The Fight of Our Lives: List 2

by David Levithan, Gabriel Duckels
This blend of history, memoir, and poetry tells the story of AIDS in the United States, from before its formal discovery to the present day.

This list covers vocabulary from "June 25 by Essex Hemphill"–"How to Have Sex in an Epidemic and the Denver Principles."

Here are links to our lists for the book: List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4, List 5, List 6
15 words 7 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. resilience
    the ability to recover readily from adversity or change
    As an AIDS counselor, he was also acutely aware of the physical toll that AIDS took—as well as the resilience of survivors to go beyond this toll.
  2. demeanor
    the way a person behaves toward other people
    His demeanor shifted.
  3. epitome
    a standard or typical example
    Hector was the epitome of what it is to be a wonderful gay man in New York City.
  4. regimen
    a systematic plan for therapy
    There was a little girl on the same treatment regimen as me, and one day, I saw her walk into a wall because the pills were making her go blind.
  5. injunction
    a judicial remedy to prohibit a party from doing something
    A New York court issues a preliminary injunction in 1983 that bars the eviction.
  6. eviction
    the removal of someone occupying a home or land
    A New York court issues a preliminary injunction in 1983 that bars the eviction.
  7. provenance
    where something originated or started
    Whatever its provenance, the world now knows the retrovirus causing AIDS.
  8. brethren
    people who are members of the same social or cultural group
    In 1985, he founded the Unity Fellowship of Christ Church in Los Angeles, and by year’s end, the Minority AIDS Project had begun, since Bean and other church members saw the pressing need to care for their impacted brethren…and also to spread the word in a community that still didn’t understand how hard HIV/AIDS would hit them.
  9. plenary
    fully attended by all participants or qualified members
    At its 1986 conference, the American Public Health Association holds a plenary session on AIDS.
  10. dogmatic
    pertaining to a code of beliefs accepted as authoritative
    The Boston Globe warned that Koop was a “dogmatic Christian fundamentalist with the kind of tunnel vision that limits bureaucrats of any ideological stripe.”
  11. excoriate
    express strong disapproval of
    As he tells the New York Times reporter Maureen Dowd, some critics “seem more concerned with homosexual genocide, and with things like William Buckley’s suggestion that AIDS victims be tattooed, than with the human tragedy….I don’t like to see people excoriated in the midst of illness because there’s some other part of their life style that people don’t like.”
  12. stark
    providing no shelter or sustenance
    Its stark equation resonated: When lives are on the line, indifference and inaction can be just as deadly as hate and fear.
  13. resonate
    evoke or suggest a strong meaning or belief
    Its stark equation resonated: When lives are on the line, indifference and inaction can be just as deadly as hate and fear.
  14. irreverent
    showing lack of due respect or veneration
    He received a homophobic backlash in the comments section for his supposedly irreverent attitude about what had happened to him—but having a sense of humor has always been an essential survival strategy for people at the front line of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
  15. inalienable
    incapable of being repudiated or transferred to another
    That day in Denver, eleven activists make an unapologetic demand that Americans recognize that people with AIDS have an inalienable human right to live without discrimination, prejudice, and scapegoating.
Created on Fri Oct 09 05:37:49 EDT 2026 (updated Mon Oct 19 19:12:28 EDT 2026)

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