Description
Book SynopsisWinner, "Gold" Independent Publishing Award (IPPY) for LGBTQ+ Nonfiction
Winner, The Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction, 34th Annual Triangle Awards
2023 Lammy Finalist, Gay Memoir/Biography
A coming-of-age memoir of life on the front lines of the AIDS crisis with ACT UP New York.
From the moment Ron Goldberg stumbled into his first ACT UP meeting in June 1987, the AIDS activist organization became his life. For the next eight years, he chaired committees, planned protests, led teach-ins, and facilitated their Monday night meetings. He cruised and celebrated at ACT UP parties, attended far too many AIDS memorials, and participated in more than a hundred zaps and demonstrations, becoming the group’s unofficial “Chant Queen,” writing and leading chants for many of their major actions. Boy with the Bullhorn is both a memoir and an immersive history of the original New York chapter of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, from 1987 to 1995, told with great humor, heart, and insight.
Using the author’s own story, “the activist education of a well-intentioned, if somewhat naïve nice gay Jewish theater queen,” Boy with the Bullhorn intertwines Goldberg’s experiences with the larger chronological history of ACT UP, the grassroots AIDS activist organization that confronted politicians, scientists, drug companies, religious leaders, the media, and an often uncaring public to successfully change the course of the AIDS epidemic.
Diligently sourced and researched, Boy with the Bullhorn provides both an intimate look into how activist strategies are developed and deployed and a snapshot of life in New York City during the darkest days of the AIDS epidemic. On the occasions where Goldberg writes outside his personal experience, he relies on his extensive archive of original ACT UP documents, news articles, and other published material, as well as activist videos and oral histories, to help flesh out actions, events, and the background stories of key activists. Writing with great candor, Goldberg examines the group’s triumphs and failures, as well as the pressures and bad behaviors that eventually tore ACT UP apart.
A story of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, from engaging in outrageous, media-savvy demonstrations, to navigating the intricacies of drug research and the byzantine bureaucracies of the FDA, NIH, and CDC, Boy with the Bullhorn captures the passion, smarts, and evanescent spirit of ACT UP—the anger, grief, and desperation, but also the joy, camaraderie, and sexy, campy playfulness—and the exhilarating adrenaline rush of activism.
Table of ContentsPreface | ix
Part I: Becoming an Activist
1 Awakening | 3
2 First Steps | 22
3 Welcome to ACT UP | 38
4 We Are Family | 52
Part II: Expanding the Agenda
5 ACT NOW and the Nine Days of Rain | 67
6 Taking Actions | 83
7 Summer Awakening | 97
8 Seize Control of the FDA | 117
Part III: Crashing Through
9 Targeting City Hall | 141
10 Storming the Ivory Tower | 163
11 Remember Stonewall Was a Riot | 179
12 Parallel Tracks | 192
13 Heading Inside | 211
14 Stop the Church | 222
Part IV: The Gorgeous Mosaic
15 The Myers Mess | 235
16 Time’s Up, Mario! | 248
17 Storm the NIH | 256
18 Inside or Out | 266
19 Can the Center Hold? | 280
20 Bombs Are Dropping | 301
Part V: Days of Desperation
21 Desperate Measures | 317
22 Splitting Differences | 333
23 Target Bush | 351
24 Strategies and Consequences | 370
Part VI: AIDS Campaign ’92
25 ACT UP / Petrelis | 383
26 The In-Your-Face Primary | 394
27 Unconventional Behavior | 402
28 Vote as If Your Life Depended on It | 417
Afterword | 437
Acknowledgments | 443
Notes | 449
Index | 483
Photographs follow page 214
