Already named on Thebes' recent queer lit poll, Sean Strub's much-anticipated Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS, and Survival [Kindle] arrives today preceded by two admiring mainstream reviews (in the SF Chronicle, Michael Bronski called it "a moving, multi-decade memoir of one gay man's life... forcefully reminds us of the impact an individual can make in changing the world") and a deluge of sixteen blurbs. Among the more useful:
John D'Emilio: "Searingly honest about himself and others, Strub shows how the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s brought out the best and the worst in people. His heroes are the ordinary men and women who fought to save lives. His villains – and deservedly so – are the cowardly public officials, from Reagan through Clinton, whose opportunism proved deadly to others. This take-no-prisoners memoir has the quality of a suspenseful page-turner, and will keep you reading until the final sentence."
Gloria Steinhem: "Read Body Counts and share one American's story of growing up with an instinct for justice, then finding oneself in an epidemic whose tragedy is multiplied by bias. As a man who survived sexual abuse, rape and an HIV diagnosis, Strub embodies the shared interest of women and men who fight for human rights, and against any government or person intruding on our bodies. By taking us with him on his journey from a conservative family in Iowa to the heart of a global movement for human rights, Sean Strub gives us ideas, strength and heart in our own journey."
For anyone who worried a political aids memoir might be 400 pages of unrelenting heaviness, Jonathan Ned Katz calls it "gossipy," Andrew Tobias compares him to Forest Gump, and Ari Shapiro cites Sean's "interactions with a parade of American icons."
Sean reads from his memoir at BGSQD on January 24.
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