More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
October 4 - October 7, 2021
The disallowed grief of twenty years of AIDS deaths was replaced by ritualized and institutionalized mourning of the acceptable dead. In this way, 9/11 is the gentrification of AIDS. The replacement of deaths that don't matter with deaths that do.
There has never been a government inquiry into the fifteen years of official neglect that permitted AIDS to become a world-wide disaster. Where is our permanent memorial?
These are stories but the pain they contain is immeasurable. The impact of these losses requires a consciousness beyond most human ability. We grow weary, numb, alienated, and then begin to forget, to put it all away just to be able to move on. But even the putting away is an abusive act. The experiencing, the remembering, the hiding, the overcoming—all leave their scars.
But no true, accurate, complex, deeply felt and accountable engagement with the AIDS crisis has become integrated into the American self-perception. It puts those of us who do know what happened in the awkward position of trying to remember what we used to know in a world that officially knows none of it.
Gentrification culture is rooted in the ideology that people needing help is a “private� matter, that it is nobody's business.
