Category: On Books and Publishing

According to the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH), the latest statistics on HIV indicate that the populations at greatest risk for new infections are African-American men who have sex with men, and African-American women.  This is a marked shift from the early years of the epidemic, when HIV/AIDS was perceived—and stigmatized—as a white gay men’s disease.

Chicago’s annual Pride Parade is a popular spectacle for queer Chicagoans and their straight allies.  But even its most ardent supporters often wonder if Pride, meant to commemorate Stonewall, has retained its insurgent and activist roots. This year, a new group named Bash Back! decided to reclaim some of what it feels is the original spirit of Pride: protest, critique and anti-assimilationist politics.

The strange conclusion is a fitting end that may well be another beginning.

A poet who’s precise without being sterile and weighty without being burdensome.

But faith is formed by politics and history, and we sacrifice real political change when we render it in ahistorical terms.