Janika Vandervelde wrote "Positive Women: Susan" for the AIDS Quilt Songbook project of baritone and AIDS sufferer William Parker, who wished to create a literature of modern composers' responses to the illness and thereby provide funds for research. Vandervelde uses a first-person narration by Susan Gladstone, published in the volume Positive Women: Voices of Women Living with AIDS, as her text. The work is written for narrator, speaking Susan's part, and a female chorus and violin who provide accompaniment. The text itself celebrates the domestic arts, and the repose inherent in them, as a response to stress brought on by AIDS; the voices, intoning a sad, repeated melody with spare accompaniment played by the solo violin, underscore the fact that Susan's struggles for peace, brave as they are, are surely doomed. Only occasionally does the chorus assume prominence, and even then its music and words do not change. "Positive Women: Susan" is not what we typically think of as a song, but it gets the job done in its touching response to the inevitability of AIDS.

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