ralentina reviewed Let the Record Show by Sarah Schulman
to change the world: no heroes, many angry, sexy people
5 stars
This book was such a brick, in the best possible way. Schulman's oral history of Act Up has a precise goal: to show the diversity of the movement in all its facets: the people who participated (not just white gay men, but also women, latinos, sex-workers, addicts, youth, etc), the issues it dealt with (not just drug development, but housing, health care, migration and detention policy, etc), and the tactics it embraced (disrupting mass and marching on the street, but also charity auctions and mail advertising to fund-raise, interrupting TV shows and conferences, sitting down with policy-makers and CEOs of pharmaceutical companies to discuss clinical trials, poster campaigns and political funerals). No doubt, this diversity is what made them so effective, but was also the movement's undoing, as people 'on the inside', who got a place at the table with the powerful, and people 'on the outside', who were left …
This book was such a brick, in the best possible way. Schulman's oral history of Act Up has a precise goal: to show the diversity of the movement in all its facets: the people who participated (not just white gay men, but also women, latinos, sex-workers, addicts, youth, etc), the issues it dealt with (not just drug development, but housing, health care, migration and detention policy, etc), and the tactics it embraced (disrupting mass and marching on the street, but also charity auctions and mail advertising to fund-raise, interrupting TV shows and conferences, sitting down with policy-makers and CEOs of pharmaceutical companies to discuss clinical trials, poster campaigns and political funerals). No doubt, this diversity is what made them so effective, but was also the movement's undoing, as people 'on the inside', who got a place at the table with the powerful, and people 'on the outside', who were left / insisted on stay outside shouting stopped being able to work in tandem and parted ways. To make her points, Schulman tells so many stories about so many different people, because the point she wants to convey is that there were no heroes, and that everyone's contribution was important and awe-inspiring. Which is such a beautiful thing to contemplate! Also: activism made everyone in Act Up really sexy, or at least that was most interviewees' first impression.
