#larry kramer

[arctic-hands]

Legit between the infighting between trans men and trans women and the shinigami eyes mods turning against intersex folks, I feel like Larry Kramer screaming that people are dying en masse from AIDS to shut up the bickering within ACT UP

DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THEY ARE TAKING AWAY OUR RIGHTS AND SUBJECTING US TO HORRIBLE ABUSE AND DEATHS? Jesus Christ people

[queereads-bracket]

Older Queer Works Book Bracket: Round 1C

Choose a book:

Notes of a Crocodile (1993) by Qiu Miaojin

The Normal Heart (1985) by Larry Kramer

Voting ended onNov 29, 2025

Book summaries below:

Notes of a Crocodile (1993) by Qiu Miaojin

Set in the post-martial-law era of late 1980s Taipei, Notes of a Crocodile depicts the coming-of-age of a group of queer misfits discovering love, friendship, and artistic affinity while hardly studying at Taiwan's most prestigious university. Told through the eyes of an anonymous lesbian narrator nicknamed Lazi, Qiu Miaojin's cult classic novel is a postmodern pastiche of diaries, vignettes, mash notes, aphorisms, exegesis, and satire by an incisive prose stylist and countercultural icon.

Afflicted by her fatalistic attraction to Shui Ling, an older woman, Lazi turns for support to a circle of friends that includes a rich kid turned criminal and his troubled, self-destructive gay lover, as well as a bored, mischievous overachiever and her alluring slacker artist girlfriend.

Illustrating a process of liberation from the strictures of gender through radical self-inquiry, Notes of a Crocodile is a poignant masterpiece of social defiance by a singular voice in contemporary Chinese literature.

Literary fiction, experimental, coming of age, epistolary, 1980s

The Normal Heart (1985) by Larry Kramer

THE NORMAL HEART is the explosive drama about our most terrifying and troubling medical crisis today: the AIDS epidemic. It tells the story of very private lives caught up in the heartrendering ordeal of suffering and doom - an ordeal that was largely ignored for reasons of politics and majority morality.

Filled with power, anger, and intelligence, Larry Kramer's riveting play dramatizes what actually happened from the time of the disease's discovery to the present, and points a moral j'accuse in many directions. His passionate indictment of government, the media, and the public for refusing to deal with a national plague is electrifying theater - a play that finally breaks through the conspiracy of silence with a shout of stunning impact. As Douglas Watt summed it up in his review for the New York Daily News,THE NORMAL HEART is "an angry, unremitting and gripping piece of political theater. You are bound to come away moved."

Play, AIDS crisis, 1980s

[philiponmycracker]

Tom Hulce as Ned Weeks. Some pages from the theatre programme of The Normal Heart - Albery Theatre, May 1986

Look what came in the mail, oh my dearest king, sweetest, most wonderful Mr Hulce. There is literally nothing I would not do if it meant I could enjoy just a tiny 10 seconds of Tom as Ned Weeks... I would sell my soul to the demons a thousand times, what I would not give, just to hear his voice echoing, screaming those passionate speech. The love, the despair, the fight! The rage!

(from the script)

I am furious with you, and with myself and with every goddamned doctor who ever told me I'm sick and interfered with my loving a man. I'm trying to understand why nobody wants to hear we're dying, why nobody wants to help, why my own brother doesn't want to help. Two million dollars-for house! And we can't even get twentynine cents from the city. You still think I'm sick, and I simply cannot allow that any longer. I will not speak to you again until you accept me as your equal. Your healthy equal. Your brother!

...

The only way we'll have real pride is when we demand recognition of a culture that isn't just sexual. It's all there - all through history we've been there; but we have to claim it, and identify who was in it, and articulate what's in our minds and hearts and all our creative contributions to this earth. And until we do that, and until we organize ourselves block by neighborhood by city by state into a united visible community that fights back, we're doomed. That's how I want to be defined: as one of the men who fought the war. Being defined by our cocks is literally killing us. Must we all be reduced to becoming our own murderers? Why couldn't you and I, Bruce Niles and Ned Weeks, have been leaders in creating new a definition of what it means to be gay?

[heavymetalyogi-blog]

Pride 2025 Day 2: Larry Kramer (1935-2020)

Larry did an immense amount of work for AIDS advocacy. He was a highly acclaimed gay Jewish screenwriter, playwright, and author. In the '80s as he couldn't just sit by and watch his friends die while the government did nothing. He first founded the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC), which has gone on to provide more in home care for individuals with AIDS than any other private organization. Realizing that political action was needed to get the government to address the AIDS crisis he left GMHC and founded AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). ACT UP organized massive political protests including their infamous Die-Ins, where protesters lied down with signs in the shape of tombstones. ACT UP's Die-Ins disrupted Wall Street multiple times and forced the US Government to act. In 1988 after years of advocating for AIDS related causes he was diagnosed with HIV, which he survived for decades until passing from pneumonia in 2020. May we remember the two organizations he founded, one for service and one for advocacy, and go forth with a similar two pronged approach!

[keepxsolxinxsolxinvictus]

The Normal Heart - Albert Dies In Phoenix (horrific heartbreaking scene)

The Normal Heart

Bruce Niles - Taylor Kitsch

Ned Weeks - Mark Ruffalo

Albert - Finn Wittrock

Albert's Mother - Catherine Chadwick

Orderly - Eden Marryshow

Written by Larry Kramer

Directed by Ryan Murphy

[rylobnk]

Legendary AIDS activist, playwright, and author Larry Kramer would have been 90 years old today. Although he was just as pugnacious with his own allies as he was with his enemies, we celebrate that fight and need that fight more today than ever.

[kosherdragon]

This is incredibly offensive.

So I'm searching the Libby app for The Normal Heart, the play about early AIDS activism by Larry Kramer (Larry freaking Kramer!!), the play he wrote to express his frustration with the apathy of the government and medical community about thousands of people dying from an epidemic. My library doesn't have it, so they suggest THIS???? A covid denialism book by Joseph Mercola with a foreword by RFK Jr.? The disrespect! The UNBELIEVABLE disrespect!

[queerazonbooks]

Honoring Larry Kramer on his birthday. 25 June 1935

Playwright, activist, and co-founder of ACT UP and GMHC, Larry was a warrior for AIDS awareness and LGBTQ+ rights. He shouted when others whispered, and demanded action when silence was deadly.

Through The Normal Heart and his tireless advocacy, he saved lives and changed the course of history.

Happy Birthday to a hero who never backed down—and never let us forget that silence = death.

#LarryKramer #ACTUP #QueerHistory #QueerActivism