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Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993
Twenty years in the making, Sarah Schulman's Let the Record Show is the most comprehensive political history ever assembled of ACT UP and American AIDS activism
In just six years, ACT UP, New York, a broad and unlikely coalition of activists from all races, genders, sexualities, and backgrounds, changed the world. Armed with rancor, desperation, intelligence, and creativity, it took on the AIDS crisis with an indefatigable, ingenious, and multifaceted attack on the corporations, institutions, governments, and individuals who stood in the way of AIDS treatment for all. They stormed the FDA and NIH in Washington, DC, and started needle exchange programs in New York; they took over Grand Central Terminal and fought to change the legal definition of AIDS to include women; they transformed the American insurance industry, weaponized art and advertising to push their agenda, and battled--and beat--The New York Times, the Catholic Church, and the pharmaceutical industry. Their activism, in its complex and intersectional power, transformed the lives of people with AIDS and the bigoted society that had abandoned them.
Based on more than two hundred interviews with ACT UP members and rich with lessons for today's activists, Let the Record Show is a revelatory exploration--and long-overdue reassessment--of the coalition's inner workings, conflicts, achievements, and ultimate fracture. Schulman, one of the most revered queer writers and thinkers of her generation, explores the how and the why, examining, with her characteristic rigor and bite, how a group of desperate outcasts changed America forever, and in the process created a livable future for generations of people across the world.
In just six years, ACT UP, New York, a broad and unlikely coalition of activists from all races, genders, sexualities, and backgrounds, changed the world. Armed with rancor, desperation, intelligence, and creativity, it took on the AIDS crisis with an indefatigable, ingenious, and multifaceted attack on the corporations, institutions, governments, and individuals who stood in the way of AIDS treatment for all. They stormed the FDA and NIH in Washington, DC, and started needle exchange programs in New York; they took over Grand Central Terminal and fought to change the legal definition of AIDS to include women; they transformed the American insurance industry, weaponized art and advertising to push their agenda, and battled--and beat--The New York Times, the Catholic Church, and the pharmaceutical industry. Their activism, in its complex and intersectional power, transformed the lives of people with AIDS and the bigoted society that had abandoned them.
Based on more than two hundred interviews with ACT UP members and rich with lessons for today's activists, Let the Record Show is a revelatory exploration--and long-overdue reassessment--of the coalition's inner workings, conflicts, achievements, and ultimate fracture. Schulman, one of the most revered queer writers and thinkers of her generation, explores the how and the why, examining, with her characteristic rigor and bite, how a group of desperate outcasts changed America forever, and in the process created a livable future for generations of people across the world.
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First published May 18, 2021
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About the author
Sarah Schulman
58 books783 followersSarah Schulman is a longtime AIDS and queer activist, and a cofounder of the MIX Festival and the ACT UP Oral History Project. She is a playwright and the author of seventeen books, including the novels The Mere Future, Shimmer, Rat Bohemia, After Delores, and People in Trouble, as well as nonfiction works such as The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination, My American History: Lesbian and Gay Life during the Reagan/Bush Years, Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences, and Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America. She is Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at The City University of New York, College of Staten Island.
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June 20, 2021
"[...] in a public conversation that I held with Larry Kramer at OutWrite in Boston in the 1990s, I suggested, in front of an audience, that the next time Larry was called by the media, he could refer them to a person of color or a woman in ACT UP. And Larry responded, 'But Sarah, shouldn't we use our best people?'"
The history of AIDS activism has been dominated by the image of the white, middle-to-upper class gay man, as seen in fictional dramas like Angels in America and distorted documentaries like How to Survive a Plague. Rank and file ACT UP NY member turned AIDS historian Sarah Schulman provides a long overdue corrective to this narrative in her magnus opus Let the Record Show: a Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993. Drawing on the nearly 200 interviews she conducted for the ACT UP Oral History Project with surviving members of ACT UP NY, Sarah provides us a rich, polyvocal understanding of the movement from the people who lived through it's most charged years. And in doing so, she restores to history the many women, people of colour, trans people, and even fake grifters who populated and lead the most successful social movement of its time.
This is more than just a dauntingly large history book. Ever the activist, Sarah is keenly aware that future social movements will need the knowledge and skills that coalesced to make ACT UP successful. Throughout the book, Sarah focuses on drawing out in detail how activism works: how affinity groups were structured, how actions were planned and undertaken, and what too can be learned from ACT UP's mistakes and failures. This is, without doubt, the single most useful political book I have ever read, providing a full blueprint for how to run a social movement.
There simply can never be another book like this, at least about ACT UP. Nothing could ever approach how definitive it is, and Sarah's work will continue to be used for generations to come — both by scholars and by activists. We are lucky, too, that her finely honed skills as a novelist make this sweeping epic a surprisingly fast and enjoyable read. Organized by theme, rather than chronology, she allows us to get deep on the specifics of actions and affinity groups, getting to know — through their own voices — the everyday people, united in anger, who did the work. This choral approach to narrators allows different versions of events to stand up side by side, as well as disagreements, fractures, and frustrations.
Let the Record Show is a monumental work whose importance to history, to contemporary organizing, and to future activism cannot be overstated.
The history of AIDS activism has been dominated by the image of the white, middle-to-upper class gay man, as seen in fictional dramas like Angels in America and distorted documentaries like How to Survive a Plague. Rank and file ACT UP NY member turned AIDS historian Sarah Schulman provides a long overdue corrective to this narrative in her magnus opus Let the Record Show: a Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993. Drawing on the nearly 200 interviews she conducted for the ACT UP Oral History Project with surviving members of ACT UP NY, Sarah provides us a rich, polyvocal understanding of the movement from the people who lived through it's most charged years. And in doing so, she restores to history the many women, people of colour, trans people, and even fake grifters who populated and lead the most successful social movement of its time.
This is more than just a dauntingly large history book. Ever the activist, Sarah is keenly aware that future social movements will need the knowledge and skills that coalesced to make ACT UP successful. Throughout the book, Sarah focuses on drawing out in detail how activism works: how affinity groups were structured, how actions were planned and undertaken, and what too can be learned from ACT UP's mistakes and failures. This is, without doubt, the single most useful political book I have ever read, providing a full blueprint for how to run a social movement.
There simply can never be another book like this, at least about ACT UP. Nothing could ever approach how definitive it is, and Sarah's work will continue to be used for generations to come — both by scholars and by activists. We are lucky, too, that her finely honed skills as a novelist make this sweeping epic a surprisingly fast and enjoyable read. Organized by theme, rather than chronology, she allows us to get deep on the specifics of actions and affinity groups, getting to know — through their own voices — the everyday people, united in anger, who did the work. This choral approach to narrators allows different versions of events to stand up side by side, as well as disagreements, fractures, and frustrations.
Let the Record Show is a monumental work whose importance to history, to contemporary organizing, and to future activism cannot be overstated.
January 25, 2021
Sarah Schulman's landmark "Let the Record Show" is so much more than a historical accounting of the AIDS crisis: it's oral history meets activism road map that pays homage to one of the last successful US activist organizations: ACT UP.
Founded in 1987 by several enraged people with AIDS and their allies, ACT UP proceeded to define an era of American history with its radical and novel forms of civil disobedience, new ideas surrounding patient-centered pharmaceutical testing, and social justice initiatives that redefined everything from housing to fundraising. Schulman has for the last 20 years meticulously interviewed the hundreds of surviving former members of ACT UP and weaves these interviews together with her own accounts of participating in ACT UP to tell these stories. And in doing so she carefully ensures that varied class, race, and gender experiences aren't just highlighted but are centered in the tale of an organization that relied as much on its white and gay members as it did on its Black and brown, lesbian, and straight women members.
"Let the Record Show" is truly a groundbreaking book; Schulman masterfully weaves together stories from the past to advise movements in the present and future. In this book we see the powerful role history can play in shaping the tactics we use in our present world to fight for social change. "Let the Record Show" is a book that each and every one of us must read. Don't miss out on this book.
Founded in 1987 by several enraged people with AIDS and their allies, ACT UP proceeded to define an era of American history with its radical and novel forms of civil disobedience, new ideas surrounding patient-centered pharmaceutical testing, and social justice initiatives that redefined everything from housing to fundraising. Schulman has for the last 20 years meticulously interviewed the hundreds of surviving former members of ACT UP and weaves these interviews together with her own accounts of participating in ACT UP to tell these stories. And in doing so she carefully ensures that varied class, race, and gender experiences aren't just highlighted but are centered in the tale of an organization that relied as much on its white and gay members as it did on its Black and brown, lesbian, and straight women members.
"Let the Record Show" is truly a groundbreaking book; Schulman masterfully weaves together stories from the past to advise movements in the present and future. In this book we see the powerful role history can play in shaping the tactics we use in our present world to fight for social change. "Let the Record Show" is a book that each and every one of us must read. Don't miss out on this book.
June 5, 2021
This is a sloppy sprawling glorious mess of a book focused deliberately and narrowly only on the NYC chapter of ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) during the years 1987-93. It is based nearly entirely on a set of oral histories conducted by the author with surviving participants of ACT-UP NYC. Part love letter to the author’s querulous inspiring bickering ACT-UP compatriots and part pedantic how-to guide for the activists of 2021 and beyond, this history is suffused with love, affection, admiration, and heart wrenching loss.
There are flaws, some of which stem from the nature of its construction from oral history. First, it is tediously repetitious in some parts. Second, its pedantic tone in prescribing why ACT-UP worked for future activists is super-offputting. Third, the author frequently uses words in awkward ways (e.g., repeatedly referencing“immunity” to treatments when she seems to mean “resistance”) which can be jarring. Fourth, there isn’t any real presence to objectivity or evenhandedness, and all kinds of old scores seem to be rehashed.
The audiobook in particular suffers from poor production and a narrator who butchers the English language by mispronouncing a dozen words (e.g., plenary, eschew, preface, homogenous). She’s done no favors by the producers whose awkward edits and splices making the narrator sound as if she’s suffering from a seizure. It’s also impossible to distinguish what’s quote and narration in the audio version.
The author doesn’t quite succeed in disciplining the oral histories into a coherent whole, but she sure gives it a yeoman effort, and her narrative strategy, which is at first difficult to comprehend, eventually makes sense and she covers enormous ground with it.
Yet the story is glorious. Self-taught amateurs school the experts. Small numbers of activists sway Big Pharma. Many David v Goliath encounters. Many participants recalled the period as the best time of their lives, though many also fell off the rails afterward losing themselves to suicide or drugs as a result of the trauma of unceasing loss.
The author attempts valiantly to re-center the contributions of women and people of color and of lower economic means. Whether she fully succeeds is unclear. Perhaps because of their privilege, white men’s stories predominate. The author also attempts—for philosophical reasons—to tell the story without a dominant hero, yet when she talks of individual actions, she attributes them mainly to a small group of heroes throughout.
This is in the end an inspiring book and one cannot help but wonder what glories many of these dead might have accomplished. At the same time, it seemed like the crisis itself brought the extraordinary out of ordinary people and caused lives to intersect that otherwise would have been at a distance.
Oh, and one more thing: Anthony Fauci was not nearly so popular back then as he is now.
August 11, 2022
The only other book I've read by Sarah Schulman was The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination, which is considerably shorter and more conceptual but focuses on the highly related subject matter of the New York City's loss in the wake of HIV/AIDS. That book is one I evangelize for, and I was excited to read a more granular, primary-source-anchored account of ACTUP, not only because of my interest in HIV/AIDS, queer history, etc., but because I've always been impressed by the creative and evocative ways that ACTUP made it impossible for an apathetic/hostile public to turn its attention from the scourge of HIV/AIDS.
Reading this during a pandemic was often poignant and felt very germane. Not only are some of the same names relevant--for example: Anthony Fauci is very prominent, and often demonized in this book for his perceived slow-rolling of AIDS treatments--but it's impossible not to draw parallels, or, more often: distinctions. Because HIV/AIDS is never and has never been a pandemic, even though those it affects are considerably less siloed than was and is still believed. If there is a thrust to this book, it's that HIV/AIDS was allowed to decimate certain populations because in the best of circumstances the straight/white world didn't care, and in the worst of cases saw HIV/AIDS as condign punishment for a life of vice, or an expedient end to lives better disposed of than preserved.
Vito Russo, an HIV/AIDS activist who died of the disease gave a speech titled "Why We Fight," and the speech in its entirety is included in this book. I have never been able to read through it without tearing up, and the few times I've tried to read it aloud to friends I have been unable to finish. But I think it's worth reading in full, because it speaks to the exigency of empathy.
COVID is undeniably a scourge, but the mortality rates are so much lower than HIV/AIDS that the two cannot be plausibly compared. In the United States, COVID mortality rates hover around 0.3%. At its peak in 1995 before the development of Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART), HIV/AIDS mortality exceeded 16%, and was above 30% for self-identified gay men; what's more, it had been above 10% for the prior three years.
We moved heaven and earth in response to COVID, shut down our entire society, altered our way of life for years, took honest and cautious account of who might be harmed the most by its spread, and managed to create several astoundingly effective vaccines within a single year. For HIV/AIDS, developing HAART took well over a decade, and things like PrEP took more than three times as long.
The contrast is as repellent as it is revelatory. There is no world in which we would have tolerated HIV/AIDS if even 10% of straight, white, non-drug-using people in rich countries had been falling victim to it. Because that wasn't the case, as Vito Russo says: they didn't give a shit. Queer people mourned the families it's so hard for us to build as they died off in droves; gay men died horrifically undignified deaths, emaciated and covered in thrush and sores and excrement while straight people blamed these victims for their behavior and sinfulness. This, too, contrasts painfully with COVID, where doing things like living your life--including doing things like having a sex life and pursuing romance--are expected, and even the most reckless behaviors are largely free of moral condemnation less than two years in.
In 1985, Bob Hope told a joke about AIDS to an audience that included then-President Reagan and his wife, Nancy Reagan. "The Statue of Liberty has AIDS. They don't know if she got it from the mouth of the Hudson or the Staten Island 'ferry'." "Ferry" was a pun on "fairy" and "Hudson" was a double entendre referencing the Hudson River and also Rock Hudson, who was fairly well known to be a closeted gay man and the first high-profile celebrity to be acknowledged as having HIV/AIDS. President Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan purportedly laughed uproariously at the joke. Hudson, who was friendly with the Reagans from their time in Hollywood, begged the White House to intercede on his behalf to admit him to a hospital in France that he believed could provide the only treatment that might save his life, or at least mitigate the disease ravishing his body; Nancy demurred, and Hudson succumbed three months later. President Reagan didn't say the word "AIDS" until late in 1985, though his staff had been joking about it during pressers for years. Earlier this year, First Lady Jill Biden participated in a flashy ceremony honoring Nancy Reagan's depiction on a postage stamp.
I mention Nancy Reagan's rehabilitation because part of me thinks that the time has passed for white/heterosexual society to contend with and make amends for its passive toleration of HIV/AIDS. America is a supremely flawed country, and it's understandable that its people need to deploy a lot of cognitive dissonance just to get on. But as queer people our rage should be enduring and incandescent, and it's all the more incumbent that we work in solidarity with other groups facing less analogous forms of oppression and disregard to pull them from the teeth of a brutal and self-interested society.
Reading this during a pandemic was often poignant and felt very germane. Not only are some of the same names relevant--for example: Anthony Fauci is very prominent, and often demonized in this book for his perceived slow-rolling of AIDS treatments--but it's impossible not to draw parallels, or, more often: distinctions. Because HIV/AIDS is never and has never been a pandemic, even though those it affects are considerably less siloed than was and is still believed. If there is a thrust to this book, it's that HIV/AIDS was allowed to decimate certain populations because in the best of circumstances the straight/white world didn't care, and in the worst of cases saw HIV/AIDS as condign punishment for a life of vice, or an expedient end to lives better disposed of than preserved.
Vito Russo, an HIV/AIDS activist who died of the disease gave a speech titled "Why We Fight," and the speech in its entirety is included in this book. I have never been able to read through it without tearing up, and the few times I've tried to read it aloud to friends I have been unable to finish. But I think it's worth reading in full, because it speaks to the exigency of empathy.
A friend of mine in New York City has a half-fare transit card, which means that you get on buses and subways for half price. And the other day, when he showed his card to the token attendant, the attendant asked what his disability was and he said, I have AIDS. And the attendant said, no you don't, if you had AIDS, you'd be home dying. And so, I wanted to speak out today as a person with AIDS who is not dying.
You know, for the last three years, since I was diagnosed, my family thinks two things about my situation. One, they think I'm going to die, and two, they think that my government is doing absolutely everything in their power to stop that. And they're wrong, on both counts.
So, if I'm dying from anything, I'm dying from homophobia. If I'm dying from anything, I'm dying from racism. If I'm dying from anything, it's from indifference and red tape, because these are the things that are preventing an end to this crisis. If I'm dying from anything, I'm dying from Jesse Helms. If I'm dying from anything, I'm dying from the President of the United States. And, especially, if I'm dying from anything, I'm dying from the sensationalism of newspapers and magazines and television shows, which are interested in me, as a human interest story -- only as long as I'm willing to be a helpless victim, but not if I'm fighting for my life.
If I'm dying from anything -- I'm dying from the fact that not enough rich, white, heterosexual men have gotten AIDS for anybody to give a shit. You know, living with AIDS in this country is like living in the twilight zone. Living with AIDS is like living through a war which is happening only for those people who happen to be in the trenches. Every time a shell explodes, you look around and you discover that you've lost more of your friends, but nobody else notices. It isn't happening to them. They're walking the streets as though we weren't living through some sort of nightmare. And only you can hear the screams of the people who are dying and their cries for help. No one else seems to be noticing.
And it's worse than a war, because during a war people are united in a shared experience. This war has not united us, it's divided us. It's separated those of us with AIDS and those of us who fight for people with AIDS from the rest of the population.
Two and a half years ago, I picked up Life Magazine, and I read an editorial which said, "it's time to pay attention, because this disease is now beginning to strike the rest of us." It was as if I wasn't the one holding the magazine in my hand. And since then, nothing has changed to alter the perception that AIDS is not happening to the real people in this country.
It's not happening to us in the United States, it's happening to them -- to the disposable populations of fags and junkies who deserve what they get. The media tells them that they don't have to care, because the people who really matter are not in danger. Twice, three times, four times -- The New York Times has published editorials saying, don't panic yet, over AIDS -- it still hasn't entered the general population, and until it does, we don't have to give a shit.
And the days, and the months, and the years pass by, and they don't spend those days and nights and months and years trying to figure out how to get hold of the latest experimental drug, and which dose to take it at, and in what combination with other drugs, and from what source? And, how are you going to pay for it? And where are you going to get it? Because it isn't happening to them, so they don't give a shit.
And they don't sit in television studios, surrounded by technicians who are wearing rubber gloves, who won't put a microphone on you, because it isn't happening to them, so they don't give a shit. And they don't have their houses burned down by bigots and morons. They watch it on the news and they have dinner and they go to bed, because it isn't happening to them, and they don't give a shit.
And they don't spend their waking hours going from hospital room to hospital room, and watching the people that they love die slowly -- of neglect and bigotry, because it isn't happening to them and they don't have to give a shit. They haven't been to two funerals a week for the last three or four or five years -- so they don't give a shit, because it's not happening to them.
And we read on the front page of The New York Times last Saturday that Anthony Fauci now says that all sorts of promising drugs for treatment haven't even been tested in the last two years because he can't afford to hire the people to test them. We're supposed to be grateful that this story has appeared in the newspaper after two years. Nobody wonders why some reporter didn't dig up that story and print it 18 months ago, before Fauci got dragged before a Congressional hearing .
How many people are dead in the last two years, who might be alive today, if those drugs had been tested more quickly? Reporters all over the country are busy printing government press releases. They don't give a shit, it isn't happening to them -- meaning that it isn't happening to people like them -- the real people, the world-famous general public we all keep hearing about.
Legionnaire's Disease was happening to them because it hit people who looked like them, who sounded like them, who were the same color as them. And that fucking story about a couple of dozen people hit the front page of every newspaper and magazine in this country, and it stayed there until that mystery got solved.
All I read in the newspapers tells me that the mainstream, white heterosexual population is not at risk for this disease. All the newspapers I read tell me that IV drug users and homosexuals still account for the overwhelming majority of cases, and a majority of those people at risk.
And can somebody please tell me why every single penny allocated for education and prevention gets spent on ad campaigns that are directed almost exclusively to white, heterosexual teenagers -- who they keep telling us are not at risk!
Can somebody tell me why the only television movie ever produced by a major network in this country, about the impact of this disease, is not about the impact of this disease on the man who has AIDS, but of the impact of AIDS on his white, straight, nuclear family? Why, for eight years, every newspaper and magazine in this country has done cover stories on AIDS only when the threat of heterosexual transmission is raised?
Why, for eight years, every single educational film designed for use in high schools has eliminated any gay positive material, before being approved by the Board of Education? Why, for eight years, every single public information pamphlet and videotape distributed by establishment sources has ignored specific homosexual content?
Why is every bus and subway ad I read and every advertisement and every billboard I see in this country specifically not directed at gay men? Don't believe the lie that the gay community has done its job and done it well and educated its people. The gay community and IV drug users are not all politicized people living in New York and San Francisco. Members of minority populations, including so called sophisticated gay men are abysmally ignorant about AIDS.
If it is true that gay men and IV drug users are the populations at risk for this disease, then we have a right to demand that education and prevention be targeted specifically to these people. And it is not happening. We are being allowed to die, while low risk populations are being panicked -- not educated, panicked -- into believing that we deserve to die.
Why are we here together today? We're here because it is happening to us, and we do give a shit. And if there were more of us AIDS wouldn't be what it is at this moment in history. It's more than just a disease, which ignorant people have turned into an excuse to exercise the bigotry they have always felt.
It is more than a horror story, exploited by the tabloids. AIDS is really a test of us, as a people. When future generations ask what we did in this crisis, we're going to have to tell them that we were out here today. And we have to leave the legacy to those generations of people who will come after us.
Someday, the AIDS crisis will be over. Remember that. And when that day comes -- when that day has come and gone, there'll be people alive on this earth -- gay people and straight people, men and women, black and white, who will hear the story that once there was a terrible disease in this country and all over the world, and that a brave group of people stood up and fought and, in some cases, gave their lives, so that other people might live and be free.
So, I'm proud to be with my friends today and the people I love, because I think you're all heroes, and I'm glad to be part of this fight. But, to borrow a phrase from Michael Callen's song: all we have is love right now, what we don't have is time.
In a lot of ways, AIDS activists are like those doctors out there -- they're so busy putting out fires and taking care of people on respirators, that they don't have the time to take care of all the sick people. We're so busy putting out fires right now, that we don't have the time to talk to each other and strategize and plan for the next wave, and the next day, and next month and the next week and the next year.
And, we're going to have to find the time to do that in the next few months. And, we have to commit ourselves to doing that. And then, after we kick the shit out of this disease, we're all going to be alive to kick the shit out of this system, so that this never happens again.
COVID is undeniably a scourge, but the mortality rates are so much lower than HIV/AIDS that the two cannot be plausibly compared. In the United States, COVID mortality rates hover around 0.3%. At its peak in 1995 before the development of Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART), HIV/AIDS mortality exceeded 16%, and was above 30% for self-identified gay men; what's more, it had been above 10% for the prior three years.
We moved heaven and earth in response to COVID, shut down our entire society, altered our way of life for years, took honest and cautious account of who might be harmed the most by its spread, and managed to create several astoundingly effective vaccines within a single year. For HIV/AIDS, developing HAART took well over a decade, and things like PrEP took more than three times as long.
The contrast is as repellent as it is revelatory. There is no world in which we would have tolerated HIV/AIDS if even 10% of straight, white, non-drug-using people in rich countries had been falling victim to it. Because that wasn't the case, as Vito Russo says: they didn't give a shit. Queer people mourned the families it's so hard for us to build as they died off in droves; gay men died horrifically undignified deaths, emaciated and covered in thrush and sores and excrement while straight people blamed these victims for their behavior and sinfulness. This, too, contrasts painfully with COVID, where doing things like living your life--including doing things like having a sex life and pursuing romance--are expected, and even the most reckless behaviors are largely free of moral condemnation less than two years in.
In 1985, Bob Hope told a joke about AIDS to an audience that included then-President Reagan and his wife, Nancy Reagan. "The Statue of Liberty has AIDS. They don't know if she got it from the mouth of the Hudson or the Staten Island 'ferry'." "Ferry" was a pun on "fairy" and "Hudson" was a double entendre referencing the Hudson River and also Rock Hudson, who was fairly well known to be a closeted gay man and the first high-profile celebrity to be acknowledged as having HIV/AIDS. President Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan purportedly laughed uproariously at the joke. Hudson, who was friendly with the Reagans from their time in Hollywood, begged the White House to intercede on his behalf to admit him to a hospital in France that he believed could provide the only treatment that might save his life, or at least mitigate the disease ravishing his body; Nancy demurred, and Hudson succumbed three months later. President Reagan didn't say the word "AIDS" until late in 1985, though his staff had been joking about it during pressers for years. Earlier this year, First Lady Jill Biden participated in a flashy ceremony honoring Nancy Reagan's depiction on a postage stamp.
I mention Nancy Reagan's rehabilitation because part of me thinks that the time has passed for white/heterosexual society to contend with and make amends for its passive toleration of HIV/AIDS. America is a supremely flawed country, and it's understandable that its people need to deploy a lot of cognitive dissonance just to get on. But as queer people our rage should be enduring and incandescent, and it's all the more incumbent that we work in solidarity with other groups facing less analogous forms of oppression and disregard to pull them from the teeth of a brutal and self-interested society.
July 11, 2023
Absolutely phenomenal! Even minor things I would change about editing or structure were overshadowed by what a feat that writing this book was. I learned so much about my (gay) history, but also this book re-instilled some lessons I've already learned as an organizer. I haven't read anything in depth about the AIDS crisis or ACT UP and I am grateful that this was my introduction. This book was so riveting and comforting to come back to after a long day of work or a lupus flare etc. I'm grateful for the book but also the experience I had of reading it. Also it made me wonder what it would look like for those of us with autoimmune illnesses to rise up and take political action. With climate change there are more of us each year, and AI's (especially lupus) are heavily gendered and radicalized. Something to think about as I work on my next book.
July 4, 2021
I feel so grateful to have read Sarah Schulman's "Let the Record Show" for a wide variety of personal and communal reasons. Buckle up, this is a long review of a long book that could never be long enough to capture my appreciation but I will try.
I consider myself to be very interested in radical and LGBTQ history. It is frustrating how the tellings of history often get so muddled and distorted over time, sometimes intentionally, but often just by accident and well intentioned ignorance. For instance, have you heard that Stonewall was mainly trans women of color throwing rocks at cops? Usually people will name drop Sylvia Rivera or Marsha P Johnson when they state this. However, if you watch, read, and/or listen to the vastly available interviews by both of them, they will tell you this is not true. In this interview, Sylvia states:
"The Stonewall wasn’t a bar for drag queens. Everybody keeps saying it was. So this is where I get into arguments with people. They say, “Oh, no, it’s always a drag queen bar and it was a black bar. No, Washington Square Bar was the drag queen bar. Okay, you could get into the Stonewall if they knew you and there were only a certain amount of drag queens that were allowed into the Stonewall at that time.
We had just come back in from, um, from Washington, my first lover and I. We were passing forged checks and what not. But we were making good money. And so, well, let’s go to the Stonewall. Let’s do our thing. Let’s go there, you know. Actually it was the first time that I had even been to friggin’ Stonewall."
Someone behind Sylvia threw the first bottle. So, she becomes merely a token in some of today's newer narratives by people who are happy to invoke her name in an argument but haven't ever listened to her voice. Do you know about the Compton's Cafeteria Uprising? That fits the narrative of trans women of color fighting back against cops and injustice, but it's not as well known precisely because it was actually trans women of color making up a large majority of people there and the people with the least power rarely get to write history.
Discovering these things in my search for knowledge of the past has always left me eager to look things up when people- particularly those of a generation who were not alive when certain events happened, make sweeping or reductive statements about history. I have sought out multiple books and documentaries about or including ACT UP and none of them came even close to Schulman's book. In fact, while reading it, I often felt like I had been lied to for so long. Schulman addresses certain histories in the book in more detailed ways. But, in short, if you've learned that ACT UP was "run" by a gay man who was the "leader," that the group belonged to one of these said men who near single handedly started it, or that women were not/barely involved aside from in caregiving, that was false. If you didn't realize how IV drug users were a huge part of the death toll, who had far less access to community and resources, and who also joined the movement, the truth was omitted. If you have been told that a few white gay men lifted up as celebrities were what ACT UP was, that was a lie. If you know little of the vast diversity of very effective tactics used by ACT UP and the organization that went into them, it's a shame, and so was I. Have you ever heard that AIDS was first discovered in the early 1900s, long before it was called a "gay disease?" Did you know that Haitian prisoners with AIDS were kept in Guantanamo Bay? Me neither. Did you know that even while people were dying in horrific ways around and inside ACT UP, people still managed to have fun, find joy, find love, and live the best lives they could in the circumstances? Probably not because we rarely talk about that part of history. Even the limited or misleading histories still offered so much importance and knowledge, don't get me wrong. I don't mean to say they're useless. But, Schulman wrote this book to share what really happened and to lift up voices and organizing efforts that most of us who weren't there never knew existed- even if we've sought the history out. The labor of the huge amount of interviews alone that went into creating this is difficult to even imagine. The task of whittling this book down to over 700 pages is an immense one.
I found this book to be an experience from cover to cover. The whole design of this heavy weight of knowledge was excellent. I recommend getting your hands on the physical book, even if you're usually an ebook or audiobook person (which are both also available if physical books are not accessible to you.) The cover art and images from a time before the digital age all add so much to the book. I like that Schulman didn't try to make it a linear story. It would have been impossible to do so. Even without being linear, the book is still fantastically organized. I could always tell whose interview I was reading, what general time period it was in and what else may have been going on, and so on.
One of the things I learned in the biggest way was how a group of people made up of highly diverse backgrounds and identities managed to be so successful. When we discussed this in VINE Book Club, many of us mentioned trying to figure out how to mobilize people the way ACT UP did on other issues such as climate change. AIDS and climate change were/are causing endless unjustified and avoidable suffering and death, but climate change is such an abstract thing to many people in a way that AIDS was not. The level of detail this book goes into about what it was like to have people in and outside the organization dying horrific deaths captures something we don't usually discuss in histories of illness and disability. But, these details are critical to truly seeing the picture of what things were like during the time period covered in this book. There was also the reality that ACT UP allowed people to be messy, flawed, to have big disagreement, and room for illness and care giving by using affinity group models and parallel organizing structures. I asked Sarah Schulman at our book club if she had any advice on how to deal with big conflicts within movements of today. I will likely butcher this and not include all of what she said. But, it was something to the tune of taking things piece by piece, rather than focusing on abstract rules or flattening an organization or movement to only doing things one way. When I mentioned that some white single issue animal rights people have mentioned allowing plant based fash (yes, unfortunately this is a thing however small) into movements and how to deal with that question of knowing where to draw the line. Her answer was basically that if you don't want to organize with someone, don't. And don't use valuable time fighting the abstract. Is a fascist trying to organize with you on a project right now? The answer is no, I have only seen this phenomena on the internet. And these answers were so simple and helped me realize how much valuable time I may have squandered on enforcing these sort of rules and hypotheticals inside my head. Schulman shared a lot more with us as well, but I have a horrible memory and may have already quoted things wrong so I won't attempt to detail them all here. I was very grateful she was able to join the humble book club when she's probably massively busy.
Another theme in the histories detailed in this book is that of growth and transformation. Would you ever work with a gentrifier? ACT UP turned a gentrifier into a lifelong housing activist. Do you think of gay cis men when you think of reproductive justice? Many gay men in ACT UP worked with women in ACT UP and joined the pro choice actions and movements during that time as well. There were youth caucuses, drug user advocacy, and people doing work with prisoners of all stripes. There were so many young people brand new to activism learning the ropes and doing profound work. There is also a lot of interesting discussion of how privilege was a double edged sword in ACT UP. White gay men with privilege and connections were able to get ACT UP access to people and agencies that women and/or people of color never could have. But, at the same time, this risked assimilation politics and white male agendas dominating the actions taken after those connections were made.
There is also a lot of information on how Anthony Fauci fit into this history and it was interesting to read how problematic he was around AIDS work given how he is valorized by so many today. I was left wondering how much the AIDS crisis affected him over time and how it affected his approach to COVID-19. It would be great to have him read this book and respond, but I doubt he will make time for that (understandable during a global pandemic.)
Last, I want to say that I am alive because of the people in ACT UP featured in this book. They made the world safer and more accessible for me as a Queer and Trans person- because ACT UP was about much more than AIDS. But, there is another aspect this book helped me internalize that I initially did not, even though I should have from talking to friends who were there. I was an IV drug user over 16 years ago and was an addict for many years. Without the clean needle programs that ACT UP members put their lives on the line for- which were thankfully legal by the time I needed them, I would very likely have ended up with Hepatitis C and/or HIV as well as the other issues such as abscesses and sometimes deadly and permanently disablling infections. I don't talk about my addiction history super publicly like this very much, but it's also not a secret. I am stating it here to stress that I am not being hyperbolic when I say that ACT UP not only saved and improved countless lives during the history of this book, but they have continued to do so for all future generations- some of whom joined the ACT UP chapters of today.
I can't recommend this book enough. It is a gift to LGBTQ people- especially those who weren't present for ACT UP's organizing and activity. But, it is also critical reading for everyone else- especially organizers of all stripes. I don't know how else to put my gratitude into words.
This was also posted to my blog.
I consider myself to be very interested in radical and LGBTQ history. It is frustrating how the tellings of history often get so muddled and distorted over time, sometimes intentionally, but often just by accident and well intentioned ignorance. For instance, have you heard that Stonewall was mainly trans women of color throwing rocks at cops? Usually people will name drop Sylvia Rivera or Marsha P Johnson when they state this. However, if you watch, read, and/or listen to the vastly available interviews by both of them, they will tell you this is not true. In this interview, Sylvia states:
"The Stonewall wasn’t a bar for drag queens. Everybody keeps saying it was. So this is where I get into arguments with people. They say, “Oh, no, it’s always a drag queen bar and it was a black bar. No, Washington Square Bar was the drag queen bar. Okay, you could get into the Stonewall if they knew you and there were only a certain amount of drag queens that were allowed into the Stonewall at that time.
We had just come back in from, um, from Washington, my first lover and I. We were passing forged checks and what not. But we were making good money. And so, well, let’s go to the Stonewall. Let’s do our thing. Let’s go there, you know. Actually it was the first time that I had even been to friggin’ Stonewall."
Someone behind Sylvia threw the first bottle. So, she becomes merely a token in some of today's newer narratives by people who are happy to invoke her name in an argument but haven't ever listened to her voice. Do you know about the Compton's Cafeteria Uprising? That fits the narrative of trans women of color fighting back against cops and injustice, but it's not as well known precisely because it was actually trans women of color making up a large majority of people there and the people with the least power rarely get to write history.
Discovering these things in my search for knowledge of the past has always left me eager to look things up when people- particularly those of a generation who were not alive when certain events happened, make sweeping or reductive statements about history. I have sought out multiple books and documentaries about or including ACT UP and none of them came even close to Schulman's book. In fact, while reading it, I often felt like I had been lied to for so long. Schulman addresses certain histories in the book in more detailed ways. But, in short, if you've learned that ACT UP was "run" by a gay man who was the "leader," that the group belonged to one of these said men who near single handedly started it, or that women were not/barely involved aside from in caregiving, that was false. If you didn't realize how IV drug users were a huge part of the death toll, who had far less access to community and resources, and who also joined the movement, the truth was omitted. If you have been told that a few white gay men lifted up as celebrities were what ACT UP was, that was a lie. If you know little of the vast diversity of very effective tactics used by ACT UP and the organization that went into them, it's a shame, and so was I. Have you ever heard that AIDS was first discovered in the early 1900s, long before it was called a "gay disease?" Did you know that Haitian prisoners with AIDS were kept in Guantanamo Bay? Me neither. Did you know that even while people were dying in horrific ways around and inside ACT UP, people still managed to have fun, find joy, find love, and live the best lives they could in the circumstances? Probably not because we rarely talk about that part of history. Even the limited or misleading histories still offered so much importance and knowledge, don't get me wrong. I don't mean to say they're useless. But, Schulman wrote this book to share what really happened and to lift up voices and organizing efforts that most of us who weren't there never knew existed- even if we've sought the history out. The labor of the huge amount of interviews alone that went into creating this is difficult to even imagine. The task of whittling this book down to over 700 pages is an immense one.
I found this book to be an experience from cover to cover. The whole design of this heavy weight of knowledge was excellent. I recommend getting your hands on the physical book, even if you're usually an ebook or audiobook person (which are both also available if physical books are not accessible to you.) The cover art and images from a time before the digital age all add so much to the book. I like that Schulman didn't try to make it a linear story. It would have been impossible to do so. Even without being linear, the book is still fantastically organized. I could always tell whose interview I was reading, what general time period it was in and what else may have been going on, and so on.
One of the things I learned in the biggest way was how a group of people made up of highly diverse backgrounds and identities managed to be so successful. When we discussed this in VINE Book Club, many of us mentioned trying to figure out how to mobilize people the way ACT UP did on other issues such as climate change. AIDS and climate change were/are causing endless unjustified and avoidable suffering and death, but climate change is such an abstract thing to many people in a way that AIDS was not. The level of detail this book goes into about what it was like to have people in and outside the organization dying horrific deaths captures something we don't usually discuss in histories of illness and disability. But, these details are critical to truly seeing the picture of what things were like during the time period covered in this book. There was also the reality that ACT UP allowed people to be messy, flawed, to have big disagreement, and room for illness and care giving by using affinity group models and parallel organizing structures. I asked Sarah Schulman at our book club if she had any advice on how to deal with big conflicts within movements of today. I will likely butcher this and not include all of what she said. But, it was something to the tune of taking things piece by piece, rather than focusing on abstract rules or flattening an organization or movement to only doing things one way. When I mentioned that some white single issue animal rights people have mentioned allowing plant based fash (yes, unfortunately this is a thing however small) into movements and how to deal with that question of knowing where to draw the line. Her answer was basically that if you don't want to organize with someone, don't. And don't use valuable time fighting the abstract. Is a fascist trying to organize with you on a project right now? The answer is no, I have only seen this phenomena on the internet. And these answers were so simple and helped me realize how much valuable time I may have squandered on enforcing these sort of rules and hypotheticals inside my head. Schulman shared a lot more with us as well, but I have a horrible memory and may have already quoted things wrong so I won't attempt to detail them all here. I was very grateful she was able to join the humble book club when she's probably massively busy.
Another theme in the histories detailed in this book is that of growth and transformation. Would you ever work with a gentrifier? ACT UP turned a gentrifier into a lifelong housing activist. Do you think of gay cis men when you think of reproductive justice? Many gay men in ACT UP worked with women in ACT UP and joined the pro choice actions and movements during that time as well. There were youth caucuses, drug user advocacy, and people doing work with prisoners of all stripes. There were so many young people brand new to activism learning the ropes and doing profound work. There is also a lot of interesting discussion of how privilege was a double edged sword in ACT UP. White gay men with privilege and connections were able to get ACT UP access to people and agencies that women and/or people of color never could have. But, at the same time, this risked assimilation politics and white male agendas dominating the actions taken after those connections were made.
There is also a lot of information on how Anthony Fauci fit into this history and it was interesting to read how problematic he was around AIDS work given how he is valorized by so many today. I was left wondering how much the AIDS crisis affected him over time and how it affected his approach to COVID-19. It would be great to have him read this book and respond, but I doubt he will make time for that (understandable during a global pandemic.)
Last, I want to say that I am alive because of the people in ACT UP featured in this book. They made the world safer and more accessible for me as a Queer and Trans person- because ACT UP was about much more than AIDS. But, there is another aspect this book helped me internalize that I initially did not, even though I should have from talking to friends who were there. I was an IV drug user over 16 years ago and was an addict for many years. Without the clean needle programs that ACT UP members put their lives on the line for- which were thankfully legal by the time I needed them, I would very likely have ended up with Hepatitis C and/or HIV as well as the other issues such as abscesses and sometimes deadly and permanently disablling infections. I don't talk about my addiction history super publicly like this very much, but it's also not a secret. I am stating it here to stress that I am not being hyperbolic when I say that ACT UP not only saved and improved countless lives during the history of this book, but they have continued to do so for all future generations- some of whom joined the ACT UP chapters of today.
I can't recommend this book enough. It is a gift to LGBTQ people- especially those who weren't present for ACT UP's organizing and activity. But, it is also critical reading for everyone else- especially organizers of all stripes. I don't know how else to put my gratitude into words.
This was also posted to my blog.
July 23, 2021
Absolutely incredible. So much gay and queer fire and rage. And as a person with chronic illness, so much that we have to be grateful for.
Every other page contains lessons that I wish to transmit to every organizer taking on dominant institutions and a sleepwalking public. Understanding the sheer desperation of ACT UP and the horizontal creativity that led them to save lives, understanding the fraught racial and gender based interpersonal dynamics and answering the main question of the inside/outside strategy: “who’s in the room,” and understanding the importance of mutual aid snd community care - these are lessons that we cannot bear forgetting.
Above all - remember that when they come out with the horses SIT DOWN. HEALTH CARE IS A HUMAN RIGHT
Every other page contains lessons that I wish to transmit to every organizer taking on dominant institutions and a sleepwalking public. Understanding the sheer desperation of ACT UP and the horizontal creativity that led them to save lives, understanding the fraught racial and gender based interpersonal dynamics and answering the main question of the inside/outside strategy: “who’s in the room,” and understanding the importance of mutual aid snd community care - these are lessons that we cannot bear forgetting.
Above all - remember that when they come out with the horses SIT DOWN. HEALTH CARE IS A HUMAN RIGHT
November 24, 2024
Definitely read this. That’s mainly what I have to say. It’s moving and funny and dramatic and human… even if this isn’t the kind of book you usually read, I think it would be worth it. Hard to write a “review” in the sense that so much of what I thought about as I read this book, and so much of what I’m taking from it, is personal, on a “not for Internet consumption” level. What I can say is this:
- Shulman’s choice to write this book via the thoughts and feelings and memories of the people involved was incredibly moving. It’s hard to imagine this story being told in a more effective way.
- The front of my edition has the quote “This is not recent, definitive history. This is a tactician’s Bible.” Yes - the detail that Shulman goes into about ACT UP’s strategy and organization, and when and why they were or weren’t effective, is riveting.
- I don’t think Shulman ever uses the word “intersectional,” actually, but the breakdown of the “Inside” and “Outside” aspects of ACT UP’s strategy is fascinating, and Shulman is so incisive in presenting who was a part of which, by gender and class and race, and in raising the questions that, clearly, not everyone who was involved with ACT UP would want her to raise. (In going back to the introduction to find a quote to illustrate this, I instead found myself just fully rereading it, so I’ll just tell you to go do that, too.)
- I found it interesting how many of the women activists involved in ACT UP came from 1970s reproductive rights activism.
- One of the things that cracked me up as I was reading was how often people would describe ACT UP as having an “erotic energy,” or talk about who in ACT UP was having sex with whom. And yet - loved it.
- I also loved how willing Shulman was to put multiple people’s versions of a story on the page immediately after one another… you just know some of the people quoted in these pages read the book and were like “exCUSE me?” I loved how ACT UP was this chaotic group of groups, and individuals, constantly merging and then separating, merging and then separating.
- As someone raised Catholic…. LOVED the Stop the Church protest. Everything about it, loved it. Went to Mass recently with some cousins (look, of course) and had to restrain myself from literally standing up and arguing with the priest during his homily. Reading about Stop the Church made me think - “Just do it!”
I did not think, when I started this book, about how directly it would point to certain aspects and perspectives and people in America today. I started this book thinking it was about a period in history. Reading it, I realized it’s about current events.
- Shulman’s choice to write this book via the thoughts and feelings and memories of the people involved was incredibly moving. It’s hard to imagine this story being told in a more effective way.
- The front of my edition has the quote “This is not recent, definitive history. This is a tactician’s Bible.” Yes - the detail that Shulman goes into about ACT UP’s strategy and organization, and when and why they were or weren’t effective, is riveting.
- I don’t think Shulman ever uses the word “intersectional,” actually, but the breakdown of the “Inside” and “Outside” aspects of ACT UP’s strategy is fascinating, and Shulman is so incisive in presenting who was a part of which, by gender and class and race, and in raising the questions that, clearly, not everyone who was involved with ACT UP would want her to raise. (In going back to the introduction to find a quote to illustrate this, I instead found myself just fully rereading it, so I’ll just tell you to go do that, too.)
- I found it interesting how many of the women activists involved in ACT UP came from 1970s reproductive rights activism.
- One of the things that cracked me up as I was reading was how often people would describe ACT UP as having an “erotic energy,” or talk about who in ACT UP was having sex with whom. And yet - loved it.
- I also loved how willing Shulman was to put multiple people’s versions of a story on the page immediately after one another… you just know some of the people quoted in these pages read the book and were like “exCUSE me?” I loved how ACT UP was this chaotic group of groups, and individuals, constantly merging and then separating, merging and then separating.
- As someone raised Catholic…. LOVED the Stop the Church protest. Everything about it, loved it. Went to Mass recently with some cousins (look, of course) and had to restrain myself from literally standing up and arguing with the priest during his homily. Reading about Stop the Church made me think - “Just do it!”
I did not think, when I started this book, about how directly it would point to certain aspects and perspectives and people in America today. I started this book thinking it was about a period in history. Reading it, I realized it’s about current events.
March 18, 2024
i can't recommend this more highly. it's a tricky job tremendously well done by schulman, as a researcher and writer who was there then and is now here, to create a volume that makes sense to read, out of hundreds of interviews done over decades, without twisting anyone else's view, or editing towards false simplicity, or pretending she doesn't have her own thoughts. i read it years after buying it bcs i anticipated it being a very hard read and also: long. and it was full of grief, and it was also so so full of life-- the vault of voices saved here, rich and distinct as if they're in the room with you, is nothing short of staggering, and i haven't even gone to watch the publicly hosted videos yet. i read so many of the stories aloud to my wife-- i laughed so many times.
you can still feel, reading it, the love-- hers and theirs-- alongside the rage, the petty and serious grievances, the notices of who was hot. everything that is part of life is here, vivid, and all at once. it is an astonishing blessing, to hear so many closely held memories of real, tangible people doing extraordinary things-- of what it is to be alive, to be dying, to love, to create-- and of what it could be. it is still so vivid. this book is a gift.
you can still feel, reading it, the love-- hers and theirs-- alongside the rage, the petty and serious grievances, the notices of who was hot. everything that is part of life is here, vivid, and all at once. it is an astonishing blessing, to hear so many closely held memories of real, tangible people doing extraordinary things-- of what it is to be alive, to be dying, to love, to create-- and of what it could be. it is still so vivid. this book is a gift.
March 4, 2021
Read if you: Want a comprehensive, informative, and moving account of the influential ACT UP New York organization during the early days and peak of the AIDS crisis. The inclusion of women activists is especially welcomed; I doubt many know that the original definition of AIDS did not include women's symptoms, which can differ from men's symptoms, as they often do in serious health situations. This is a remarkable and much needed book, as the generation that lived through this is aging, survivors are dealing with the longterm affects of HIV/AIDS and the early medications, and are once again vulnerable during a new pandemic.
Librarians/booksellers: Although this is a massive book, it's very compelling and intimate. A must read for anyone wanting an in-depth look at what it was like to live through this devastating era.
Many thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.
Librarians/booksellers: Although this is a massive book, it's very compelling and intimate. A must read for anyone wanting an in-depth look at what it was like to live through this devastating era.
Many thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for a digital review copy in exchange for an honest review.
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March 21, 2024
“People who are desperate are much more effective than people who have time to waste.”
Wow. Just wow.
What a feat in storytelling. In oral history curation. In just everything.
Part history of ACT UP, part condemnation of the US government's failure to do, well, anything, and part handbook on how to organize a grassroots activist organization.
Wow. Just wow.
What a feat in storytelling. In oral history curation. In just everything.
Part history of ACT UP, part condemnation of the US government's failure to do, well, anything, and part handbook on how to organize a grassroots activist organization.
Read
February 20, 2023No star rating as I am stopping at page 87 of this 736 page book. I have never been a particular fan of ActUp, and I was reading this to try to better understand the organization. I understand the howl of pain and disillusionment, but I never felt like ActUp accomplished much by burning down the house. At a time when America was turning its back on people dying horribly in shocking numbers ActUp was intent on pissing people off. Again, I understand the anger. When the organization started I was a law student working at Gay Men's Health Crisis, mostly drafting wills and dealing with landlord issues (it was not out of the ordinary for landlords to evict people with AIDS knowing it was unlawful, but often landlords were successful in getting terminally ill people out of their homes for no reason knowing they would be fine if they just kept continuing actions until the tenants died. People suck.) Obviously my anger was not the equal of people with AIDS, but I lost many people I knew, and two people I loved to the disease. I was, and am plenty pissed off at America's decision to let people die and to carry on while Rome burned. I just don't think the way in which ActUp worked to make people look at people with AIDS was effective, and I know many pulled desperately needed funding from GMHC and other organizations because of ActUp. I was working a couple of blocks from the Stock Exchange in 1990 when ActUp took over the street, and it was a shitshow. It was like Occupy Wall Street -- we are mad (for real reasons) and we want to not be mad but we don't know what you should do about it and if you ask 10 of us you will get 10 differnt answers. So much energy that could have had impact, but did not. I don't know why I thought this book would show lessons learned, or would attempt to connect cause and effect based on fact rather than wishful thinking. It is pretty clear already that this is going to keep going in a direction that is not of interest to me, it is like some twisted bit of bad-old-days nostalgia.
April 30, 2025
Wow, what an incredible book. I checked this out from the library based on another author's recommendation that everyone involved in activism should read this book, and I definitely agree! I also think LGBTQ folks should read this, there is so much history here that we are not taught and that people have and are actively trying to erase. I learned, relearned, and unlearned so much.
This book is long, longer than I think it needed to be, it probably could have been edited more to eliminate some of the repetition and it does get a bit into the weeds sometimes, BUT I found it to be a fast read and super engaging. Since there was so much going on at the time, the format didn't bother me too much and sometimes the repetition helped keep track of where I was in the timeline (there is also a timeline in the back of the book to refer to also).
This book is organized into themes and then the information is delivered through interviews, which is both engaging and a little confusing to keep track of who is speaking as it jumps around, AND the author sometimes interjects info she knew from being there. If this sounds a bit messy, it is, but it also worked and is so worth your time. I loved learning about every person in this book and cried many times at their loss. Another thing this book really highlights, is just how much trauma and loss people experienced at the time.
Organizing and activism is messy, and this book is a great example of how we don't always have to totally agree or get along to work together and make change, sometimes the mess brings us closer together and sometimes the mess means we have to just work on things separately/in different ways towards a similar goal.
It was also impossible to read this without seeing the parallels to the way people, those in power, and the media reacted to Covid, higher risk folks, and people with Long Covid. Sadly, history repeating as people continue to look the other way and "get back to normal". Many have pointed out this connection, but there are still too many refusing to see it.
This book is long, longer than I think it needed to be, it probably could have been edited more to eliminate some of the repetition and it does get a bit into the weeds sometimes, BUT I found it to be a fast read and super engaging. Since there was so much going on at the time, the format didn't bother me too much and sometimes the repetition helped keep track of where I was in the timeline (there is also a timeline in the back of the book to refer to also).
This book is organized into themes and then the information is delivered through interviews, which is both engaging and a little confusing to keep track of who is speaking as it jumps around, AND the author sometimes interjects info she knew from being there. If this sounds a bit messy, it is, but it also worked and is so worth your time. I loved learning about every person in this book and cried many times at their loss. Another thing this book really highlights, is just how much trauma and loss people experienced at the time.
Organizing and activism is messy, and this book is a great example of how we don't always have to totally agree or get along to work together and make change, sometimes the mess brings us closer together and sometimes the mess means we have to just work on things separately/in different ways towards a similar goal.
It was also impossible to read this without seeing the parallels to the way people, those in power, and the media reacted to Covid, higher risk folks, and people with Long Covid. Sadly, history repeating as people continue to look the other way and "get back to normal". Many have pointed out this connection, but there are still too many refusing to see it.
November 2, 2023
I'm so grateful to have all this history and these individuals' organizing experiences to learn from. This inspired me to pursue creative activism in the fight for Palestinian liberation. I learned a ton about specific organizing strategies, Anthony Fauci, pharmaceutical companies and of course AIDS. An important and vital book.
July 3, 2021
Easily the best book I’ve read so far this year. The insights — from strategy, direct action tactics, and fundraising, to constituency organizing, decision making, and structure — are all SO helpful in diagnosing challenges in the Left today. Schulman’s commitment to write a “history for activists today” did not disappoint.
February 1, 2021
I received this as an ARC from NetGalley.
This book provides new context and analysis of the rise, development, and eventual splintering of ACT UP.
I still don’t love Schulman’s tendency to insert her own personal stories in historical text- but you have to give her credit for *being* there.
Oh and it is real weird reading about one pandemic in the middle of another. I thought Dr. Fauci got a fairly even handed portrait here despite not being one of the interviewees for the book.
This book provides new context and analysis of the rise, development, and eventual splintering of ACT UP.
I still don’t love Schulman’s tendency to insert her own personal stories in historical text- but you have to give her credit for *being* there.
Oh and it is real weird reading about one pandemic in the middle of another. I thought Dr. Fauci got a fairly even handed portrait here despite not being one of the interviewees for the book.
September 28, 2021
whew. let me collect my thoughts; review coming soonish
July 27, 2025
let the record show is a treasure. it took my a long time to read it. after a discouraging introduction (lightly academic), the oral histories read quickly and i enjoyed the pace. i read 674 pages, with more in appendices, and as an unenthusiastic reader of nonfiction this took me a long time. but the stories are incredible.
the accounts are vital. camp, and dark humor, and earnest and bright personalities - so many characters come through. sometimes the humor only emphasized the devastation. and the stories are devastating. i'm not sure whether a book has ever made me weep like this.
i felt a connection to the history in a way that i didn't expect. i guess from living in new york, and being of a similar demographic to many of the activists. i was surprised to recognize names of ACT-UPers - the designer whose name is on a treasured scarf given to me as a child; an old upper-management colleague from an old job; the writer of a significant book to my coming out 12 years ago; a friend's lesbian mentor; an activist who spoke to my AIDS volunteer group in college. the book is real but these small connections made me realize how present the events are in my own life.
i was enamored with some of these people, imperfect heroes. lessons about direct action, consensus building, autonomy, connection, and desperation. i will find a used copy to keep as reference. reading this book felt like a gift. i am in awe that schulman wrote it.
the accounts are vital. camp, and dark humor, and earnest and bright personalities - so many characters come through. sometimes the humor only emphasized the devastation. and the stories are devastating. i'm not sure whether a book has ever made me weep like this.
i felt a connection to the history in a way that i didn't expect. i guess from living in new york, and being of a similar demographic to many of the activists. i was surprised to recognize names of ACT-UPers - the designer whose name is on a treasured scarf given to me as a child; an old upper-management colleague from an old job; the writer of a significant book to my coming out 12 years ago; a friend's lesbian mentor; an activist who spoke to my AIDS volunteer group in college. the book is real but these small connections made me realize how present the events are in my own life.
i was enamored with some of these people, imperfect heroes. lessons about direct action, consensus building, autonomy, connection, and desperation. i will find a used copy to keep as reference. reading this book felt like a gift. i am in awe that schulman wrote it.
May 25, 2025
in a word: invaluable. so, so grateful this book exists, that schulman put in countless hours not only to document this oral history, but to bring out so many evergreen lessons from it.
one big takeaway is that act up was messy, verging on incoherent—were it not for their trust that they all had a common goal. the group eschewed consensus and careful oversight in favor of agility and responsiveness, small, tight-knit communities making up the whole. much to learn about how to weed out perfectionism from my organizing and put direct action first.
so much more to get into: their diversity of tactics, the way they charted their own solutions and bent centers of power toward their vision, their persistence through so much loss, etc.
but for now: i feel so indebted to act up and to schulman and so so lucky to be alive and healthy and in queer community. will surely be returning to this text for years to come.
one big takeaway is that act up was messy, verging on incoherent—were it not for their trust that they all had a common goal. the group eschewed consensus and careful oversight in favor of agility and responsiveness, small, tight-knit communities making up the whole. much to learn about how to weed out perfectionism from my organizing and put direct action first.
so much more to get into: their diversity of tactics, the way they charted their own solutions and bent centers of power toward their vision, their persistence through so much loss, etc.
but for now: i feel so indebted to act up and to schulman and so so lucky to be alive and healthy and in queer community. will surely be returning to this text for years to come.
February 27, 2022
This book was unbelievably moving. I learned so much about AIDS and activism in general, and I enjoyed reading each person’s story about how they arrived at ACT UP. This book reminded me the people perpetuating structural violence are real people with real names and addresses. ACT UP participants would hold them accountable, for example, with political funerals. They carried the body of a person who died from AIDS to the literal doorstep of President George H.W. Bush’s summer home in Maine. “The only requirement was that it was direct action with the goal related to ending the AIDS crisis, not providing social services. The differentiation between direct action and social services was rooted in the understanding that activists created change that required policy.” What a moving book. May these stories never be forgotten.
July 21, 2021
This is a hard and often heartbreaking read, but absolutely essential history — with a lot of relevant lessons for modern-day activism related to healthcare. I hope more people spend time with it.
October 3, 2025
don't even know what to say really. this was an incredibly powerful work and i am so thankful for the people still telling the stories of AIDS victims who are no longer with us, and for historians like sarah schulman who are still invested in telling these stories almost half a century later. ACT UP accomplished so much through direct community action and advocacy and i feel really grateful for all the gay elders who fought for everything we have today!!!! burn in hell reagan and bush
May 17, 2021
This is a fascinating history of ACT UP, but it's also (as so many reviewers have noted) a handbook on how to use direct action to make marginalized voices heard. (I also think it's a good illustration of what happens when privilege gets in the way of progress, as the split of ACT UP reveals a lot about what happens when wealthy white men get what they want and stop fighting.)
It's A LOT though, so only read when you're ready to really do the work of reading a heavy non-fiction book.
Thanks to NetGalley and to the publisher for the ARC.
It's A LOT though, so only read when you're ready to really do the work of reading a heavy non-fiction book.
Thanks to NetGalley and to the publisher for the ARC.
Read
March 24, 2021Topical now and informative if you don’t know the history of the LGBTQ struggles in NYC. Or anywhere else to be fair. Inform yourself with the facts rather than clips from social media.
June 5, 2021
"I have come to understand that, for one thing, AIDS activist history has been mistakenly placed in the trajectory of gay male history. I can understand why this connection would be made: gay men were significantly victimized—individually and collectively—by the criminal indifference of the U.S. government [...] It was the gay male media that focused on AIDS, and activists met in gay-controlled and gay-funded spaces. But my research shows that the ideologies and values that served as the foundations of the applied practices of AIDS activism did not only come from the trajectory of gay male history." (14-15)
"Another powerful reason ACT UP has been awkwardly shoved into the gay male historical trajectory is that it was misrepresented over and over by the national media as exclusively, instead of predominantly, white and male. This is a significant difference because women and people of color transform the movements that they choose to join. And this enormous influence was hidden by corporate control of representation" (16)
Sarah Schulman's political history of ACT UP NY serves as a necessary correction to the historical record not just of the representation of that group, but of the AIDS Crisis more generally. Taking the history out of the gay-historical corner and into to light of other movements and politics, examined with insights and personal history from the interviews of the ACT UP Oral History Project and the author's own critical assessments and understandings, this book finally democratizes the history needed to understand how to make change in the present. One of the most important things done in this book is putting the history of ACT UP and PWA self-empowerment alongside that of the reproductive rights and anti-sterilization abuse movements, and centering the independent and coalitional work of Black, API, and Latino (with careful considerations of the specificities of Puerto Rican, Latino and Chicano culture history and politics) people in ACT UP.
As a white gay male reader I found this book to be an incredible intervention. I had read Schulman's earlier works, watched United in Anger, and read other articles and a few books about the crisis, such as Sean Strub's memoir, and David France's How to Survive a Plague (which Schulman rightfully criticizes, though I wouldn't completely dismiss the book, which does tell well certain strands of the history of the Crisis, like the Callen-Berkowitz-Sonnabend triangle, the New York Native early coverage, and certain aspects of the TAG group), and quite a few of the ACT UP Oral History interviews, but this book really cleared things up in so many ways and made the connections that were lying hidden or unpresented before. I was wondering if the book would feel too bogged down by the interviews, or redundant for those who'd read many interviews, but Schulman did an amazing job of bringing the interviewees into the book, letting them speak as a chorus, and contextualizing and making the connections that many of the ACT UP members couldn't make without a full view of the history. She shows that each individual had a different idea of who constituted ACT UP, even multiple ideas depending on what it was contrasted with.
Schulman has said many times that "you can only meet people where they're at", and that reflection is one we must all be conscious of. The ACT UP NY members all met each other at the Center, but some couldn't or wouldn't meet each other where they were, and those gaps, widened by miscommunication, misunderstanding, and escalated in conflict, led to the split that Schulman details well at the end of the book. Reading this book the reader can see all of the ideas and history that Schulman has engaged with in her previous works, such as in Conflict is not Abuse, The Gentrification of the Mind, Stagestruck, and her works of fictions like People in Trouble and Rat Bohemia. I found reading those books, especially Conflict, Gentrification, and Rat Bohemia, before this one helped in recognizing the history and things she highlights.
Even though the book is huge, the chapters stand alone enough and most are short enough that you can read it at any pace you like, which I found nice.
And though it is thorough and expansive, it isn't exhaustive. There's more that can be read in the oral history interviews (like Petrelis's, Strub's, and Bill Bahlman's, which details the history of the Lavender Hill Mob which preceded ACT UP), and there are so many histories and stories outside of the scope of this book waiting to be told, and I'm glad Schulman's done the work of telling some of these stories, and giving the people who need it a roadmap and an example to follow.
"Another powerful reason ACT UP has been awkwardly shoved into the gay male historical trajectory is that it was misrepresented over and over by the national media as exclusively, instead of predominantly, white and male. This is a significant difference because women and people of color transform the movements that they choose to join. And this enormous influence was hidden by corporate control of representation" (16)
Sarah Schulman's political history of ACT UP NY serves as a necessary correction to the historical record not just of the representation of that group, but of the AIDS Crisis more generally. Taking the history out of the gay-historical corner and into to light of other movements and politics, examined with insights and personal history from the interviews of the ACT UP Oral History Project and the author's own critical assessments and understandings, this book finally democratizes the history needed to understand how to make change in the present. One of the most important things done in this book is putting the history of ACT UP and PWA self-empowerment alongside that of the reproductive rights and anti-sterilization abuse movements, and centering the independent and coalitional work of Black, API, and Latino (with careful considerations of the specificities of Puerto Rican, Latino and Chicano culture history and politics) people in ACT UP.
As a white gay male reader I found this book to be an incredible intervention. I had read Schulman's earlier works, watched United in Anger, and read other articles and a few books about the crisis, such as Sean Strub's memoir, and David France's How to Survive a Plague (which Schulman rightfully criticizes, though I wouldn't completely dismiss the book, which does tell well certain strands of the history of the Crisis, like the Callen-Berkowitz-Sonnabend triangle, the New York Native early coverage, and certain aspects of the TAG group), and quite a few of the ACT UP Oral History interviews, but this book really cleared things up in so many ways and made the connections that were lying hidden or unpresented before. I was wondering if the book would feel too bogged down by the interviews, or redundant for those who'd read many interviews, but Schulman did an amazing job of bringing the interviewees into the book, letting them speak as a chorus, and contextualizing and making the connections that many of the ACT UP members couldn't make without a full view of the history. She shows that each individual had a different idea of who constituted ACT UP, even multiple ideas depending on what it was contrasted with.
Schulman has said many times that "you can only meet people where they're at", and that reflection is one we must all be conscious of. The ACT UP NY members all met each other at the Center, but some couldn't or wouldn't meet each other where they were, and those gaps, widened by miscommunication, misunderstanding, and escalated in conflict, led to the split that Schulman details well at the end of the book. Reading this book the reader can see all of the ideas and history that Schulman has engaged with in her previous works, such as in Conflict is not Abuse, The Gentrification of the Mind, Stagestruck, and her works of fictions like People in Trouble and Rat Bohemia. I found reading those books, especially Conflict, Gentrification, and Rat Bohemia, before this one helped in recognizing the history and things she highlights.
Even though the book is huge, the chapters stand alone enough and most are short enough that you can read it at any pace you like, which I found nice.
And though it is thorough and expansive, it isn't exhaustive. There's more that can be read in the oral history interviews (like Petrelis's, Strub's, and Bill Bahlman's, which details the history of the Lavender Hill Mob which preceded ACT UP), and there are so many histories and stories outside of the scope of this book waiting to be told, and I'm glad Schulman's done the work of telling some of these stories, and giving the people who need it a roadmap and an example to follow.
December 14, 2022
Aside from being perhaps the definitive account of ACTUP, Let the Record Show is by far the best book I’ve read that discusses what it takes and means in practice to be an activist and get your message across. I was blown away by the breadth of Schulman’s project, and moved close to tears several times. AIDS was and still is a great loss for our society. It’s painful to read about government inaction and just how disinterested the majority of people in power were in their attitude towards people with AIDS.
Thank you, Sarah Schulman for being an historian and leaving the world this glorious text for the generations of LGBTQ readers to come. 5/5
Thank you, Sarah Schulman for being an historian and leaving the world this glorious text for the generations of LGBTQ readers to come. 5/5
March 7, 2024
Took me a long time to finish, but easily one of the best books I’ve ever read.
July 7, 2023
This is a tough book to rate by stars. It’s tremendously impressive, ponderous, deeply caring, inherently biased, historically important, and organized in a way that seems enormously significant to the author, but was often puzzling to me. It is an important and impressive book more than it is a good or great book. But it’s absolutely worth reading, especially for LGBTQ folks who are younger than the people chronicled here. We benefited in incalculable ways from our activist elders; the least we can do is read an exhaustive account of what they did to fight for our right to love and live.
June 10, 2021
This is a true monster of a book, and I really really enjoyed it. Having read How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS years ago, I was wondering if this account had anything new to say. It did! I learned so much about activism through this book. Also, I loved how much it focused on women and minorities dealing with AIDS. Very much worth a read.
August 6, 2022
An incredible, vital document that tells the truth about AIDS and Act Up New York. Clear in its intention that it wants to be an historical record and to give voice back to women and people of colour who were part of the campaign but were overlooked by the media of the day who just wanted one spokesperson (Larry Kramer).
While I am glad I read this and I learned an incredible amount, it did feel like a bit of a slog to get through all of it. But I am very grateful this book exists and grateful for it's clear eyed, matter of fact tone.
While I am glad I read this and I learned an incredible amount, it did feel like a bit of a slog to get through all of it. But I am very grateful this book exists and grateful for it's clear eyed, matter of fact tone.
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