A revelatory portrait of McCarthy-era Manhattan—back in print! It is 1948 in Manhattan. Aspiring reporter Sylvia Golubowsky pays her dues in the steno pool at the tabloid New York Star, along with sixteen other girls whose eyes are on the back of the chair in front of them, the next step up the ladder. At the rival paper across town, gossip columnist Austin Van Cleeve rules New York and Washington with his venomous pen. In the Village, Columbia University graduate Cal Byfield is stuck flipping burgers to support his dream of a Negro theater on Broadway. Against the backdrop of post–World War II New York City and under the growing shadow of the Red Scare, these three indelible characters collide with one another amidst the larger drama of the historical moment. In a fresh re-interpretation of the McCarthy era, Sarah Schulman reframes our understanding of the “blacklist� to show how racial and sexual discrimination create their own ongoing exclusions and how the politics of treachery affect the most intimate relationships. First published in 1998, Shimmer draws parallels between the McCarthy era and contemporary American life and upends the tropes of film noir, pulp fiction, and set pieces of midcentury America by positioning a Black man and a queer Jewish woman as emblematic Americans. In a story set before the advent of the collective revolutionary movements of the 1960s, Cal and Sylvia learn the hard way that the American Dream was not available to them. This new edition of Shimmer includes a postscript by the author.

Sarah Schulman's writing is bold, provocative, and refreshingly unrepentant. First published in 1994, My American History: Lesbian and Gay Life During the Reagan and Bush Years combines critical commentary with a rich and varied collection of news articles, letters, interviews, and reports in which the author traces the development of lesbian and gay politics in the U.S. In her coverage of many tireless campaigns of activism and resistance, Sarah Schulman documents a powerful political history that most people - gay or straight - never knew happened. In her Preface to this second edition, Urvashi Vaid argues for the continued relevance of Schulman's writing to activism in the 21st century, particularly in light of the resurgence of the right in American politics. Also included is a selection of articles by Sarah Schulman for Womanews, in their original print format, with illustrations by Alison Bechdel. The book closes with an interview with the author, conducted by Steven Thrasher, especially for this new edition. It explores AIDS and homophobia during the Reagan/Bush administrations and at the dawn of the Trump era. My American History is a collection that gives voice to both the personal and political struggles of feminist and lesbian and gay communities in the 1980s. It is an important historical record that will enlighten and inform activists, as well as academics of women's, gender and sexuality studies, in the 21st century.

In this gripping memoir of the AIDS years (1981OCo1996), Sarah Schulman recalls how much of the rebellious queer culture, cheap rents, and a vibrant downtown arts movement vanished almost overnight to be replaced by gay conservative spokespeople and mainstream consumerism. Schulman takes us back to her Lower East Side and brings it to life, filling these pages with vivid memories of her avant-garde queer friends and dramatically recreating the early years of the AIDS crisis as experienced by a political insider. Interweaving personal reminiscence with cogent analysis, Schulman details her experience as a witness to the loss of a generationOCOs imagination and the consequences of that loss.

Sarah Schulman's writing is bold, provocative, and refreshingly unrepentant. First published in 1994, My American History: Lesbian and Gay Life During the Reagan and Bush Years combines critical commentary with a rich and varied collection of news articles, letters, interviews, and reports in which the author traces the development of lesbian and gay politics in the U.S. In her coverage of many tireless campaigns of activism and resistance, Sarah Schulman documents a powerful political history that most people - gay or straight - never knew happened. In her Preface to this second edition, Urvashi Vaid argues for the continued relevance of Schulman's writing to activism in the 21st century, particularly in light of the resurgence of the right in American politics. Also included is a selection of articles by Sarah Schulman for Womanews, in their original print format, with illustrations by Alison Bechdel. The book closes with an interview with the author, conducted by Steven Thrasher, especially for this new edition. It explores AIDS and homophobia during the Reagan/Bush administrations and at the dawn of the Trump era. My American History is a collection that gives voice to both the personal and political struggles of feminist and lesbian and gay communities in the 1980s. It is an important historical record that will enlighten and inform activists, as well as academics of women's, gender and sexuality studies, in the 21st century.

In this chronicle of political awakening and queer solidarity, the activist and novelist Sarah Schulman describes her dawning consciousness of the Palestinian liberation struggle. Invited to Israel to give the keynote address at an LGBT studies conference at Tel Aviv University, Schulman declines, joining other artists and academics honoring the Palestinian call for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel. Anti-occupation activists in the United States, Canada, Israel, and Palestine come together to help organize an alternative solidarity visit for the American activist. Schulman takes us to an anarchist, vegan cafe in Tel Aviv, where she meets anti-occupation queer Israelis, and through border checkpoints into the West Bank, where queer Palestinian activists welcome her into their spaces for conversations that will change the course of her life. She describes the dusty roads through the West Bank, where Palestinians are cut off from water and subjected to endless restrictions while Israeli settler neighborhoods have full freedoms and resources. As Schulman learns more, she questions the contradiction between Israel's investment in presenting itself as gay friendly-financially sponsoring gay film festivals and parades-and its denial of the rights of Palestinians. At the same time, she talks with straight Palestinian activists about their position in relation to homosexuality and gay rights in Palestine and internationally. Back in the United States, Schulman draws on her extensive activist experience to organize a speaking tour for some of the Palestinian queer leaders whom she had met and trusted. Dubbed "Al-Tour," it takes the activists to LGBT community centers, conferences, and universities throughout the United States. Its success solidifies her commitment to working to end Israel's occupation of Palestine, and it kindles her larger hope that a new "queer international" will emerge and join other movements demanding human rights across the globe.

For decades, history ignored the Nazi persecution of gay people. Only with the rise of the gay movement in the 1970s did historians finally recognize that gay people, like Jews and others deemed "undesirable," suffered enormously at the hands of the Nazi regime. Of the few who survived the concentration camps, even fewer ever came forward to tell their stories. This heart wrenchingly vivid account of one man's arrest and imprisonment by the Nazis for the crime of homosexuality, now with a new foreword by Sarah Schulman, remains an essential contribution to gay history and our understanding of historical fascism, as well as a remarkable testament to the resilience of those who experienced the unimaginable cruelty of the concentration camps.

Finalist for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbriath Award for Nonfiction, the Gotham Book Prize, the ALA Stonewall Israel Fishman Nonfiction Award, and the Lambda Literary LGBTQ Nonfiction Award. A 2021 New York Times Book Review Notable Book and a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. Longlisted for the 2021 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize. One of NPR, New York, and The Guardian's Best Books of 2021, one of Buzzfeed's Best LGBTQ+ Books of 2021, one of Electric Literature's Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2021, one of NBC's 10 Most Notable LGBTQ Books of 2021, and one of Gay Times' Best LGBTQ Books of 2021. This is not reverent, definitive history. This is a tactician's bible. --Parul Sehgal, The New York Times Twenty years in the making, Sarah Schulman's Let the Record Show is the most comprehensive political history ever assembled of ACT UP and American AIDS activism In just six years, ACT UP, New York, a broad and unlikely coalition of activists from all races, genders, sexualities, and backgrounds, changed the world. Armed with rancor, desperation, intelligence, and creativity, it took on the AIDS crisis with an indefatigable, ingenious, and multifaceted attack on the corporations, institutions, governments, and individuals who stood in the way of AIDS treatment for all. They stormed the FDA and NIH in Washington, DC, and started needle exchange programs in New York; they took over Grand Central Terminal and fought to change the legal definition of AIDS to include women; they transformed the American insurance industry, weaponized art and advertising to push their agenda, and battled--and beat--The New York Times, the Catholic Church, and the pharmaceutical industry. Their activism, in its complex and intersectional power, transformed the lives of people with AIDS and the bigoted society that had abandoned them. Based on more than two hundred interviews with ACT UP members and rich with lessons for today's activists, Let the Record Show is a revelatory exploration--and long-overdue reassessment--of the coalition's inner workings, conflicts, achievements, and ultimate fracture. Schulman, one of the most revered queer writers and thinkers of her generation, explores the how and the why, examining, with her characteristic rigor and bite, how a group of desperate outcasts changed America forever, and in the process created a livable future for generations of people across the world.

A fast-paced, electrifying chronicle of the Lower East Side's lesbian subculture in the 1980s, 'After Delores' is a noirish tale about a no-nonsense coffee shop waitress in New York who is nursing a broken heart after her girlfriend Dolores leaves her. Going on the prowl looking for a new girlfriend, her attempts to find love again are funny, sexy and, ultimately, even violent.

Based on more than two hundred interviews with ACT UP members and rich with lessons for today's activists, Let the Record Show is a revelatory exploration - and long-overdue reassessment - of the coalition's inner workings, conflicts, achievements, and ultimate fracture. Sarah Schulman, one of the most revered queer writers and thinkers of her generation, explores the how and the why, examining, with her characteristic rigor and bite, how a group of desperate outcasts changed America forever, and in the process created a liveable future for generations of people across the world.

‘A book of resistance and love, as urgently necessary now as it was thirty years ago’
OLIVIA LAING

First published in 1990, a blistering novel about a love triangle in New York during the AIDS crisis

It was the beginning of the end of the world but not everyone noticed right away.

It is the late 1980s. Kate, an ambitious artist, lives in Manhattan with her husband Peter. She’s having an affair with Molly, a younger lesbian who works part-time in a movie theater.

At one of many funerals during an unbearably hot summer, Molly becomes involved with a guerrilla activist group fighting for people with AIDS. But Kate is more cautious, and Peter is bewildered by the changes he’s seeing in his city and, most crucially, in his wife.

Soon the trio learn how tragedy warps even the closest relationships, and that anger – and its absence – can make the difference between life and death.

‘Strong, nervy and challenging’
New York Times

In this groundbreaking book, playwright and social critic Sarah Schulman explores the family, the first place where all people: straight, gay, and bisexual, learn homophobia. It is within the family that homophobia begins to control the lives of perpetrators and recipients. Written in the tradition of Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (Ballantine Books, 2000), which transformed rape from a private problem into an internationally recognised cultural crisis. Ties That Bind uncovers the hidden crime of `familial homophobia' and moves it into the open.

Stew is a 15-year-old boy who goes online looking for an older man to have sex with. But when his older boyfriend is arrested in an Internet paedophilia sting, Stew's life is exposed to his family and the town. Devastated by these revelations and left to fend for himself, he ends up committing murder.

Anna O. is a loner in New York, an office temp obsessed with a mysterious woman in white leather. Doc is a post-Freudian psychiatrist who hands out business cards to likely neurotics on street corners and is looking for his own fulfilment. They befriend each other in the netherworld of the lower east side.

Set in contemporary New York, 'Rat Bohemia' tells the story of Rita, a woman from Queens who works as a rat exterminator. Central to the story is the plight of David, a friend of Rita's who is dying of AIDS, and has been shunned by his family.

In Stagestruck noted novelist and outspoken critic Sarah Schulman offers an account of her growing awareness of the startling similarities between her novel People in Trouble and the smash Broadway hit Rent. Written with a powerful and personal voice, Schulman's book is part gossipy narrative, part behind-the-scenes glimpse into the New York theater culture, and part polemic on how mainstream artists co-opt the work of "marginal" artists to give an air of diversity and authenticity to their own work. Rising above the details of her own case, Schulman boldly uses her suspicions of copyright infringement as an opportunity to initiate a larger conversation on how AIDS and gay experience are being represented in American art and commerce. Closely recounting her discovery of the ways in which Rent took materials from her own novel, Schulman takes us on her riveting and infuriating journey through the power structures of New York theater and media, a journey she pursued to seek legal restitution and make her voice heard. Then, to provide a cultural context for the emergence of Rent-which Schulman experienced first-hand as a weekly theater critic for the New York Press at the time of Rent's premiere-she reveals in rich detail the off- and off-off-Broadway theater scene of the time. She argues that these often neglected works and performances provide more nuanced and accurate depictions of the lives of gay men, Latinos, blacks, lesbians and people with AIDS than popular works seen in full houses on Broadway stages. Schulman brings her discussion full circle with an incisive look at how gay and lesbian culture has become rapidly commodified, not only by mainstream theater productions such as Rent but also by its reduction into a mere demographic made palatable for niche marketing. Ultimately, Schulman argues, American art and culture has made acceptable a representation of "the homosexual" that undermines, if not completely erases, the actual experiences of people who continue to suffer from discrimination or disease. Stagestruck's message is sure to incite discussion and raise the level of debate about cultural politics in America today.

It's summer in New York and at the Kitsch-Inn, the girls are hard at work on their lesbian version of A Streetcar Named Desire. As the temperature rises, enter Lila Futuransky, looking for adventure, with her keys in her pocket and a copy of On the Road in her hand.

For decades, history ignored the Nazi persecution of gay people. Only with the rise of the gay movement in the 1970s did historians finally recognize that gay people, like Jews and others deemed “undesirable,� suffered enormously at the hands of the Nazi regime. Of the few who survived the concentration camps, even fewer ever came forward to tell their stories. This heart wrenchingly vivid account of one man's arrest and imprisonment by the Nazis for the crime of homosexuality, now with a new preface by Sarah Schulman, remains an essential contribution to gay history and our understanding of historical fascism, as well as a remarkable and complex story of survival and identity.