BOY WITH THE BULLHORN: A Memoir and History of ACT UP New York, clarion call to the quiet youth

BOY WITH THE BULLHORN: A Memoir and History of ACT UP New York
RON GOLDBERG
Empire State Editions/Fordham University Press
$36.95 hardcover, available now

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Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A coming-of-age memoir of life on the front lines of the AIDS crisis with ACT UP New York.

From the moment Ron Goldberg stumbled into his first ACT UP meeting in June 1987, the AIDS activist organization became his life. For the next eight years, he chaired committees, planned protests, led teach-ins, and facilitated their Monday night meetings. He cruised and celebrated at ACT UP parties, attended far too many AIDS memorials, and participated in more than a hundred zaps and demonstrations, becoming the group’s unofficial “Chant Queen,” writing and leading chants for many of their major actions. Boy with the Bullhorn is both a memoir and an immersive history of the original New York chapter of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, from 1987 to 1995, told with great humor, heart, and insight.

Using the author’s own story, “the activist education of a well-intentioned, if somewhat naïve nice gay Jewish theater queen,” Boy with the Bullhorn intertwines Goldberg’s experiences with the larger chronological history of ACT UP, the grassroots AIDS activist organization that confronted politicians, scientists, drug companies, religious leaders, the media, and an often uncaring public to successfully change the course of the AIDS epidemic.

Diligently sourced and researched, Boy with the Bullhorn provides both an intimate look into how activist strategies are developed and deployed and a snapshot of life in New York City during the darkest days of the AIDS epidemic. On the occasions where Goldberg writes outside his personal experience, he relies on his extensive archive of original ACT UP documents, news articles, and other published material, as well as activist videos and oral histories, to help flesh out actions, events, and the background stories of key activists. Writing with great candor, Goldberg examines the group’s triumphs and failures, as well as the pressures and bad behaviors that eventually tore ACT UP apart.

A story of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, from engaging in outrageous, media-savvy demonstrations, to navigating the intricacies of drug research and the byzantine bureaucracies of the FDA, NIH, and CDC, Boy with the Bullhorn captures the passion, smarts, and evanescent spirit of ACT UP—the anger, grief, and desperation, but also the joy, camaraderie, and sexy, campy playfulness—and the exhilarating adrenaline rush of activism.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: After reading Peter Staley's memoir of the ACT UP days during the AIDS crisis, I was too emotionally fatigued to give this memoir of the same time my full attention. I still find it astounding that this book came out thirty-five years after ACT UP appeared.

Early, noisy days
I have to admit that I am still very tender on the subject of this epidemic because of my own losses during that time. There is no sense hiding away from the terrible, always-there pain of losing someone in this awful way, though. It was quite theraputic to recall that the world might not have cared much, but the world could not just ignore the issue after ACT UP got the noisemakers and angry young folk organized.

My personal favorite demonstration–combining my hatred for the catholic church and outrage at the inaction of the medical establishment
Whatever else has happened to me since AIDS took my first friend in 1984, I have carried the clear and unforgiving certainty that my life mattered less than a straight person's life on a policy level. This is brutal, evil, capitalist greed...costs too much to get those drugs, coverage denied...the Government can't afford this medication, coverage denied...and, while that is nothing new to Black or Indigenous people, or even to women, it was a wake-up call to a privileged white boy.

There is one thing that makes me recommend this as a #Booksgiving idea...your young, gay friend who is doing little, or nothing at all, to protest the inaction on climate change...that is reaching crisis stage earlier than we thought...needs a reminder that PrEP did not come about because the elites thought it was a good idea, but because there was a history of loud, angry agitation among the folk who needed it, a bunch of scientists whose careers were able to focus on AIDS because ACT UP acted, and the way to pay it forward is to start shouting along with Greta Thunberg. Or along with David Hogg abour gun control. Whatever! Read this memoir of the joys of acting up and yelling about important matters, about the crises we face. Goldberg has led a happy, fulfilling life being very disobedient. Encourage your young gay friend to do the same.

Being flamboyant in a good cause is no crime.