A review by archytas
Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 by Sarah Schulman

informative reflective sad slow-paced

4.25

This is a bit of  "glorious mess" of a book. Shulman is committed to telling an activist history of ACTUP NYC that doesn't reduce the story to the perspectives of a few. Rather, she draws on the hundreds of oral histories carried out with ACTUP members to tell stories from dozens of perspectives. Central to Shulman's concern is to highlight the women, latinx and Black activists within ACTUP. She puts a strong argument that the organisation's biggest successes came from the work of this group. This was only slightly undermined by the fact that, in their oral histories, many of these activists revealed that they saw themselves as fringe within the group, which they saw as dominated by white men, many of them somewhat wealthy. 

It was hard not to think of Alexis Wright's incredible Tracker in reading this,  but which also utilises oral histories to tell a story that defies a single perspective. This isn't a fair comparison, as Wright is a novelist and Tracker is a carefully constructed story. Shulman, however, was working to deconstruct the idea of a single narrative with mixed success, but in ways that were always compelling. I completely tore through this lengthy book, wanting to follow the stories. Shulman herself, however, also argues for her views, colouring the book. One the one hand, I admired that she was not pretending to an impossible objectivity. However, there are times when she directly disagrees with a quote, where it can feel like the stories needed some more time to breathe. (also times, such as in covering the cathedral action, where critical views felt minimised in comparison to public comments by the participants. Shulman's pride in ACTUP doesn't prevent her from critique, but it does lend of course to focusing on successes. At times, I felt the absence of a discussion of the contribution made by other organisations in other places to some of the policy gains.

On the whole, though, this does a magnificent job of telling stories which have had little airing. And in celebrating the successes of NY ACTUP in fighting for needle exchange, enabling women to be diagnosed (yes, incredibly AIDS was defined by a series of opportunistic infections uncommon in women and none of those - like yeast infections - which were, leading to women dying without officially having the disease (or getting access to disability)). In New York, AIDS was prolific in injecting drug user communities as well as the gay community, and Shulman captures how the movement spread to jails, and to refugee services for poz Haitians stranded by authorities. Shulman stays respectful of all the participants, her narrative coloured by a weary grief that extends tenderness even with anger amid the battles. This is the kind of messy history we need much more of, which refuses to collapse the heat and passion of change to singular stories and perspectives.