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A review by daphneducky
When We Rise: My Life in the Movement by Cleve Jones
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.
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.