Rat Bohemia (Paperback)

by Sarah Schulman (Author)
Key Phrases: New York, Puerto Rican, Please God (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Sarah Schulman's Rat Bohemia is a witty, moving and sometimes shocking look at how lesbians and gay men are treated by their biological families. Set in contemporary New York, Schulman's characters--Rita, a rat exterminator who works for the city, Killer, a lesbian bohemian, and David, a gay writer with AIDS--are all trying to figure out how to live in a city that is falling apart and how to make peace with the families who ignore them or treat them badly. Schulman's eye for urban detail and her wicked, ironic sense of humor all contribute to making this a profoundly affecting and deeply disturbing look at lesbian and gay life today. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly
Parental abandonment is the theme of this dreary tale of gay and lesbian life on the edge in New York City. Rita Mae Weems, whose father kicked her out at the age of 16, still hears the disappointment in his voice when she phones him years later. She works as a rat exterminator for the city's Department of Health, and everywhere she looks she sees decay and vermin, both human and animal. Her friend David, a young writer dying of AIDS, spends his last months mourning his dead lover and his dead friends and meditating on why his parents hate him. Pondering the narrow boundaries of parental love, he observes that "they're glad we're dying... really they're relieved." Killer, their chronically unemployed friend, is more philosophical, if also more simplistic. "We're bohemians," she says proudly. "We don't have those dominant cultural values." Indeed, these three would refuse to fit into the mainstream, even if the mainstream were generous. And they're united in their scorn of Muriel Kay Starr, a lesbian writer who "moved to another neighborhood and got closer to power" and wrote a closeted novel called Good and Bad, in which they (David, Killer and Rita) appear as characters. For no apparent reason, Schulman (Empathy) tacks on, as an "appendix," the first four chapters of Good and Bad. Very little binds this "appendix" to the four other sections that comprise the novel; in fact, very little, other than the presence of the principal characters and a theme of resentment of parents, binds the other four sections to each other. Only the dying David, ironically, seems alive, animated by his rage at his impending death. His loneliness and eloquent anguish only partially salvage this meandering tale of a city so befouled that it leaves the reader wishing for a bath.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Plume (October 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452271827
• ISBN-13: 978-0452271821
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,015,600 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Simple truths behind the complexity of lesbian experience, March 11, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Rat Bohemia: 9 (Hardcover)

Rat Bohemia articulates one of the simple truths behind the complexity of lesbian and gay experience - the overpowering need for parental acceptance and the lifelong pain and coping necessitated by its absence.

5.0 out of 5 stars Dealing with Loss, May 18, 2008

By	Amos Lassen (Little Rock, Arkansas) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Rat Bohemia (Paperback)

Schulman, Sarah. "Rat Bohemia", Arsenal Pulp Press, 2008. (reprint)

Dealing with Loss

Sara Schulman first published "Rat Bohemia" in 1995 which was right in the middle of the AIDS crisis and people took notice. Rat Bohemia is part of New York City where the members of the GLBT community come together to deal with the losses they feel. Here is a story that hurts in its boldness and honesty. Roaming the city is Rita Mae, a rat exterminator by profession and she is an optimist like all bohemians claim to be. Bohemians are those who stand outside of the acknowledged social structure in which we live. Rita and friends look for new ways and avenues to truth and honesty--not just about their own lives but also about the lives of those that live around them because others cannot seem to be bothered.
The book engenders grief because it means we have to return to that awful period when so many died needlessly. We also lost the sense of Bohemia.
In the new introduction to "Rat Bohemia" Schulman tells us that at least 75,000 New Yorkers died to AIDS and that is about twenty percent of the total losses in America. New York has changed because of AIDS and gay neighborhoods became gentrified as residents died. Gay people, at that time, in many cases, left their unsupportive families and when they were gone, their families rarely intervened and therefore many were buried under terrible conditions. Those who had AIDS were risk-takers who lived among people who did not want them in society and they paid very heavily for being "out".
Are we allowed to forget? I certainly hope that no one ever forgets because this was out holocaust and Sarah Schulman reminds us of it.
She brilliantly looks at how our disenfranchisement is found as a political evil in every aspect of life and it hurts to read it but IT MUST BE READ. It is a part of out lives as incendiary as this book is, it is above all honest.
I am not sure that "Rat Bohemia" is even a novel, it is more of a remembrance and a hurtful nostalgic look at a world, people and a counterculture that is lost forever. It is also somewhat of a manifesto for those that demand that their families accept them. "Rat Bohemia" is "a dispatch from real life" and is perhaps one of the important books that deals with the way we lived and live now.

4 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Rats! This Book Stunk, June 12, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Rat Bohemia: 9 (Hardcover)

Interesting blurb and sale price helped me decide to buy this book. It was boring and did not live up to the hype. Not wirth more than $2, so if you see it in the dollar bin, then that's the only time to buy it.