as small as a world and as large as alone, so i'm currently reading and the band played on,...

8:02am August 2, 2015

manycoloureddays asked: so i'm currently reading and the band played on, and in light of your most recent post i was wondering if you had done any further reading about that period in lgbtq history (or tbh any books you've read on any period of queer history- books i read because of your blog always leave me happy, if emotionally scarred :) )

swanjolras:

SO: i am currently dealing with a multitude of weird and inexplicable illnesses, so i cannot promise that this list will be a) exhaustive or b) well-explained; it also focuses pretty heavily on new york, because, well, me. HOWEVER HERE GOES:
and the band played on you are currently reading, but if anyone has not read it: read it. it’s by randy shilts, he died of aids in the mid-90s; he documents the plague from 1979 to roughly 1985, and while some of the book has come into question in recent years (mostly his discussion of gaetan dugas, the quebecois flight attendant who people blamed for being the “typhoid mary” of the epidemic) it is an incredible work of investigative journalism and historical documentation.
angels in america. angels in america. angels in america. there is not an excuse not to read angels in america. i will link you a pdf of the script! i will link you a stream of the hbo production! i will link you anything and everything, have you read angels in america you need to read angels in america
the normal heart, by larry kramer; ryan murphy directed a movie of it recently, it had mark ruffalo in it. it covers the same material as and the band played on, but it’s mostly set in new york and is a Very Thinly Veiled diary entry by larry kramer, sassing all his friends. what a dick. i love him.
borrowed time: an aids memoir, by paul monette. this is on my bookshelf! i have not read it yet. it’s monette’s chronicle of his lover’s battle with and death from aids (monette himself died of aids in ‘95).
the gentrification of the mind, by sarah schulman. schulman is a lesbian who worked for ACT UP; this is her memoir of aids from ‘81 to ‘96, it’s about gentrification (obviously) and the homogenization and white-washing of new york culture.
rat bohemia, also by sarah schulman; this one’s fiction, it’s about two lesbians and a gay man in new york in the ‘90s. they’re stunningly poor, it’s set on the lower east side, consider it the slightly less, uh, hipster version of certain depictions of '90s new york that shall remain unnamed.
how to survive a plague, a documentary made in 2012; it’s about ACT UP and their struggle to get the fda to actually approve some hiv/aids drugs so people wouldn’t keep relying on illegally imported foreign drugs, it’s got 99% on rotten tomatoes, it is incredible. go watch.
paris is burning, have you seen paris is burning, PLEASE see paris is burning; it’s not explicitly about aids, it’s about the drag scene in the 1980s, but aids is obviously and necessarily a part of it and a lot of the people in it (angie xtravaganza, willie ninja, dorian corey) later died of aids.
the ghosts of fire island, a radio documentary that starts at the beginnings of the crisis; focuses on fire island, a sort of mecca for gay and lesbian tourists from the 1960s onwards. here it is on soundcloud.
not a movie or book, but: the entire work of keith haring, whose art you’ve probably seen somewhere. (he was a prolific dude.) he worked in new york in the 80s; he died of aids in 1990. there was a really amazing keith haring show at the deyoung museum this past winter (which is ironic, because holy shit, he was such a populist artist, a lot of his work was actually doodled on subway platform walls, a museum is… not his usual environment. but.)
and finally: if the aids quilt is ever anywhere near you, just– go and see the aids quilt. over 94,000 people are memorialized in it. (for the record: this is roughly equivalent to the entire population of new bedford, massachusetts. the total number of people who have died is 39 million; this is equivalent to the entire population of new york, london, and moscow all put together.) rock hudson is in it. roy cohn is in it. freddie mercury is in it. it’s worth seeing.