SEAN STRUB~ TONIGHT @ ANTEBELLUM

if you want to know more about gay politics during the 80s & 90s and the beginnings of the 
AIDS crisis in america come to antebellum and meet the remarkable SEAN STRUB.

presents

the Los Angeles release of 

BODY COUNTS

 A MEMOIR OF POLITICS, SEX, AIDS & SURVIVAL

meet & greet the author

SEAN STRUB

reception & book signing

february 1st, 2014

6pm till 8pm 

ANTEBELLUM

1643 N LAS PALMS AVE

HOLLYWOOD, CA 90028

323 856~0667

antebellum@earthlink.net

http://antebellumgallery.blogspot.com/2013/12/sean-strub-reminds-us-how-it-was-during.html

Sean Strub, founder of the groundbreaking POZ magazine, producer of the hit play “The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me,” 

and the first openly HIV-positive candidate for US Congress, charts his remarkable life—

a story of politics and AIDS and a powerful testament to loss, hope, and survival. 

As a politics-obsessed Georgetown freshman, Sean Strub arrived in Washington, DC, from Iowa in 1976, with a plum part-time job running a Senate elevator in the US Capitol. 

But he also harbored a terrifying secret: his attraction to men. As Strub explored the capital’s political and social circles, 

he discovered a parallel world where powerful men lived double lives shrouded in shame.When the AIDS epidemic hit in the early 1980s, 

Strub was living in New York and soon found himself attending “more funerals than birthday parties.” 

Scared and angry, he turned to radical activism to combat discrimination and demand research. Strub takes readers through his own diagnosis and inside ACT UP, 

the activist organization that transformed a stigmatized cause into one of the defining political movements of our time.

From the New York of Studio 54 and Andy Warhol’s Factory, to the intersection of politics and burgeoning LGBT and AIDS movements,

 Strub’s story crackles with history. He recounts his role in shocking AIDS demonstrations at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the home of US Senator Jesse Helms. 

Body Counts is a vivid portrait of a tumultuous era, with an astonishing cast of characters, including Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Keith Haring, Bill Clinton, Yoko Ono, and others.

By the time a new class of drugs transformed the epidemic in 1996, Strub was emaciated and covered with Kaposi’s sarcoma lesions, the scarlet letter of AIDS.

He was among the fortunate who returned, Lazarus-like, from the brink of death. 

Strub has written a vital, inspiring memoir, unprecedented in scope, about this deeply important period of American history.

ENVISIONING EMANCIPATION

These are the never-before-seen faces of slavery and Emancipation, revealing families' lives before and after they were freed.

The images themselves played a key part in allowing the men, women and children freedom - being distributed through the northern states as propaganda during the push for abolition, and employed by former slaves to showcase their new images.

More than 150 of the photographs feature in a new book, Envisioning Emancipation, which has been published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 on January 1.

Following the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the use of photography evolved - eventually being used by black men and women to show off their new, postslavery looks and to portray their hopes of freedom.

Subsequently, the book, which was published earlier this month, shows how photography was central in the war against slavery, racism and segregation

READ MORE

MEIN SCHWULES AUGE/MY GAY GAZE #9

the new issue of ~ MEIN SCHWULES AUGE/MY GAY GAZE #9~ is out now.. 
edited by RINALDO HOPF, this series is becoming a homo~tradition. each issue is a masterpiece on it's own. order all issues if you can. they promise to become collectors items.

MEIN SCHWULES AUGE / MY GAY GAZE 9Edited by RINALDO HOPF (images) & AXEL SCHOCK (texts) 
Anthology, 288 pages, German & English

all images courtesy~ rinaldo hopf~ berlin/antebellum correspondent

HELP ME

 

(Abilene Cooper (above) who claims kathryn stockett used her life to write her bestseller) Millions have read Kathryn Stockett’s bestselling novel THE HELP with a mixture of fascination and raw, often tearful, emotion. Based on the lives of black servants in America’s Southern states of the Sixties, it is a sharply observed portrait of a racially charged, segregationist world that some might say has barely passed. It has also proved a literary phenomenon, selling five million copies worldwide, 500,000 of them in Britain. ]Disney’s film version of THE HELP i a big hit with the critics. When Abilene Cooper picked up her copy, however, her reaction was rather different. Instead of sympathy for the characters of The Help, there was anger and devastation. As she turned the pages she came to believe that the story at the heart of the book – an unlikely friendship between a white girl and a black maid – was her own. Her life, she believes, has been stolen, without acknowledgment or payment. Certainly the name is hers, although in the book the heroine is spelt Aibileen. The city, Jackson, Mississippi, is correct, and like the characters in The Help, she has spent much of her life working in white households. Intriguingly, these include the household of Kathryn Stockett’s brother and sister-in-law, where she has been a maid and nanny for 12 years. brothers were involved in the civil rights protests and my daddy feared for our lives and my momma walked around praying. The Help compares Aibileen’s skin colour to a cockroach: ‘He black,’ Abilene says of the insect, ‘blacker than me. How can Kathryn live with herself after writing that? How can a person be that cruel? 'I think she is just a racist. She claims she respects black people but she just ran all over me.’ Stockett contends that she modelled Aibileen on a long-dead black maid called Demetrie who worked for the author’s family in Jackson: ‘The Help is purely fiction and the character was loosely inspired by my own relationship with Demetrie.’ In Stockett’s story, the white girl Skeeter persuades Aibileen and 12 out their lives. 

 (Kathryn Stockett has sold more than five million copies of THE HELP. she says, "i don't owe Abilene Cooper one penny.")

 When her book is accepted for publication, she gives them all the proceeds. Stockett, however, is trying to get Abilene’s complaint thrown out of court and insists she isn’t entitled to a penny. Despite going to the trouble of sending the maid the book and the note, the author is airily dismissive of Abilene’s claim. ‘If I add it up, the number of seconds where we’ve seen each other would be maybe ten or 15,’ she says. ‘I met her twice.’ In New York, perhaps, such a response would be acceptable, but not here. It wasn’t until 1994 that Byron de la Beckwith, a Ku Klux Klan member, was jailed for the murder of Medgar Evers – 31 years later. Black maids still raise the children of ‘white folks’ and the two communities live separate lives. This is Mississippi. Time passes slowly, and Abilene believes she has become a victim of the same prejudices that blighted her childhood. READ MORE-

BOOK REVIEW- MODERN DAY PINOCCHIO

STRINGS ATTACHED- Modern Day Pinocchio
by nick nolan- Little Eden Press, 2006.



review by AMOS LASSEN

Nick Nolan, author of “Strings Attached” has rewritten the story of Pinocchio for modern times. This modern version is intriguing and grabs you at the first page and keeps you enchanted until the last page. Nolan gives us the story of one youth’s struggle to grow up and become a man. Beautifully told, it grabs at your heart and emotions and does not let go. It is compelling–especially as it deals with the main character’s, Jeremy’s, entrance into the ambiguities of sex. The book has several layers and is a sharp social commentary on the way we live and face change. Like a puppet, Jeremy. Is pulled in many directions and is at the will of others until; he can make the decision to be who he wants to be.

Jeremy is seventeen years old and stands at the threshold of an entrance into a world that he has never really considered. He had been dependent upon his mother, Tiffany, an alcoholic but when she goes into rehab, his life changes drastically. He goes to live with a very wealthy couple at their estate and goes from poverty to the world of wealth. Because he feels he has landed in a paradise, he endeavors to fit into the upper class of Bellena Beach. The fact that his new “mother”. Katherine is excessively wealthy gas him access into a world he knew little about. Coupled with that are his good looks and lithe physique so his transition did not seem to be too difficult. But this move into the world of the ‘haves” comes with a price—his new “parents” feel they can tell him what to do and because he wants so badly to fit in with the gang causes him to lose his own sense of what is real. When he begins to date a member of the social elite, he hopes that he will be able to rid himself of the feelings he has for members of his own sex but that idea is soon torn asunder by two boys who are out to prove to Jeremy that moving up the social ladder is not so easy.

Jeremy’s father had been murdered earlier and a mysterious phone call not only identifies the murderer but says that Jeremy will befall the same fate. It is here that Jeremy decides that it is time to become a man and turns to the butler for guidance. The butler, however, seems to have a secret all of his own.

A myriad of characters and a skillful plot make this one exciting read. “Strings Attached” has a little something for everyone—the supernatural, murder, coming of age, social commentary but most of all it has a great deal to read.
AMOS LASSEN