A Quilt for David

By: Steven Reigns

Narrated by: Steven Reigns

Length: 1 hr and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

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

In the early 1990s, eight people living in a small conservative Florida town 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 a People magazine 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 21st 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 David is a posthumous journal of vindication." (Brontez Purnell, author of 100 Boyfriends)

"A stunning homage to people with AIDS." (Sarah Schulman, author of Let 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 of We the Animals)

"A Quilt for David is amazing and so powerful, filled with anger and frustration.... It's an unforgettable book." (Marie Cloutier, Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn, NY)

"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 of Chronicle of a Plague, Revisited)

"Steven Reigns lifts David Acer 30 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 of AMANDA PARADISE: Resurrect Extinct Vibration)

©2021 City Lights (P)2022 Steven Reigns

Stunning

A poetic rendering of a sobering and shameful part of the AIDS crisis, the story gives voice and presence to a fortunate man whose life was cut short by ignorance and fears rampant in society at the time.Betrayed by lies his history now seen in this beautiful quilt of the moments of his life.

Loved this book so much.

Steven Reigns created a beautiful work of literature with this book. I remember when this case was in the news. I was in college and I remember how demonized David Acer was. This book revisits the case and the people involved from a different perspective. David was not the devil, and it was homophobia and hysteria that tried to imprint his place in history as just that. He was a human being who died from a terrible disease. This book beautifully humanizes him.

A fantastic book

Steven Reigns is our generations greatest poet and this work shows us why. Reigns deftly mixes poetry prose and true crime for a surprisingly touching and even suspenseful listen.