Authors lost to AIDS remembered
Sign up for our PoliticsNY newsletter for the latest coverage and to stay informed about the 2021 election in your district and across NYC
This year’s observance of World AIDS Day at the New York City AIDS Memorial (West 12th Street at Greenwich Avenue) begins at 7 p.m. 17.00 with an hour-long reading of works by writers, poets and filmmakers who died of AIDS-related causes. The program will include selections from the following artists:
Tory Dent (1958-2005) was a poet, art critic and author on AIDS. Among her works was the collection of poems “HIV, Mon Amour” from 1999, which won the Academy of American Poets’ James Laughlin Prize – which recognizes expertise in other poetry books – and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Dent’s work will be read by Tim Murphy, the event’s curator, who is a novelist, journalist and teacher who has lived with HIV since 2000.
Essex Hemphill (1957-1995) was a poet and activist with a strong focus on African American gay life. His collections of poems included “Earth Life” and “Conditions”. Together with black filmmaker Marlon Riggs, Hemphill worked on two documentaries, “Tongues Untied,” which explored the intersection of black and gay identities, and “Black Is … Black Ain’t,” which explored what exactly “blackness” means. Jay W. Walker, a longtime HIV survivor who co-founded the Reclaim Pride Coalition, will read from Hemphill’s work.
Michael Slocum (1956-1995) was an artist, writer, cartoonist, and activist who was the editor of Newsline, a monthly magazine published by the People with the AIDS Coalition of New York. To tell the stories of his life as a black gay man with AIDS, Slocum created the cartoon character Zander Alexander, PWA, whose experiences were painful, funny and gripping. Slocum’s friend Kevin Hertzog, who has been living with HIV since 1994 and was a co-founder of Gays Against Guns, will read from Slocum’s work.
Iris de la Cruz (1954-1991) was an activist, educator, lecturer and outreach worker who was a pioneer in founding support groups for sex workers, drug users and other marginalized people living with HIV. De la Cruz wrote a regular column for the People with AIDS Coalition of New York’s Newsline magazine. HIV housing and support group Iris House is named in her honor. Activist, educator and outreach worker Patricia Shelton, diagnosed with HIV in 1991, will read aloud from de la Cruz’s writings.
Marlon Riggs (1957-1994) was a filmmaker, poet, educator and activist. His documentaries – “Tongues Untied” and “Black Is … Black Ain’t” (both made with the poet Essex Hemphill) and “Ethnic Notions” and “Color Adjustment” – explored representations of race and sexuality, especially the black gay experience , in American culture. “Tongues Untied,” which received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and aired on public television, was among the works that fueled North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms’ vituperative attacks on NEA and PBS. John Grauwiler, a teacher and co-founder of Gays Against Guns, who was diagnosed with HIV in 2005, will read from Riggs’ work.
Paul Monette (1945-1995) was an author, poet, and activist whose best-known book was “Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir,” in which he recounted his lover Roger Horwitz’s 19-month battle with AIDS, beginning with “The Day We began to live on the moon. ” In “Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story,” which won the 1992 National Book Award for Nonfiction, Monette tells her own story of living in the closet before meeting Horwitz in 1974. Ed Barron, a New Jersey-based activist diagnosed with HIV in 1986, will read from Horwitz’s work.
Reinaldo Arenas (1943-1990) was a Cuban-born poet, novelist and playwright whose imprisonment under the Castro regime following conviction for “ideological deviation” led to his joining Mariel Boatlift in 1980 to the United States. His gripping memoir about his time in Cuba and after “Before Night Falls”, after his death, became a film starring Javier Bardem. Lillibeth Gonzalez, a health educator at the GMHC who was diagnosed with HIV in 1992, will read from Arenas’ work.
Mary Bowman (1988-2019) was a poet born with HIV who used both poetry and music to solve problems around HIV. During AIDSWatch’s annual lobbying effort in Washington in 2015, Bowman was recognized with a Positive Leadership Award. Bowman’s work will be read by Kineen MaFa, an artist, spiritual guide, and lecturer who was diagnosed with HIV in 2003.
David Feinberg (1956-1994) was a member of the ACT UP, contributor to several mainstream and LGBTQ publications and author of several novels and essay books. The protagonist of his novels “Eighty-Sized” – which won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Men’s Fiction and the American Library Association’s Gay / Lesbian Award for Fiction – and “Spontaneous Combustion” was a young gay man who was modeled heavily after Feinberg’s admission. itself. His last book was a collection of essays, “Queer and Loathing: Rants and Raves of a Raging AIDS Clone.” Author, actor, HIV campaigner and teacher Bruce Ward, who has been living with HIV since 1984, will read from Feinberg’s work.
B.Michael Hunter (1958-2001), a teacher and cultural activist, was a member of Other Countries, a New York collective of black gay writers, for which he was editor of “Sojourner: Black Gay Voices in the Age of AIDS,” which won Lambda Literary Small Press Book Award. Hunter’s work will be read by Ivy Kwan Arce, a mother, artist, designer and activist who was diagnosed with HIV in 1990.
No comments: