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A longtime LGBTQ and AIDS activist offers an account of his life from sexually liberated 1970s San Francisco, through the AIDS crisis, and up to his present-day involvement with the marriage equality battle. "Born in 1954, Cleve Jones was among the last generation of gay Americans who grew up wondering if there were others out there like himself. There were. Like thousands of other young people, Jones, nearly penniless, was drawn in the early 1970s to San Francisco, a city electrified by progressive politics and sexual freedom. Jones found community--in the hotel rooms and ramshackle apartments shared by other young adventurers, in the city's bathhouses and bars like The Stud, and in the burgeoning gay district, the Castro, where a New York transplant named Harvey Milk set up a camera shop, began shouting through his bullhorn, and soon became the nation's most outspoken gay elected official. With Milk's encouragement, Jones dove into politics and found his calling in 'the movement.' When Milk was killed by an assassin's bullet in 1978, Jones took up his mentor's progressive mantle--only to see the arrival of AIDS transform his life once again. By turns tender and uproarious, When We Rise is Jones' account of his remarkable life. He chronicles the heartbreak of losing countless friends to AIDS, which very nearly killed him, too; his cofounding of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and conception of the AIDS Memorial Quilt; the story of 1970s San Francisco and the magnetic spell it cost for thousands of dreamers and misfits; and the harrowing, sexy, and sometimes hilarious stories of Cleve's relationships with friends and lovers during an era defined by both unprecedented freedom and violence alike. When We Rise is not only the story of a hero to the LGBTQ community, but the vibrantly voiced memoir of a full and transformative American life."--Dust jacket.… (more)
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Unfortunately, as things go in life, Phoenix and Arizona proved to be too small a canvas for him, and though he eventually ended up in San Francisco, several years passed before he really found himself, or rather, before Harvey Milk enlisted him in the effort to defeat the Briggs Amendment. It was then that he began to really shine.
There is a line in the book, where Cleve asks Dustin Lance Black: "What is it like to be part of a generation with no purpose." For years I think, that is what the gay community felt like. We were content with going to the bar, doing drugs, having sex, and shopping for clothes. It could be argued that movies like Milk, and the battle over Prop 8 awakened something within the community, and the battle for marriage sparked once again a sense of community and movement. And now, during this movement we must look to the leaders who forged the path, like Jones, to help us pave a future.
It's true this memoir is not only about gay rights and the movement Cleve was apart of. It was also about Cleve's life, both before he knew Harvey Milk and after.
My favorite parts of the books are the times when he reflects on the way he fantasized about San Fransisco and how he dreamed of escaping there, and then when he did, the way he paints the city during his youth. You can feel the love and the nostalgia seeping through the pages. It makes me long for that feeling! I have always dreamed of San Fransisco since I was a teenage and fantasized about living there and walking the streets. This book makes me wish it was still the same city Cleve grew up in.
I will do my best to ensure anyone I can convince, that they should read this, do so. We need to remember these people. We need to remember these stories. They are the foundation that built our movement. We have some big shoes to fill.
It was amazing reading Cleve's story, and he has cemented a place in my heart as one of my heroes. His ending passage resonates, and will stay with me forever; "My generation is disappearing; I want the new generations to know what our lives were like, what we fought for, what we lost, and we won."
Seriously.
And finally, reckon with the discovery that it is happening to friend after friend and that Medicine offers palliative consolations at best, the illness itself regarded as the collateral consequence of who you are. It is sickness, it is stigma, it is the destroyer of worlds in which you and your friends breathed.
Now you are prepared to read When We Rise: My Life in the Movement, a memoir by Cleve Jones.
The book is partly the story of how the gay community came to make itself visible to America. It’s also a story of how at least some individuals discovered for themselves a way to find joy. These breakthroughs were accompanied by losses of a scope not commonly experienced outside war, famine, or tyranny.
This memoir is a journey in four parts: The hidden anxieties of childhood—The awakenings and excitements of young adulthood—The intrusion of tragedies—The responses of an activist. While the account of Cleve’s lively young adulthood took some effort to traverse (if you’re keen to hear about his sexual adventures you’ll feel differently) the rest was mostly absorbing.
Near the end of the 1970s the author’s youthful interest in political action was intensified by the impact of the murders of San Francisco politicians Harvey Milk and George Moscone, and then again by the arrival of a syndrome later named AIDS. Some of the public and some politicians claimed that victims of AIDS weren’t victims but instead persons receiving the wrath God’s justice warranted, and seemed even to celebrate the opportunity to believe this was true. It is irony, then, that by helping unmask the relative anonymity of gay people in America that had existed, the crisis caused by AIDS contributed to changes that ultimately led to authorizing gay marriage.
What created this transformation? It was ignited by the work of activists, among whom was the author, originator of the AIDS Memorial Quilt. The last parts of Cleve Jones’s story focus on this work. The rising was made possible first by individual courage and then by the urgency accompanying the grief and desperation and anger brought by AIDS. It was a difficult fight they fought and fight still. When We Rise is one way to know it better, and with respect.
I’m in the same
I wish he hadn’t changed any names because I am wondering about one man I knew back then and wonder whether he was mentioned in the book but with a pseudonym. A couple more guys too.
Cleve Jones is so personable, and delivers such great storytelling. I found it hard to put this book down, except at times when painful happenings were being covered, and even then.
The author has had an interesting, eventful life.
Even though the book goes in chronological order, there is quite a bit of repetition, but it wasn’t too distracting or annoying.
At the end does touch on our current situation. As I got toward the end I felt more depressed because of what we’re going through right now, but this account does a good job of having the reader see the big picture and seeing the process needed to make positive changes. It’s hard not to get discouraged though fighting the same old battles over and over and over again. This goes for so many issues!
I already knew so much of what I read, though some of the details toward the end of events, during the 21st century, I didn’t know it all, particularly the infighting/disagreements within different groups in the movement, and they remind me more than a bit of the vegan/animal rights/environmental movements, and I’m hoping maybe we can continue to learn from one another.
My emotions were all over the place as I relived the social and personal aspects of my life over these decades. I found it both fun and painful.
I think the pacing and structure were good. The author explains at the end a change he made in how much of what was covered and I do think the choice was good, even though much of the worst of the AIDS epidemic felt skimmed over to me.
A lot of name dropping but he is entitled! And there are always valid reasons for when he does it!
Highly recommended for those who lived it or witnessed it, who lived during these decades, particularly if readers were young adults in the 70s, and also those who are curious about the period and those who want to understand how history makes our present. Through all times and causes/issues. Recommended also for people who enjoy good coming of age and aging memoirs.
Thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I recommend this to anyone who wants to know more about the movement for equal rights for LGBTQ people. As a gay man close in age to Cleve, and one
As a memoir of his life it also brought back so many of my own memories of the times we've lived through. I had the good fortune to meet the author in the early 2000's when he talked about his work on the Quilt to a conference of gay men meeting in San Francisco. I was impressed then with his easy way with a story and that comes through here in this book.