In the mid-1980's Barbara Rose Brooker found herself in the midst of the AIDS epidemic when Joe, her neighbor and friend, died of AIDS. Knowing she was an author, Joe asked her to write about him. "Write that I'm afraid. Not of AIDS, but of humanity". So began the 15 year journey of the author/narrator and her book, God Doesn't Make Trash. The book isn't about HIV/AIDS itself; it's about the devastating effects of homophobia. It's a collection of stories about the people the author interviewed in researching her book, from the first men and women to be diagnosed with HIV/AIDS on Ward 86 at San Francisco General Hospital in the 1980's to those at the 1999 San Francisco AIDS Walk. The unedited words of the interviewees give extraordinarily moving and powerful personal accounts of what it was like to live and die of AIDS in the early 1980's, and what it is like now, in the millennium, for the second generation of AIDS patients. Their stories have put a human face to AIDS. Woven through the interviews is the narrator's story of her own life during this period of time and how her experiences with AIDS and homophobia have changed her life. Book jacket.