05/12/2017
A book which spawned an inspirational film on the AIDS activism era, called “How to Survive a Plague” has won a prestigious literary award. Fifty eight year old David France has won the Baillie-Gifford prize for his account of being a young gay man moving to New York in 1981, just as the first cases of what had hitherto been described as “junkie pneumonia” surfaced in the gay male communities. Mr France told journalists that for a long while, gay men who had been through the harrowing eighties and lost scores of friends, had difficulty processing the emotional legacy of what they had been through. Even after the introduction of anti-retroviral therapies in the mid 1990's, it took a long time to sink in that the worst was over. Today, Mr France, said, we can look at the triumphs of the era. For example, the AIDS Activist group ACT-UP, which still functions today, started in May 1987 and brought together gay men, lesbians who brought experience of the feminist health movement, people of colour and IV drug users in unity against the indifference of the authorities. The book “How to Survive a Plague” is available at all good booksellers, including LGBT specialist ones like Gay's The Word and News from Nowhere.
