Forget Burial: HIV Kinship, Disability, and Queer/Trans Narratives of Care [Hardcover]

Finalist for the LGBTQ Nonfiction Award from Lambda Literary

Queers and trans people in the 1980s and early ‘90s were dying of AIDS and the government failed to care. Lovers, strangers, artists, and community activists came together take care of each other in the face of state violence. In revisiting these histories alongside ongoing queer and trans movements, this book uncovers how early HIV care-giving narratives actually shape how we continue to understand our genders and our disabilities. The queer and trans care-giving kinships that formed in response to HIV continue to inspire how we have sex and build chosen families in the present. In unearthing HIV community newsletters, media, zines, porn, literature, and even vampires,Forget Burialbridges early HIV care-giving activisms with contemporary disability movements. In refusing to bury the legacies of long-term survivors and of those we have lost, this book brings early HIV kinships together with ongoing movements for queer and trans body self-determination.
 Queers and trans people in the 1980s and early ‘90s were dying of AIDS and the government failed to care. Lovers, strangers, artists, and community activists came together take care of each other in the face of state violence.These early HIV care-giving narratives continue to shape how we understand our genders and our disabilities, forming ongoing chosen families for body self-determination.MARTY FINKis an assistant professor of professional communication at Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.Introduction: Taking Care

Having a Good Time Getting this Disease
In the summer of 1990, HIV activist and sex work organizer Iris De La Cruz performed a daring act at the New York University (NYU) Medical Center. With the support of fellow activists, she strategized to enter unnoticed into the hospital rooms of people living with HIV. Her campaign began in the mlS¯