The Gentrification Of Queer Activism

Download or read book The Gentrification of the Mind written by Sarah Schulman and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2013-09-02 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this gripping memoir of the AIDS years (1981–1996), Sarah Schulman recalls how much of the rebellious queer culture, cheap rents, and a vibrant downtown arts movement vanished almost overnight to be replaced by gay conservative spokespeople and mainstream consumerism. Schulman takes us back to her Lower East Side and brings it to life, filling these pages with vivid memories of her avant-garde queer friends and dramatically recreating the early years of the AIDS crisis as experienced by a political insider. Interweaving personal reminiscence with cogent analysis, Schulman details her experience as a witness to the loss of a generation’s imagination and the consequences of that loss.