Reviews

really truly inspirational
the first half didn't have me as hooked (though it was still exciting), but then as he got more involved in the movement, i was hooked on every page. Hearing his account of the AIDs epidemic as well as his direct involvement of so many historical events, i was surprised i hadn't heard of his name before. in my eyes, he is an american hero. he is an amazing, kind, brave individual who inspires me maybe more than anyone else i've ever learned about. everyone needs to hear his story.

jake_powell's review against another edition

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5.0

Reading Cleve’s narrative of the early years of the AIDS crisis certainly added a new perspective to my understanding of that period, but it was his recounting of the years between Stonewall and AIDS that will forever stay with me. The delight of San Francisco’s heigh day, the communities that lifted each other up, the fear, the nascent activism - those are years I think were missing from my understanding of queer history in a big way. I feel like I have a new grasp on the queer rights movement after reading this, and in many ways feel re-energized to get out there and find joy in the fight.

daphneducky's review against another edition

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5.0

i listened to this on audiobook and immediately bought it (for pride month!) because it was so so so powerful. and i just flipped through it bc one last stop reminded me of it and wowow just reading the chapter names made me tear up. cleve jones really was out there doing the fucking most for the movement and it's just!!! so inspirational.

it's unbelievable how much queer people had to put up with back then. there was so much heartbreak but they really said, it's alright as long as we have each other. we'll come out of this together. except they didn't. a lot of them didn't. when i think about how devastating it was to read about all their losses and pain, how many people's names were in that quilt, i can't even begin to process how impossible it must've been to actually be in that time in history, to have been /friends/ with the people who died from AIDS. it was a tragedy; there is no sugarcoating the prejudices and injustices they had to suffer through this time. but also, the marches and the protests and cleve jones' speeches gave me the same goosebumps as the most epic scenes of lord of the rings or game of thrones. they were fighting for their lives!!!!!!!!! theirs and their lovers' and their friends'. from the bottom of my silly little heart, i am in absolute awe of how resilient and brave they (and cleve jones of course) were. i don't know how i would've been able to pick myself back up, day after day, and fight for a cause against so many odds. really, they weren't asking for much. they wanted equality. why was it so fucking hard. WHY IS IT ALWAYS SO FUCKING HARD TO GET THE BAREST MINIMUM!!!!!!! fuck cis white /religious/ men making all the decisions fuck that shit, then and now.

okay anyway i digress. the point is that this was such a phenomenal read. i felt like every single part of the memoir was significant, from his teenage years when he thought he was the only gay person, to his charmed 20s when he got to experience love and friendship and traveling and the beauty of being queer, to his joining the movement and working with harvey milk, to his fight in AIDS epidemic. he is such an inspirational human, and as cheesy as this sounds, i was truly honored to have been able to read his story. and what's more is that this memoir wasn't just about him as an individual. he gave such detailed and vivid descriptions of the movement and so many monumental milestones in it (he was literally there when the pride flag was, invented?!), of his life on Castro street and how tightly knitted the community was, of the epidemic and how terrifying and devastating it was to have an unbeatable virus taking away tens of thousands of lives, many of them friends and neighbors. it was written with so much love to memorialize the people he loved, and the movement that he fought for his whole life. it is so so so so important to me.

phantasyia's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

larryerick's review against another edition

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3.0

I'm not all sure I'm qualified to review this book. For one, I'm neither L, G, B, T, nor Q. Maybe I just don't get it. This book is a memoir of a gay man. Without question, the part of the book I found most distracting from my enlightenment had to do with his emphasis on his own sexual relations. As a straight man nearly completing his seventh decade, I can state without question that I have never once had spontaneous sex with any stranger I happened to find attractive. (Nor any stranger, for that matter.) By the author's own words, that dynamic happened to him dozens, if not hundreds of times. Then again, word has it the leader of the free world has a similar point of view, so I'm sure it is just me being the odd one. After a brief introduction about his youth, which I found somewhat reminiscent of Bill Bryson's The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, albeit with less humor, he switches to tour bus driver mode as he starts to explore his new life in San Francisco, finally finding a meaningful life in his own skin. From there he immerses the reader in what he clearly sees as the good life of free sex, frequent exotic travel, and enough booze, drugs, and good food to make every day a happy one. Bored? Change location, wash, rinse, repeat. Amidst all the strangers, he leads us to believe he may actually have deep feelings for specific individuals. "And we would love each other for the rest of our lives." Oops, change location a few days later, wash, rinse, repeat. More than 100 pages into the book, there is finally the first true signs of "the movement" part of the books title. Harvey Milk comes into view. Clearly, the author never regards him as attractive, not even liking him very much, but connections start to be made. Events occur. Campaigns develop. Milk finally gets elected and the author is too busy having sex to show up for Milk's first day on the job in celebration. Some of us chose our own way of celebrating. If the reader wants a summary of the next activities and challenges in the "movement", Randy Shilts' The Mayor of Castro Street, is a better choice than this book, but the author does keep pace between reports on his love interests. Eventually, slowly, the discussion shifts from a lack of rights for the "movement" to the specifics of "gay cancer" to "gay-related immune disease" (GIRD) to HIV and AIDS. For the author, it's just something he sees in medical data reports that gets his attention. Ultimately, the author is seeing what the whole world ends up seeing, and yet, it takes forever for the author to even bring up "safe sex" and even then, it is only after he is finally tested, has yet another relationship and states no more detail for the reader than "we were safe". The book shifts more and more away from his sexual exploits -- with an indication he isn't being found as attractive to younger gay men -- and deals more with the multitude of LGBTQ issues, such as employment and housing discrimination, medical funding for AIDS, and same-sex marriage. By far, the best part of the book is the author's reports and insight into the various factions and divisions on these many issues within the "movement". To be fair, rather early on in the book, he briefly brings up a few issues between gay men and lesbians, but his coverage toward the end of the book is quite broad in scope and specific on who was on which side of particular issues. In the end, I would like to read a similar memoir from the perspective of an equally strategically placed lesbian in the movement. I suspect it will be an entirely different read. I apologize for whatever ignorance I brought to this reading.

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