Description

City LightsBooks, paperback

Publication Date:September 14, 2021

Publisher Marketing:The hidden history of a vulnerable gay man whose life and death were turned into tabloid fodder.

In a small conservative Florida town in the 1980s, eight patients alleged that Dr. David Acer, their dentist, infected them with HIV. David’s gayness, along with his sickly appearance from his own AIDS-related illness, made him the perfect scapegoat and victim of mob mentality. In these early years of the AIDS epidemic, when transmission was little understood, and homophobia rampant, people like David were villainized. Accuser Kimberly Bergalis landed aPeoplemagazine cover story, while others went on talk shows and made front page news.

With a poet’s eulogistic and psychological intensity, Steven Reigns recovers the life and death of this man who also stands in for so many lives destroyed not only by HIV, but a diseased society that used stigma against the most vulnerable. It’s impossible not to make connections between this story and how the twenty-first century pandemic has also been defined by medical misinformation and cultural bias.

Inspired by years of investigative research into the lives of David and those who denounced him, Reigns has stitched together a hauntingly poetic narrative that retraces an American history, questioning the fervor of his accusers, and recuperating a gay life previously shrouded in secrecy and shame.

Much too long, suffering has been part of our collective queer legacy. We weather the storm of insult to character and seemingly irreconcilable injustice in tandem with the hope that the arc of time will bend towards justice; our time is now.A Quilt for Davidis a posthumous journal of vindication.–Brontez Purnell, author of100 Boyfriends

A stunning homage to people with AIDS.–Sarah Schulman, author ofLet the Record Show: A Political History of Act Up New York 1987-1993

I found this an incredibly moving book. Reigns deals in hard truths, revisioning one man’s life and death, and our collective queer history.–Justin Torres, author ofWe the Animals

For those who’ve forgotten or never heard of David Acer–the gay dentist accused of infecting Kimberly Bergalis and other patients–A Quilt for Davidis a searing recreation of that horrible chapter in the early stages of AIDS. Told in short, occasionally haiku-like entries, Reigns has done what literature should: put the reader into the mind, the suffering, of another human being.–Andrew Holleran, author ofChronicle of a Plague, Revisited

Steven Reigns lifts David Acer thirty years after his death to show the naked cost of violent, unexamined public opinion around the catastrophe of AIDS. This poetry masterfully documents the tangle of hatred and lies haunting a generation of survivors. I am often grateful for what poems give to me, most especially the ones in this book.–CAConrad, author ofAMANDA PARADISE: Resurrect Extinct Vibration

This writing is energetic, alive, and uncensored. Through poetry and prose we glean a deep understanding of a life misunderstood and mischaracterized. Reigns goes to the mat to find out what really happened, and with his expert pacing we’re right there with him.—Natalie Goldberg, author ofWriting Down the Bones

Like so many of us born into the Age of AIDS, who saw the epidemic from childhood and grew up in a world forever changed by loss, Reigns is searching for the stories of our ancestors.–Justin Elizabeth Sayre,author ofFrom Gay to Z: A Queer Compendium

This book doesn’t only echo our current political moment, it dissects it as it’s being born.–Jonathan D. Katz, activist and writer