#holdtightgently

[structures-of-feeling]

From - Martin Duberman's Reading and signing for HOLD TIGHT GENTLY: MICHAEL CALLEN, ESSEX HEMPHILL, AND THE BATTLEFIELD OF AIDS (Recorded at BGSQD - Bureau of General Services—Queer Division - May 21st 2014)

[thenewpress]

"In Africa, AIDS is primarily a heterosexual phenomenon, but in the United States it remains a profoundly gay one, with poor, young, nonwhite men disproportionately impacted—though children, intravenous drug users, and heterosexual women are hardly immune. But self-identified gay men in the United States do still make up 48% of the 1 million people currently living with AIDS."

—from Martin Duberman’s new book Hold Tight Gently

My hope is that this book will shed additional light on our current approach to AIDS by scrutinizing more closely the earlier years (1981-95) of the epidemic, and in particular the pre-ACT UP (1987) period. I've chosen to tell this story through the lives of two gay men, the singer and activist Michael Callen and the poet and cultural worker Essex Hemphill.

[thenewpress]

"The number of Americans who consider AIDS the most urgent health problem facing the nation dropped from 44 percent in 1995 to 6 percent in 2009. One reason, surely, is that AIDS has become less and less a white disease and more and more a disease associated with people of color."

— from Martin Duberman's new book Hold Tight Gently

We are excited to launch this book; more quotes and excerpts to come!