we're here and we're queer

All Out! Dancing in Dulais

“Within the lesbian community I am Black, and within the Black community I am a lesbian. Any attack against Black people is a lesbian and gay issue, because I and thousands of other Black women are part of the lesbian community. Any attack against lesbians and gays is a Black issue, because thousands of lesbians and gay men are Black. There is no hierarchy of oppression.”

ya of course! obvs this is gonna be a really partial list and if anyone wants to add to this post that’d be awesome but here are a bunch, i’ve included links where i could find them <3

books

and the band played on by randy shilts - a long and comprehensive book that traces the early years of the epidemic and media/government response, pretty essential imo

how to survive a plague by david france - goes along with the documentary of the same name. interesting and easy to read if you’re just starting to learn more!

moving politics: emotion and ACT UP’s fight against AIDS by deborah b. gould - a really fantastic and well researched book on what act up accomplished and how. like even just the bibliography of this book is great if you want to find some stuff to read

the gentrification of the mind: witness to a lost imagination by sarah schulman - this is a short memoir that touches on a lot of topics and isn’t necessarily the most informative for like, research but i found it to be a good starting point in comprehending the sheer erasure of the aids epidemic in american history and the cultural impact it had

haven’t read it but i’ve been meaning to- punishing disease: HIV and the criminalization of sickness by trevor hoppe

a few memoirs + other stuff: close to the knives by david wojnarowicz, borrowed time by paul monette, AIDS and its metaphors by susan sontag and also honestly… read angels in america if you haven’t and the recently released oral history, the world only spins forward by isaac butler and dan kois

movies

how to survive a plague (documentary)

beats per minute (fictionalized, french w english subtitles but really fantastic)

united in anger: a history of ACT UP (documentary)

websites + articles

ACT UP oral history project

Before Occupy: How AIDS Activists Seized Control of the FDA in 1988

7 New Yorkers Remember the Early Days of the AIDS Epidemic

History of HIV and AIDS Overview from Avert

AIDS History Project from UCSF (lots of stuff linked here)

art

Seventeen years before the Stonewall Riots, Dale Jennings proclaimed to a California court that he was a homosexual. It was the first glimmer of a civil rights revolution. This is the story of an unsung, and reluctant, hero.

The FBI sought out friendly vice squad officers who supplied arrest records on morals charges, regardless of whether convictions had ensued. Regional FBI offices gathered data on gay bars, compiled lists of other places frequented by homosexuals, and clipped press articles that provided information about the gay world. Friendship with a known homosexual or lesbian subjected anyone to investigation. 

The Post Office, exploiting its authority to prevent the dissemination of obscene material through the mails, joined the antihomosexual campaign. The department established a watch on the recipients of physique magazines and other forms of gay male erotica. Postal inspectors subscribed to pen pal clubs, initiated correspondence with men whom they believed might be homosexual, and, if their suspicions were confirmed, placed tracers on victims’ mail in order to locate other homosexuals.

Magazine cover with The Communards - 1980s (1986?)

Jimmy Somerville on Mark Ashton, from Walking After Midnight: Gay Men’s Life Stories