In this gripping memoir of the AIDS years (1981-1996), Sarah Schulman recalls how much of the rebellious queer culture, cheap rents, and a vibrant downtown arts movement vanished almost overnight to be replaced by gay conservative spokespeople and mainstream consumerism. Schulman takes us back to her Lower East Side and brings it to life, filling these pages with vivid memories of her avant-garde queer friends and dramatically recreating the early years of the AIDS crisis as experienced by a political insider. Interweaving personal reminiscence with cogent analysis, Schulman details her experience as a witness to the loss of a generation's imagination and the consequences of that loss.
The Gentrification of the Mind
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"This bracing, powerful, and well-reasoned work reaffirms the author's stature as a distinctive American woman of letters. . . . Highly recommended."--Library Journal
"The book that's inspired me more than any other this year is Sarah Schulman's Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination, a razor-sharp memoir of New York in the heyday of the AIDS crisis."--Slate
"Teeming with ideas, necessary commentary, refreshing connections and examination of the status quo."--Lambda Literary
"A brilliant critique of contemporary culture. . . . This is the most important book of the year."--Cult Mtl
"Schulman's personal recollections... are sharp and vivid."--Gay & Lesbian Review/Worldwide
From the Inside Flap
"Sarah Schulman, as always, hits the nail on the head. I can't imagine a more insightful probe into gentrification and its inhumane consequences. Everyone needs to read this book."--Martin Duberman, author of Stonewall
"Sarah Schulman's The Gentrification of the Mind is a bulwark against the collective loss of memory. AIDS, gentrification, the struggle for gay rights, the class war that has driven entire communities of artists, immigrants, and outsiders from the neighborhoods they created--all these things have been erased by the official culture. Schulman's book will make you rage and weep, and then--just maybe--organize."--Luc Sante, author of Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York
"Hard-headed, sensitive, and informed, this book will make the confused world of urban redevelopment and gentrification make notably more sense. Schulman has a mind as clear as a bell in evening. You'll be glad you read it. I was."--Samuel R. Delany, author of Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders
"Sarah Schulman's The Gentrification of the Mind is a bulwark against the collective loss of memory. AIDS, gentrification, the struggle for gay rights, the class war that has driven entire communities of artists, immigrants, and outsiders from the neighborhoods they created--all these things have been erased by the official culture. Schulman's book will make you rage and weep, and then--just maybe--organize."--Luc Sante, author of Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York
"Hard-headed, sensitive, and informed, this book will make the confused world of urban redevelopment and gentrification make notably more sense. Schulman has a mind as clear as a bell in evening. You'll be glad you read it. I was."--Samuel R. Delany, author of Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders
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More About the Author
Sarah Schulman is the author of seventeen books, including nine novels. Forthcoming is a new nonfiction book, ISRAEL/PALESTINE AND THE QUEER INTERNATIONAL from Duke University Press. She recently published THE GENTRIFICATION OF THE MIND: WItness to a Lost Imagination by University of California Press, the paperback of TIES THAT BIND: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences and the paperback edition of her novel THE MERE FUTURE from Arsenal Pulp.Previous novels are THE CHILD, SHIMMER, EMPATHY, RAT BOHEMIA, PEOPLE IN TROUBLE, AFTER DELORE, GIRLS VISIONS AND EVERYTHING and THE SOPHIE HOROWITZ STORY. Her nonfiction titles are TIES THAT BIND: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences, STAGESTRUCK:Theater, AIDS and the Marketing of Gay America, and MY AMERICAN HISTORY: Lesbian and Gay Life During the Reagan/Bush Years. A working playwright, her productions include: CARSON McCULLERS (published by Playscripts Ink), MANIC FLIGHT REACTION and the theatrical adaptation of Isaac Singer's ENEMIES, A LOVE STORY. As a screenwriter, her films include THE OWLS (co-written with director Cheryl Dunye)- Berlin Film Festival 2010, MOMMY IS COMING (co-written with director Cheryl Dunye)- Berlin Film Festival selection 2011, and their upcoming web series SIMI, produced by Effie Brown She is co-producer with Jim Hubbard of his feature documentary UNITED IN ANGER: A History of ACT UP. As a journalist, her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, and Interview. She has won a Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwrighting, a Fullbright in Judaic Studies, two American Library Association Book Awards, and is the 2009 recipient of the Kessler Prize for sustained contribution to LGBT studies. Sarah is Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York, College of State Island, a Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University. She was the US coordinator of the first LGBT Delegation to Palestine. She lives in New York.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful
By Butters
Format:Hardcover
I loved reading this moving and thought-provoking memoir by a noted queer activist, novelist and playwright who came of age in the 1980s Lower East Side of Manhattan. Aids, the struggle for gay rights, the electricity of the downtown arts scene, an unfolding class war that would drive the tribes of artists, immigrants and activists from the neighborhood they created -- it is all here.
I lived on the Lower East Side from 1974 to 1984 and this books helps me understand the furious ideological offensive (what Schulman calls "the gentrification of the mind") waged by the same banks and corporations that also profited from the gentrification of such urban neighborhoods. Many community institutions we activists relied upon on the Lower East Side disappeared overnight due to skyrocketing rents or cutbacks of funding. Many institutions claiming to be cultural or political alternatives became slowly coopted by the powers that be.
Reading "The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination", we who lived through this period weep for what we have lost. But Schulman's call is not just to mourn our "lost imagination". It is also a call for us to learn from and build upon the all-too forgotten struggles of our radical ancestors. In this way we can more effectively organize against the banks and corporations, who are still seeking "the gentrification of the mind" today.
Chris Butters
I lived on the Lower East Side from 1974 to 1984 and this books helps me understand the furious ideological offensive (what Schulman calls "the gentrification of the mind") waged by the same banks and corporations that also profited from the gentrification of such urban neighborhoods. Many community institutions we activists relied upon on the Lower East Side disappeared overnight due to skyrocketing rents or cutbacks of funding. Many institutions claiming to be cultural or political alternatives became slowly coopted by the powers that be.
Reading "The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination", we who lived through this period weep for what we have lost. But Schulman's call is not just to mourn our "lost imagination". It is also a call for us to learn from and build upon the all-too forgotten struggles of our radical ancestors. In this way we can more effectively organize against the banks and corporations, who are still seeking "the gentrification of the mind" today.
Chris Butters
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
First off, if you've found yourself on this page, I recommend going ahead and buying this book. Chances are you're here because you possess, at the very least, some passing interest in the subject matter or the author, and if that's the case, you will probably enjoy this book and find it useful.
I would absolutely recommend this to anyone else familiar with Sarah Schulman's work, anyone interested in AIDS and the history of the gay rights movement, anyone who lives in New York (especially those in the areas of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens that are currently experiencing gentrification or have already undergone it,) or any other gentrifying part of the world, and, well, basically anyone asking why we've found ourselves in the intellectual rut we're currently maneuvering our way out of.
Unlike any other author I've read, Sarah has beautifully articulated our current climate of cultural homogeneity and intellectual constipation with this book. Her insights into academia were, to me, just as compelling and surprising as her explication of the role that AIDS played in the gentrification of New York City.
I especially enjoyed her section on the MTV-ification of Kathy Acker, an artist who has always fascinated me, and Schulman seems one of the few living scholars who actually acknowledge what made Acker so brilliant and so interesting to begin with, and, just as importantly, Acker's Judaism and the role it played in shaping her writing.
The way she has tied AIDS to gentrification and gentrification to our current state of cultural and political stagnation is inspired; I just feel that this book is missing that certain something, that devastatingly lucid paragraph, that intellectual kick-in-the-chest that Schulman achieved with "Stagestruck."
That said, maybe it's there and I just need to re-read it (something I will absolutely do and have always done with Sarah's books,) and even though I didn't get that with the first read, it still struck me as an inspired collection of thoughts and a downright enjoyable read.
I would absolutely recommend this to anyone else familiar with Sarah Schulman's work, anyone interested in AIDS and the history of the gay rights movement, anyone who lives in New York (especially those in the areas of Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens that are currently experiencing gentrification or have already undergone it,) or any other gentrifying part of the world, and, well, basically anyone asking why we've found ourselves in the intellectual rut we're currently maneuvering our way out of.
Unlike any other author I've read, Sarah has beautifully articulated our current climate of cultural homogeneity and intellectual constipation with this book. Her insights into academia were, to me, just as compelling and surprising as her explication of the role that AIDS played in the gentrification of New York City.
I especially enjoyed her section on the MTV-ification of Kathy Acker, an artist who has always fascinated me, and Schulman seems one of the few living scholars who actually acknowledge what made Acker so brilliant and so interesting to begin with, and, just as importantly, Acker's Judaism and the role it played in shaping her writing.
The way she has tied AIDS to gentrification and gentrification to our current state of cultural and political stagnation is inspired; I just feel that this book is missing that certain something, that devastatingly lucid paragraph, that intellectual kick-in-the-chest that Schulman achieved with "Stagestruck."
That said, maybe it's there and I just need to re-read it (something I will absolutely do and have always done with Sarah's books,) and even though I didn't get that with the first read, it still struck me as an inspired collection of thoughts and a downright enjoyable read.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book is listed as biography, but it's so much more. Sarah Schulman writes about her place and time, then provides insight in to where that has led in terms of the changes to Manhattan in the last quarter century. How did New York City go from bankrupt to thriving? Artistic and bohemian to Trumpish and elite? AIDS.
