Stitching a Revolution - The Making of an Activist
Jones, Cleve; Dawson, Jeff
ISBN 10: 0062516418 / ISBN 13: 9780062516411
Published by HarperOne, 2000
Bibliographic Details
Title: Stitching a Revolution - The Making of an ...
Publisher: HarperOne
Publication Date: 2000
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Fair
About this title
Synopsis:
From the frontlines of one of the greatest human struggles of our time comes this powerful and moving tale. Both an important cultural history of the
AIDS crisis and an intimate personal memoir, Stitching a Revolution is the story of a man who, besieged by discrimination, death, and despair, found the
courage and strength of spirit to conceive and create a unique healing vision-the AIDS Memorial Quilt.
Against the turbulent backdrop of politics and sexual liberation in San Francisco during the seventies, Jones recounts his coming-of-age alongside friend
and mentor Harvey Milk--and, later, Milk's assassination and the ensuing riots that threatened to tear down all they had accomplished. But Jones's
political aspirations were put on hold after the emergence of an insidious, unexplainable "gay cancer" that would soon become known throughout the
world as AIDS. Demoralized by the tide of death and despair sweeping his community, brutally assaulted by gay-bashing thugs, and faced with the
specter of his own positive diagnosis, Jones sought a way to restore hope to a world falling apart beneath his feet.
What started out as a simple panel of fabric stitched for his best friend now covers a space larger than twenty-five football fields and contains over eighty
thousand names. The Quilt has affected the lives of many people, bridging racial, sexual, and religious barriers to unite millions in the fight against AIDS.
Stitching a Revolution is a compelling, dramatic tale with a cast of memorable characters from all walks of life. At times uplifting, at times
heartwrenching, this inspiring story reveals what it means to be human and how the power of love conquers all--even death.
Review:
There can be few American stories more inspiring than that of the tremendous 43,000-panel AIDS quilt, a national memorial as powerfully symbolic as
the Vietnam War Memorial--but made from a material as fragile and ephemeral as human life. The quilt is predicated on a simple concept: putting names
to those who have died of AIDS humanizes the statistics and forces those who visit the quilt to look beyond the stigmatized categories of gayness and
contagious disease that cling to the popular image of AIDS. Cleve Jones stitched the first panel in his backyard in February 1987 as a memorial to his best
friend, Marvin. He has been speaking in public about the quilt for many years now, and his narrative in Stitching a Revolution is smooth and engaging.
Perhaps his best quality as a storyteller is his generous recognition of others, shown in his memory of Rosa Parks in her Sunday hat: "When she handed
me the quilts she'd made for her neighbors," Jones recalls, "she wanted to relish only their lives, not the divisions--just memorialize her friends and what
they'd meant to her. You're doing a wonderful thing, young man, she'd said. There were no tears in her eyes, just a message for me to continue. Did my
fatigue show? Did she see that the death threats and potshots had taken their toll? Dismiss them, she seemed to say, and grow old. A challenge. I brighten
and feel combative." --Regina Marler
