A review by moonyreadsbystarlight
The Gifts of the Body by Rebecca Brown

emotional reflective

4.5

This is told in 11 short chapters, snapshots in the narrator's experience as a nurse's aid for people with AIDS in the early 90's, each focused on a particular motif. We revisit each character from the first half of the book in the second half in different ways, giving the book a bit of continuity and a symetry. 

The writing style has simple descriptions, yet the emotion still comes right through. It very much mirrored the feeling in that sort of situation; when you're trying to distance your emotions to get what needs to be done, to not feel the overwhelm. 

This sort of literature is incredibly important. I think today, despite so much information being at our fingertips, there is a separation from history. The AIDS epidemic isn't really taught about, but it is so important to understand a lot of what is happening now. 

I will say, obviously this has medical content and death, but there is also some ableism. Some of it is passive word choice, but also mostly from the narrator's reflection (and most of these thoughts are also critiqued by the narrator in-text).
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