A compelling record of how women incarcerated in a maximum-security prison developed a widely applicable model AIDS program. AIDS is the leading cause of death in New York State prisons, and among those entering prison, HIV infection is present in twice as many women as men. The ACE program (ACE stands for AIDS Counseling and Education) was begun by a group of women inmates in Bedford Hills prison, who in 1988 saw the need to reach out to those among them already suffering with AIDS and to educate the entire Bedford Hills population about the disease. They tell their story here. Creating such a program within the restrictions and bureaucracy of a prison was not easy, but aided by a $250,000 grant from the AIDS Institute, which funded an outside community agency to work with the women, the program gradually took shape. ACE developed workshops and seminars, provided counseling, and held memorial services inside Bedford Hills. The original manual was expanded for use by other prisons and then later into its present form, which is both manual (Part II) and history of ACE (Part I). What makes ACE’s story powerful is not the facts of its history, but the voices of the women recounting that story and at the same time telling their own stories. Not all have AIDS, but all are affected by it, and the pain of prison life, even absent AIDS, is made abundantly clear. The manual itself describes the various teaching methods used and, for each of the nine workshops, outlines the goals and curriculum content. Topics include the stigma of AIDS, transmission, testing, treatment, and how it impacts women as caregivers and mothers. The volume includes a preface by Whoopi Goldberg. A valuable handbook for any group, in or outside prison, involved in AIDS education, but even more, a testament to the humanity of a group of dedicated women. (35 b&w illustrations)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-87951-500-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
The spawn of Seinlanguage: shticky meditations by a stand-up comic who now stars in a top-rated television show. As Tim Taylor, Allen is the focal point of Home Improvement, but his manly-man persona plays off his wife, ``Tool Time'' cohorts, and other characters. Here we have Allen solo, closer to the stand-up mode, musing ``about many things I want to say about being a man.'' His short chapters mainly consist of riffs on his past, his humor safely in the middle American mainstream. Born Timothy Allen Dick, he learned to cope with his unusual moniker through humor and thus segues into observations genitalistic. Allen resents women saying men's cars are linked to their penises: ``What's an extension of the vagina—a purse?'' His life was transformed, he writes, by a Playboy centerfold, and he does have some wise thoughts on objectification: ``If we could have had sex with our cars and boats, it would have been a lot easier. But we'd be a smaller species.'' What should men ``look for in a gal? The answer is easy: breath.'' Allen balances such cheap laughs with some insights, suggesting that women, like men, seek glitz in a partner but eventually settle for ``the family station wagon.'' There's more: marriage, sports, and, of course, tools, leading to his innovative analysis of the impact of tool belts on butt cracks. He ends with some heartfelt sentiments on fatherhood. Allen only briefly touches on the traumas that have fueled his psyche: the death of his father in a car wreck when Tim was 11 and a prison sentence for selling drugs. (The lack of privacy in prison supplies the book's title.) More memoir and less shtick might have been a better balance here. For loyal fans, who should still be plentiful. (First printing of 500,000; first serial to TV Guide and Playboy)
Pub Date: Oct. 7, 1994
ISBN: 0-7868-6134-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
Danielle's dirty linen. A lot of this unauthorized biography is about legal wrangling, much of it to do with child custody. It's a good story, but Steel could have told it better. Bane and Benet, People magazine staff reporters, follow up on their Steel exposÇ of 1992 (written with Paula Chin) with this book cobbled together from interviews, court depositions, and letters Steel wrote to her second husband, Danny Zugelder (most while he was in prison). Heaven knows Steel's life is more than the stuff of romance. She was a neglected child. When she was hospitalized with ovarian cancer at 16, her parents never visited her. She married two convicts: Zugelder, a car thief and bank robber, who was also jailed for assault and rape (they were married in a prison ceremony and consummated their relationship in a bathroom); and Bill Toth, a heroin addict imprisoned for fencing stolen goods. Toth and Steel fought over custody of their son, Nicholas, and much of the last half of the bio comes from trial depositions and interviews with Toth and his lawyers. Steel finally found her putative Prince Charming in John Traina, who the authors take pains to point out is not and has never been a shipping magnate, though he does have a dynamite collection of cigarette cases and closets full of designer clothes. With their nine children, Steel and Traina bought the enormous Spreckels mansion in San Francisco. They also own a mini- compound in the Napa Valley, where they house a fleet of cars and a staff of thousands. For the sins of success, eccentricity, and a strong sense of privacy, the authors try to build a case against Steel. But in the end she comes through as a hard worker and a gritty survivor. It's you-can-run-but-you-can't-hide journalism, gossipy with a sound foundation, and not too high on elegant turns of phrase. (First printing of 100,000; author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-11257-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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