An excerpt from MFAW-VT alum Emily Stern’s memoir When Doves Cry, which is the evolution of her thesis, is in Entropy Magazine today.
Author’s Note from Emily:
“When Doves Cry is about my mother and her death from complications of HIV/AIDS in 1993. Beneath all of this, When Doves Cry is a story about the indestructible, transformational longing to be loved that blazes in every beating heart, including my mother’s.
“A candid and vulnerable artifact of Chicago’s political and pop cultures in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, seen through the eyes of an outspoken, precocious, sarcastic and tenacious young girl,When Doves Cry is a story of compassion, injustice, and the universal journey home, to the source of the ache—the denial of love. It’s the story of my survival and perseverance under unusual, often harrowing, circumstances. It’s a coming out story, and a coming of age story. It’s a rarely seen window into an early example of a still-silenced demographic—women living with HIV/AIDS.
“This excerpt is about our lives before my mom’s diagnosis with HIV, and span from 1984 to 1990.”