Cleve Jones’ memoir says gay rights movement saved his life
Cleve Jones’ memoir says gay rights movement saved his life
Here, Jones became a central figure in an effort that helped elect the first openly gay person to a public office in California, and served as a nationwide catalyst for civil rights.
“It’s turned out to be very timely, because of the election,” Jones said of the book, but I felt there was an urgency to it anyway, because my generation of gay men is disappearing rapidly; half of us were killed by AIDS, and those of us who survived are getting old.
[...] I wanted young people to know about that time, when it was still a criminal offense to be gay — before we had political power, before we were represented in pop culture — we did nonetheless have lives and engaged in struggle.
While more than half of “When We Rise” chronicles life before the onset of the AIDS pandemic in 1982, it also follows Jones into the present, and we see him rise from the shy, terrified child planning suicide to a leader of a national movement, marching with the quilt in President Bill Clinton’s inauguration parade; at the Academy Awards as “Milk” won best original screenplay and best actor; and through the passing, upholding and overturning of the anti-marriage-equality Proposition 8 and the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, in 2015, that legalized same-sex marriage.
“When We Rise” is the partial inspiration for the forthcoming ABC miniseries of the same title, written by Dustin Lance Black, produced by Gus Van Sant and starring Guy Pearce as Jones.
U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera reads at UC Berkeley’s Lunch Poems series (12:10 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 1, 101 Library Court, Morrison Library in Doe Library, Berkeley, free). www.lunchpoems.berkeley.edu
Bay Area poets celebrate the life and work of Max Ritvo, who was diagnosed with cancer at age 16 and died this year at 25, on the occasion of the publication of his collection of poems, “Four Reincarnations” (Milkweed Editions) (7:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 1, Amado’s, 998 Valencia St., S.F., free). www.greenapplebooks.com
The third annual Howard Zinn Book Fair brings together authors, academics, zinesters and other critical thinkers for a day of readings, panels and workshops “exploring the value of dissident histories towards building a better future.”
The more than 40 sessions include everything from “Radical Approaches to Early Childhood Education” to “Abolishing Corporate Rights Through Politics and Art” (10 a.m. Sunday, Dec. 4, City College, 1125 Valencia St., S.F., free). www.howardzinnbookfair.com