When We Rise: My Life in the Movement

When We Rise: My Life in the Movement

by Cleve Jones
When We Rise: My Life in the Movement

When We Rise: My Life in the Movement

by Cleve Jones

Hardcover

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Overview

This sweeping memoir tells the life story of longtime LGBTQ and AIDS activist Cleve Jones in a profoundly moving account from sexually liberated 1970s San Francisco, through the AIDS crisis, and up to his 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 gay 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 co-founding of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation during the terrifying early years of the epidemic; his conception of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, the largest community art project in history; the bewitching story of 1970s San Francisco and the magnetic spell it cast for thousands of young gay people and other misfits; and the harrowing, sexy, and sometimes hilarious stories of Cleve's passionate relationships with friends and lovers during an era defined by both unprecedented freedom and and violence alike.

When We Rise is not only the story of a hero to the LQBTQ community, but the vibrantly voice memoir of a full and transformative American life.

Lambda Literary Award Winner

The partial inspiration for the ABC television mini-series!

"You could read Cleve Jones's book because you should know about the struggle for gay, lesbian, and transgender rights from one of its key participants—maybe heroes—but really, you should read it for pleasure and joy."—Rebecca Solnit, author of Men Explain Things to Me


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780316315432
Publisher: Hachette Books
Publication date: 11/29/2016
Pages: 304
Product dimensions: 9.00(w) x 6.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Cleve Jones' career as an activist began in San Francisco in 1970s where he befriended pioneer gay rights leader Harvey Milk. After Milk's death, Jones co-founded the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and conceived the idea of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, which memorializes over 85,000 Americans who have died from AIDS. He lives in San Francisco and works as a labor activist.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

1 Ghost Ranch 1

2 Gay Liberation Arizona Desert 15

3 Polk Street 24

4 Betty Blender Finds a Tree House 27

5 Struggling for Solidarity 44

6 Going to the Tubs 55

7 On the Road 61

8 Père Lachaise 68

9 On Barer Strasse 79

10 Homesick 93

11 Ten Million Queers 97

12 Back to Scott 106

13 Anita Bryant 109

14 Summer of '77 117

15 Supervisor Harvey Bernard Milk 126

16 Building the Army 136

17 Raise the Sky 148

18 A Victory and a Massacre 155

19 A Long Winter 164

20 White Night 170

21 We March on Washington 179

22 Sacramento 186

23 The Avalanche 196

24 One Thousand Dead 200

25 Needle and Thread 210

26 A Stupid Idea 216

27 We Bring a Quilt 223

28 Ricardo 228

29 Loma Prieta 231

30 Counting the Days 234

31 The President Sees the Quilt 239

32 A New World 247

33 Making Milk 255

34 Proposition 8 260

35 New Life 266

36 Meet in the Middle 271

37 National Equality March 277

38 Equality Across America 279

39 "Something greater than once they were." 283

Acknowledgments 288

What People are Saying About This

New York Times-bestselling author of the Tales of the City series - Armistead Maupin

"Some people witness history; other actually make it happen. Cleve Jones, by planting himself boldly in the eye of the storm, has succeeded brilliantly at doing both."

bestselling author of The Season of the Witch and The Devil's Chessboard - David Talbot

"When We Rise is a song to what's best in us, when we join together in a movement that takes us higher. The story Cleve Jones tells—of a bullied boy from the sun-blasted Arizona suburbs, who finds an extended family among the street kids of San Francisco and then within the gay movement that revolutionized the world—is thrilling to read. The path to freedom is littered with the names of fallen loved ones. But through all the sorrows and setbacks, Jones persevered—and the movement for human liberation that he helped lead still rises."

Rob Reiner

"Cleve Jones is a history buff who has himself become part of history. He has been at the epicenter of the LGBT movement for over 45 years. Now, in When We Rise, Cleve takes us along on his personal journey in the fight for equal rights—a journey filled with humor, sadness, love and ultimately profound change."

Gus Van Sant

"I loved this amazing, inspiring, and sometimes outrageous book. When We Rise is about the building of a movement—and the building of Cleve Jones, who came to San Francisco as a teenage adventurer and transformed into an activist whose contributions helped change the course of gay history."

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