Let the Record Show - Supernormal Reads

eBook, 736 pages

English language

Published 2021 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

ISBN:: 978-0-374-71995-1
OCLC Number:: 1251803405

(2 reviews)

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 …

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.

3 editions

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.

Renata

rated it

Sept. 7, 2022