Ever since Professor Paul Solomon at Western Michigan University asked me to create a playlist for the week he taught my graphic memoir Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371 in his amazing course Direct Encounters with the Arts, I have had a playlist for the book on my phone.
Today, preparing to once again do a class visit discussing Taking Turns as it connects through time to our current moment and COVID-19, I decided to make my playlist public. This time I’m preparing to teach in the class of a scholar I respect immensely, Lisa Dietrich, in her course at Stony Brook University, “Illness-Thought-Activism: From HIV/AIDS to COVID-19.”
These songs played as I thought about the book before it existed, as I wrote and drew the book, and as I look at it in my hands today.