A review by clairefallon
Funeral Diva by Pamela Sneed

Did not finish book. Stopped at 62%.

The first half of the book was excellent. Sneed has a powerful perspective on the AIDS crisis and her account of the death and grief of that time is sobering, and her documentary-style poetry of that historical moment is essential. However, given the power of the first half and its naming of violence against queer people, particularly queer Black people, I was totally lost when in the second section she takes up the Trump presidency as a subject worth lingering on. After establishing that institutional neglect and hatred were what caused the AIDS crisis and continue to cause violence to Black people, people of color, and queer people, I just don’t understand how she can imagine the presidency as a redeemable thing where Trump is any worse than anyone who came before him or anyone who will come after him. Maybe this book is optimistic where I am not, but the scale felt extremely off as it shifted from devastating documentation of death and survival to deflated critiques of a psychopath who by nature is continuing the work of his predecessors.