As a long-time columnist and associate editor of Positive Living, David Menadue is probably familiar to many readers. He is an HIV-positive gay man with a long involvement in activism and the HIV-positive community.
Positive is David’s autobiography and a personal history of HIV/AIDS in Australia. Written in an accessible, journalistic style, Positive is nonetheless suffused with David’s empathy, vulnerability and reasonableness. It is an honest and direct personal narrative which ranges between personal and community history.
Positive is divided into three parts. The first part focuses on the emergence of HIV/AIDS in the early 1980s, David’s HIV diagnosis in 1984 and his experience as an openly HIV-positive gay man in the 1980s. This part evokes a time of fear and profound prejudice, both in the gay community and mainstream Australia. David’s straightforward and unpretentious style heightens the sense of marginalisation experienced by positive gay men at this time, and the constancy of death and grief in gay men’s lives. Discussion of one of the first peer support initiatives, Melbourne Positive Friends, provides a powerful insight into the positive gay community of the 1980s.
David also conveys the trauma of coming out to family as HIV-positive and gay during an AIDS-defining illness. A central theme of the book is the importance of family, and the role of David’s family in supporting him in his identity, illness and activism.
In the second part of the book, David explores his childhood in country Victoria, his key family relationships and coming out in the 1970s. He describes a traditional white Aussie childhood in rural Victoria, and depicts the destructive pressure of masculinist culture on both his parents. David also writes about the evolution of his sexual identity within a sport-obsessed, macho world. The repressive nature of small town country life is contrasted to David’s experience of personal liberation and individual aspiration in the city.
David provides a first-person account of the camp party scene in Melbourne in the 1970s, as well as insights into the gay sexual subculture and the left-wing gay political activism of the time.
The third part of the book returns to the central theme of HIV/AIDS and the ways in which it has shaped David’s life and sexual experience. He explores the emerging radicalism among HIV-positive activists and the infamous infighting at the Victorian AIDS Council, explaining events primarily in terms of a generalised anger in response to HIV/AIDS, and organisational and personal differences among key actors. As ever, David’s reasonable and empathetic voice dominates. Nevertheless, this account may annoy some readers for its failure to explore political differences in greater depth.
“For many people, the life of an HIV-positive gay man is one of extreme marginality and trauma”
In the final chapters of the book, David addresses the impact of treatments on HIV-positive people, and discusses the ongoing challenges which confront people living with HIV and the gay community.
For many people, the life of an HIV-positive gay man is one of extreme marginality and trauma. David Menadue’s autobiography defies these assumptions, describing a life enriched by friendships, family and a strong community-based gay identity. I would expect sections of Positive to become standard reading for students of the social and health professions. It would also provide a great resource for students of social movements and gay history.
While Positive is a wide-ranging and impressive chronicle, I have a couple of minor criticisms. First, I would have liked more discussion of David’s father Donald Menadue. David’s paternal grandfather was a self-made man with substantial involvement in the Liberal Party, while Donald was a shearer, meat inspector and alcoholic. There is little sense of the nature of Donald Menadue and his attitude to his life choices and his children. As a consequence, the transformation in David’s relationship with his father later in life is confounding.
Given much of the book concerns David’s ambivalent relationship to the dominant masculine culture, greater exploration of this key relationship may have been worthwhile.
The second absence in the book concerns the role of writing in David’s life. Positive is dedicated to two former editors of Positive Living, and writing appears to have been a significant event in David’s life. However, David’s long-term contributions to Positive Living are not discussed, nor is the way in which writing provided him with an opportunity to make sense of his life, linking personal struggles and community experiences.
For people acquainted with David’s writing in Positive Living and books such as AIDS in Australia (1992), some of the material in Positive will be familiar territory. Nevertheless, the format of an autobiography has allowed David Menadue to produce a more reflective piece of writing on his life and the history of HIV/AIDS and the gay community.
For any members of the HIV community who are wondering ‘Do I get a mention?’ I can only suggest that you read Positive in the knowledge that it is accessible and engaging. It is a rewarding and recommended book.
- David Menadue’s Positive ($22.95) is published by Allen and Unwin.
*Megan Nicholson* is a Sydney-based journalist and a contributing site editor to AIDSmap.com.
