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yikesbmg's review against another edition
5.0
Wow, this was an excellent book to read after “How to Survive a Plague” by David France. It gives context to what happens when People With AIDS died, and were essentially disappeared by the American government policy and American culture. This book left me thinking a lot about what it means to be accountable in community, and the responsibility each person has to another when it comes to accountability. One question she asked (“Everything humans constructed can be transformed. If people can change you, why can’t you change them” or something like that) will stick with me forever. Her simple and yet very complex and aware answers of what shapes her happiness (a job, health insurance, understanding and interrogating why things are they way they are) really moved me and I am excited to explore those things for myself. Schulman doesn’t cut herself, or anyone else, any slack which is a bit intimidating but at the end of the book, I was left with a profound awareness of how valuable that is. New York City was significantly reshaped after the AIDS crisis, and there’s no way to read this book while knowing we have lost north of 300,000 neighbors due to COVID, and not wonder how those deaths with shape our city. Who and what have we lost? Who and what will replace it? How do we ensure the people that replace those loved ones have context and respect for what came before them? How do we make sure the orphans left behind by parents who left for COVID don’t struggle with the same lack of recognition and distorted sense of self of those in the queer community who survived the AIDS crisis were left with? Most importantly, I think, is how do we even create space for us to discuss those questions? This book is leaving me with so many questions, which is exactly how I like to be at the end of a great read. Bravo Schulman, one of the best New Yorkers of our time.
ALSO: One huge take away is that it’s our duty to our neighbors and other human beings not to turn away from something just because it’s uncomfortable. It was nice to have this affirmed by Schulman. Ok i think that’s it!
ALSO: One huge take away is that it’s our duty to our neighbors and other human beings not to turn away from something just because it’s uncomfortable. It was nice to have this affirmed by Schulman. Ok i think that’s it!
ralowe's review against another edition
1.0
god damn it i'd kill a whole cave of pepes for a black act up. the cdc: "In 2014, the estimated diagnosis rate for HIV cases in the United States was 13.8 per 100,000 population and 49.4 among blacks/African Americans."ќ i'm not sure where that's at now 2017. BLM is a black queer femme product granted the legitimacy of disdain from conservatives mostly due to it being a politic that keeps black flesh hidden. the terrifying impossilbe gary fisherisms, a thouand times the critique of the critique of the nation, illegible. a valid alibi, the online outraged liberal circulation of black documentary snuff, mike brown, eric garner, tamir rice and more. by "black flesh"ќ i refer to cathy cohen *boundaries of blackness*. ethical dreaming: beyond *time* magazine, what kind of black trans queer optics do i actually in my heart of hearts imagine? is it not merely beyond sarah schulman's grasp but my own? if the uninvited irruption of black queer trans flesh is beyond discourse then where? is schulman incapable of mitigating this bloody shitstorm? not sure to what extent i could be homies with schulman. i don't think she'd approve of me for some reason and then it'd be over. a really close colleague i used to work with"У okay mattilda"У deeply admired schulman for the unrelenting purity of her analysis and unwillingness to allow people their contradictions, and i have inherited that trait from her through her. and i believe that whenever it has been feasible"У excepting those occasions where it is absolutely necessary"У these tendencies have contributed manifestly to successful flourishing, generally as well as mine. not like that shit on tumblr where people tear each other to pieces. "tear each other to pieces"ќ"Уanother heuristic of mattilda's idiomatic inheritance: she'd use it to describe act up meetings in san francisco, how people treated each other, near the end i presume. it's a schulman construct i bet. sitting in a cafe in tech gentrified san francisco i can't help despairing at a recent black trans queer direct action project that came undone but not in so dramatic a fashion implied in "tear each other to pieces"ќ. i tried my best to be calm but firm for the most part in meetings. my emails are characterized otherwise. one of the most explosively disliked emails was written while i was in the midst of what i personally experienced as complete emotional detachment. i wonder if that was psychosis. but group-wise the differences were so stark that the few of us that together held precious distinct notions of reciprocity could no longer front on the fact that the group was impossible"У and by extension, us. well, not literally in a frank wilderson way "us"ќ, "чcause i'm still here, but you know what i mean. how immense and subtle, like the ground beneath your feet, were the forces we were working against. it was cosmic joke, meaning a joke on a cosmic scale, 42. these same forces write themselves as natural in schulman's democratic party aura, even as she knows and articulates that isomorphic naturalizing process enacted by straights against homos. i had low expectations for this book, and kind of wanted to get it out of the way so i can label myself current, but i'm actually worried about how much i did enjoy this book before now. enjoyed it as i floated through the marina waiting for a vegan bakery to open because i thought it described precisely the bland affluence we're fighting against, where i was walking through, choosing to walk through to eat, or something, but to what extent is sarah (i mean "schulman"ќ)'s and mine's the same fight? hers is overly and eloquently discursive on a broadway scale. but in an alternate schulmanhood or schulman dimension i'm tripping on the non-discursive way that black queer trans sociality moves through signals in the mall bathroom"_ because after all schulman(i keep wanting to type "sarah"ќ)'s critiques seemed to have went the right direction for the better part of the most part. sorta. but then i thought about it and gradually i lost my mind, hoodwinked again! schulman does little to disrupt the lowkey andrew sullivaning formaldehyding and periodizing of HIV/AIDS context she writes from within. the touching elegy of all her lost friends sincerely almost brought a tear to my eye in the marina, but then i remembered how much longer the names of the lost are in that sped-up cut of obit portraits in *tongues untied*, everything we don't know, a deadly miasm on the unfolding present statistically three years old; i feel size queeny and gross stat to stat, however millions more than you, but yeah. damn you, secular humanism! at one point she mocks this ineligibility of subaltern black queer trans deviant flesh to ever matter by noting that one elegized friend although a published author just couldn't write very well, awwe. that's fine, at least he's not a nigger.
rnfortier's review
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
3.5
This book left me conflicted. On one hand it was extremely informative and painted a deeply personal picture of a time in history that is definitely in need of more attention.
On the other, the first three chapters at times read like an exercise in absolving herself and white gay men from being the instigators to the gentrification of black and Latino communities of NYC. There is an over explanation that feels like a dodge of accountability, with the excuse of them being artists.
I also found some of her statements to be made so broadly but without any evidentiary backup either than her own personal lived experiences.
Regardless, the topics and people she introduces are important and I look forward to exploring the novels of people the author highlighted throughout.
On the other, the first three chapters at times read like an exercise in absolving herself and white gay men from being the instigators to the gentrification of black and Latino communities of NYC. There is an over explanation that feels like a dodge of accountability, with the excuse of them being artists.
I also found some of her statements to be made so broadly but without any evidentiary backup either than her own personal lived experiences.
Regardless, the topics and people she introduces are important and I look forward to exploring the novels of people the author highlighted throughout.
jake_powell's review against another edition
5.0
What a remarkable book! Schulman introduces paradigms for queerness, community, and change-making that I know I’ll be referencing for years to come, and did so while firmly grounding her work in stories and anecdotes. Her expansion of what exactly gentrification can mean creates a framework for so much broader social analysis. As a queer transplant to New York, and as a member of ACT UP, this book gave me so much more than I could have expected.
floortje_fauna's review against another edition
4.0
"It's weirdly passive to commit gentrification, even though the consequence is brutal. It feels safe to be like others, and frightening to be one's self - because that requires knowing who one's true self is - and not in a New Agey sense where anything one "feels" (a euphemism for wants) is right. But in a truthful sense, to see one's dark side and conflicts and in that way, realize one's self as human. Not as an excuse to not change, but as a starting point for change."
cnidariar3x's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
5.0
sujuv's review against another edition
4.0
One last, great read for 2022. Schulman's brave, intelligent honesty is as always admirable and interesting. Her take on the gentrification of art, activism, and literature rings true though as this was written in 2012 there are changes unaccounted for - such as the emergence of trans voices which she sees coming but I was reminded were not really there a decade ago. It is despite some depressing diagnoses ultimately an optimistic book as she does believe in the potential for "degentrification." Also it's important to note that she grounds the gentrification in the AIDS crisis and its aftermath and points out how little most people know about the fight activists put up to get people in power to take them seriously. A good reminder.