THE GENTRIFICATION OF MINDS - WITNESS TO A LOST IMAGINATION

The Gentrification of Minds is a captivating look back at the “AIDS years” and ACT UP activism in New York in the 1980s and 1990s. Sarah Schulman, herself a New Yorker and LGBT activist, remembers the disappearance, almost overnight, of queer rebel culture, of low rents and the prolific artistic movement that was developing in the heart of Manhattan; replaced by conservative gay spokespeople, as well as by mass consumerism. Sarah Schulman describes with precision and commitment the "replacement of one community by another" and the process of gentrification that affected these neighborhoods at the same time as the AIDS crisis. Schulman brings back to life for us her Lower East Side as she knew it. She fills the pages of this book with the vivid reminiscence of his friends from the queer avant-garde, as well as the disturbing shadow of the early years of the AIDS crisis, as experienced by a political scientist. Personal memories intertwine with a hard-hitting analysis of the two phenomena, and the weight invisible burden they have on American society today. Schulman makes account of his experience as a witness to the "loss of imagination" of an entire generation, and the consequences that this loss brings.