book and getting just as much out of it as I do now.

part memoir, part history, part science, “the other pandemic” explores the aids crisis through lynn curlee’s eyes. as a gay painter who lived in both new york and california during the height of the aids pandemic, he brings both context and heart to the lgbtqia+ community. there are beautiful photos of men who have passed from brutal deaths within this story, accompanied by the science behind hiv/aids.

curlee writes from a place of both love and fear, sharing what life was like before treatments for aids existed and gay men were systemically mistreated. the memorial in the back of the book will make you tear up.

my only complaint is that when curlee writes about stonewall and other important movements (act up, etc.) he completely leaves out trans women. he does not write about any trans women at all, and ignores the work they contributed to our community. in fact, the only time curlee mentions trans people, gender non-conforming people, and nonbinary people is at the end, to insinuate that these are “new” identities and that gay men did most of the work to build a platform for liberation. i also feel that this is sanitized to be easily digested by straight cis people. trans women are once again erased from history or referred to explicitly as “drag queens.”

thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an arc in exchange for an honest review!

Astounding historic relic. I’m still sitting here reflecting on Curlee and these men who meant the world to him and were lost at such a devastatingly young age to a hideous disease that no one cared about. I came to love these men. They were funny and opinionated and urban and gritty and wonderful. And even if they hadn’t been, it wouldn’t matter. They lived and they died and no one in their government cared for one damned second that they suffered and others suffered for their loss. And that same government is in charge today and still does not care about how queer people are represented and treated in our society. They lived through this unbelievable time of pain and loss and still see queer people as a societal group unworthy of rights and acceptance. It disgusts me.

But back to Lynn’s book. I loved the pictures, giving faces to the victims. I loved the contextualization of the promiscuity among gay men that drew so much ire during the AIDS crisis. When you fight for centuries for liberation and finally find joy among your own kind, why the hell would you give that up willingly just because a disease manifests that may be related to your lifestyle? While in hindsight the author understands the concern, in the moment I can sympathize with the hesitancy. Likewise, when you are watching hundreds of people die around you and no one is doing anything to stop it, I can understand a distrust that would cause many in the LGBTQIA community to resist vaccination during Covid. Your government has proven not to care about you once…why trust them a second time?

Mostly what this book made me reflect on is the dearth of gay elders. Why is everyone at Pride so young, Gen Z asks? Because the late stage boomers and early millennials buried them all. They were here and they died and that is why none of us trust Republicans. Because death was at their heels and they celebrated. They saw it as a moral judgment by an unfeeling god. If you want to know why I’m an atheist? The AIDS crisis. That’s why.