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Bleeder: A Memoir
I am Caucasian, five foot eleven, have sandy brown hair, blue eyes, and am a tender slip of bone. And I am at the hospital.
A coming-of-age memoir for modern times, Bleeder is the incredibly compelling tale of author Shelby Smoak. A hemophiliac, Smoak discovered he had been infected with HIV during a blood transfusion at the start of his college career. This devastating and destabilizing news led Smoak to see his world from an entirely new perspective, one in which life-threatening illness was perpetually just around the corner. Set in the 1990s along the North Carolina coast, Bleeder traces Smoak’s quest for love in a world that feels increasingly dangerous, and despite a future that feels increasingly uncertain. From the bedroom to the operating room, and from one hospital to the next, Smoak seeks out hope and better health. Winner of a PEN American Center award for writers living with HIV, Smoak, whose work has appeared in numerous journals and magazines, constructs this unforgettable story of life and love against insurmountable difficulties in breathtaking, tightly drawn prose.
A coming-of-age memoir for modern times, Bleeder is the incredibly compelling tale of author Shelby Smoak. A hemophiliac, Smoak discovered he had been infected with HIV during a blood transfusion at the start of his college career. This devastating and destabilizing news led Smoak to see his world from an entirely new perspective, one in which life-threatening illness was perpetually just around the corner. Set in the 1990s along the North Carolina coast, Bleeder traces Smoak’s quest for love in a world that feels increasingly dangerous, and despite a future that feels increasingly uncertain. From the bedroom to the operating room, and from one hospital to the next, Smoak seeks out hope and better health. Winner of a PEN American Center award for writers living with HIV, Smoak, whose work has appeared in numerous journals and magazines, constructs this unforgettable story of life and love against insurmountable difficulties in breathtaking, tightly drawn prose.
- GenresMemoirNonfictionMedical
214 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2013
6 people are currently reading
301 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
August 13, 2016
Vivid, heartbreaking, inspiring tale of a young writer's struggle to live life fully in the face of hemophilia and HIV. Highly recommended. Author profile and book review here: http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/shel...
January 28, 2013
A wonderful coming of age story, but not the typical coming of age story. Bleeder really makes you think, "what would I do in that situation." Sometimes doing the "right" thing isn't always the right thing to do. I think this book will be of particular interest to those os us, like myself who came of age in the 80s and 90s. So, what are you waiting for, go get a copy of Bleeder!
June 4, 2020
I gave a blurb for this book when it was published, before I met Shelby at a meeting of a hemophilia support group in North Carolina. I suffer from the same disorder and syndrome. Here is what I wrote, and I stand by it. Shelby Smoak's Bleeder is a strongly written, mournful tale of a young man learning that the medicine he has taken to treat hemophilia has the disastrous side effect of giving him HIV. I have rarely read anything as moving or as deeply human as this memoir, and I admire the clarity with which Smoak has shaped this painful narrative. As a hemophiliac myself, I have lived through much of what Smoak writes about, and can vouch for the depth of truth these pages contain. This is a superb book. Now I would add that the pain of it all, the feeling of betrayal - knowing that the bleeding medicine was the source not only of HIV but also of Hepatitis C, is wonderfully conveyed in this book, and will resonate with me for a long time. Revisiting this book today has made me wonder whether I ought to turn to this subject, too, one of these days.
July 25, 2021
beautiful prose, unique perspective, pretty bleak content
July 17, 2013
It's great when a memoir about dealing with both hemophilia and HIV can surprise you with its warmth/charm/sexiness??? It's REALLY hard to be sweetly funny and relatable when you're writing about terrible things that you've gone through. To step back and write with the poetry and the clear-headedness that a little objectivity can bring you....boy!I cringe when I read my own blog posts etc. from some of my darker days in college(definitely not even close to being this rough), but this book is not a pity party. The only part that brought a lil tear to my eye dealt with an episode of social injustice rather than personal tragedy. Maybe I'm giving such a glowing review because I saw this author give a talk today and you always want to like writers whose faces you see in real life(?) and I watched a documentary tonight about the damage done by hecklers. But I don't think so! It was good!
July 7, 2020
this had a lot of great info on hemophilia and all the complications surrounding it, and several parts of the book mirrored my own experiences as a disabled person (the dad constantly going on about needing a job for health insurance, relatable!!!!!) but i also had to read about this man's penis way too much, the writing was often pretentious and eye roll-inducing, there was a decent dose of misogyny AND a chapter titled 'My Lolita' where he dated/fucked an 18 yr old girl who attended the high school he assisted at so. ew.
April 24, 2013
A book should transport you into a different life and show you a perspective that you had not experienced. This book does just that. I enjoyed it!
May 9, 2013
Amazing, poignantly crafted memoir that brought tears to my eyes and kept me turning the pages. Highly recommended!
October 31, 2013
Excellent memoir! Highly recommend it! The story is so real, you can feel his pain and sickness as he writes. Amazing!
January 28, 2022
The mental burden of living with chronic illness can be just as significant as the physical burdens. The author gives a window into both. It is a painful but also optimistic memoir of living with diseases that are painful and socially stigmatized.
November 9, 2022
One of my favorite memoirs, I love the way Smoak writes and how the progression in how he thinks about his HIV is represented. Also love that it’s essentially vignettes but you don’t notice because they’re so well woven
March 20, 2019
Loved Shelby Smoak's writing. Raw, real, moving. His story is encouraging, sad and hopeful. I wonder what has happened to him.
April 22, 2024
well-written, personable, unnerving and important.
February 20, 2014
Bleeder was unlike any other memoir I have ever read, partly because of the simple fact of the topic: Shelby Smoak was born a severe hemophiliac who, as a child, contracted HIV through a blood transfusion in the early days of the AIDS epidemic.
The book begins with Smoak turning 18 and learning of his status (his parents were informed years beforehand, and let him choose whether or not he wanted to know as a child), and chronicles his college and young adult years. Bleeder is lovely, fascinating, depressing, informative, sad, strange, and different. It is painful to read about Smoak's suffering, all the while knowing that not only will he never recover from the hemophilia, the condition also weakens and damages his body over the years; in addition, he has a fatal disease that is more dangerous to weakened, damaged bodies. Although he can get better in the sense that HIV treatments are always improving, he can never be cured of either ailment. We are all dying, but Smoak is doing so in a faster, more painful, more direct way than most of us.
The reader is also offered a glimpse into the intimate dating and sex life of an HIV positive person. I think this is something we have all wondered about, although of course the way to handle such things is as individual as the people who are HIV positive. Smoak .
Moving beyond content to style, Smoak has a poetic voice and many passages of the book are seamless and beautiful. However, his prose is a bit inconsistent. Also, I feel as though if there is a writing equivalent to overacting, Smoak demonstrates it: he's an overwriter. Haha. I guess that's really just a complicated way of saying he tends toward the dramatic.
Ultimately, when I consider Smoak and his memoir, I find him incredibly brave. Brave to have lived it and brave to have shared it; overall, brave to keep going.
The book begins with Smoak turning 18 and learning of his status (his parents were informed years beforehand, and let him choose whether or not he wanted to know as a child), and chronicles his college and young adult years. Bleeder is lovely, fascinating, depressing, informative, sad, strange, and different. It is painful to read about Smoak's suffering, all the while knowing that not only will he never recover from the hemophilia, the condition also weakens and damages his body over the years; in addition, he has a fatal disease that is more dangerous to weakened, damaged bodies. Although he can get better in the sense that HIV treatments are always improving, he can never be cured of either ailment. We are all dying, but Smoak is doing so in a faster, more painful, more direct way than most of us.
The reader is also offered a glimpse into the intimate dating and sex life of an HIV positive person. I think this is something we have all wondered about, although of course the way to handle such things is as individual as the people who are HIV positive. Smoak .
Moving beyond content to style, Smoak has a poetic voice and many passages of the book are seamless and beautiful. However, his prose is a bit inconsistent. Also, I feel as though if there is a writing equivalent to overacting, Smoak demonstrates it: he's an overwriter. Haha. I guess that's really just a complicated way of saying he tends toward the dramatic.
Ultimately, when I consider Smoak and his memoir, I find him incredibly brave. Brave to have lived it and brave to have shared it; overall, brave to keep going.
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September 5, 2013Imagine being a little kid who falls down, gets a bruise, and then never heals. Shelby Smoak is one of the rarest of the rare: a hemophiliac with less than 1% clotting agent. So being a little kid constantly in the hospital is bad enough; now imagine that one of those times you get a transfusion and the transfusion is tainted. This was a sad possibility in the late 70’s and early 80’s. And it happened to Shelby. His parents were informed when the first HIV test came back positive when he was 13, but Shelby didn’t want to know. At 18, he was burdened with the truth and the responsibility of his condition. This memoir is surprisingly upbeat. Mimicking the musings of any other boy his age, by bird-dogging chicks and trying to balance college and life after, Shelby is very down-to-earth about his life and health. Ultimately, it’s an optimistic piece. (Kim - Reader's Services)
January 7, 2015
This is the story of a portion of a man's childhood/early adulthood spent living with hemophilia and HIV. This memoir exposed me to something I previously knew nothing about and was eye-opening in that respect.
To me, many (or most) of his descriptions felt forced - I found myself skipping over a lot of his descriptions since they felt clunky when they were trying to be smooth. The memoir is mainly composed of "I did", "I went", "I sat" - a lot of telling without showing. Even though this is a memoir I never felt like I scratched the surface of who Shelby was or is.
It was heartbreaking without actually breaking my heart.
To me, many (or most) of his descriptions felt forced - I found myself skipping over a lot of his descriptions since they felt clunky when they were trying to be smooth. The memoir is mainly composed of "I did", "I went", "I sat" - a lot of telling without showing. Even though this is a memoir I never felt like I scratched the surface of who Shelby was or is.
It was heartbreaking without actually breaking my heart.
March 18, 2013
I was interested but skeptical at the start of Bleeder. My problem, I think, is that I was trying to anticipate the direction of the story. I'm really glad I finished the book. I learned a lot, I was enlightened and I was left with closure. The book is too well written - obviously because Shelby Smoak is an English major. :> There's a true story of rising above your circumstances here. I don't want to overwrite another readers' reaction with the distraction of my preconceived notions on this book. I strongly suggest you read it if you are interested in a small paradigm shift from 1980-2000.
July 17, 2014
Smoak writes of his late teens through his early twenties, a period when he not only has to deal with severe hemophilia, but also his having contracted HIV. His experiences pretty much chronicle how society has dealt with AIDS- at first the treatments are basic and those who find out he has it are fearful that they might "catch it". That said, I didn't care for his writing style . I found it to be very choppy ("I did this, then I did that") and flat. I also found that his use if adjectives to be kind of "off" and forced.
May 25, 2014
This story is one of the most unique and intriguing I have ever read. The strange title caught me and description got me.
Shelby has HIV; contracted through tainted blood and hemophilia. Not so cut and dry.
I savoured this book slice by slice, like the key lime pie in my fridge. Beautifully painful, strong, hopeful and tragic, this is a must read memoir.
One of my must reads and favourites for 2014.
Shelby has HIV; contracted through tainted blood and hemophilia. Not so cut and dry.
I savoured this book slice by slice, like the key lime pie in my fridge. Beautifully painful, strong, hopeful and tragic, this is a must read memoir.
One of my must reads and favourites for 2014.
February 16, 2013
Enough startlingly clear illustrations of the pain, physical and psychological, that comes with this combination of diseases to seem real. Enough love, hope and joy of life that the story doesn't seem self-pitying or self-indulgent. This is a lovely memoir, a great gift from the author to anyone who would like to understand better, or who had a friend who....
December 21, 2014
This was so good to the point where I read this in a 24 hour time span. Incredibly eye opening to the world of Hemophilia and HIV. He talks a lot about his vacations in Myrtle Beach/North Myrtle Beach/Cherry Grove and living in Wilmington, NC for quite a bit so I enjoyed reading about my hometowns and city getaways from other point of views.
December 16, 2013
Interesting memoir of a man who has hemophilia and HIV. it is not a woe is me book it is more about his journey and figuring out who he is and have to live with his diseases. A very real book and a hopeful ending.
February 18, 2013
Great memoir. Left me wanting more.
July 1, 2013
Well written. Made me think deeply about the difficulties caused by diseases like hemophilia and HIV for individuals. Also, about the near miraculous results from new treatments
August 27, 2013
File with the "what's it like" memoirs. Hemophiliac with HIV, bummer. But interesting.
November 24, 2013
loved it. go buy it.
April 29, 2015
The content and basic story in this memoir were engaging. However, the narrative voice just seemed so "flat". It was like it was narrated by that existential French cat.
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September 19, 2015Just glanced at
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews