The Queer Studies Network is honoured to welcome the award-winning activist and author Sarah Schulman for a live online event. From her 1990s novels Rat Bohemia and People in Trouble, to more recent works of ground-breaking non-fiction like The Gentrification of the Mind and Conflict is Not Abuse, Schulman has long been a leading voice in queer literature and politics. Her new book Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 has been described by the New York Times as a ‘masterpiece tome: part sociology, part oral history, part memoir, part call to arms’. The book challenges familiar narratives about AIDS activism as a victory attained by individuals, and instead shows how a broad coalition with constantly changing leadership won significant victories for people with AIDS. In documenting the vital work of a broad range of white men, working with and next to women and people of colour, Schulman provides an urgent intervention and a timely reconceptualising of this moment in queer history, one that creates space for us to reflect upon the ongoing fight against the epidemic.
