Cynthia Carr

This was an astounding work on an astounding life and talent. So much detail, elaborate research and retelling, painstaking work to construct a life in words. You will feel angry and astonished and exhilarated, you will feel completely inadequate creatively. It is a fantastic history of an artist and of a time and of a subculture, it is a snapshot into a New York City that no longer exists. It is a story of AIDS and AIDS activism and a country that turned its back on a group of people, and could have stood alone as a book. The NEA saga could also be its own book. You will learn. Even if you think you know Wojnarowicz, you will learn.

It is also a memorial. It was painful to read of AIDS related death after AIDS related death but I appreciated the memorializing that took place for each person lost.

Warning, this is a very long book. I put it on my Kindle without checking page count and then realized once engrossed that I was barely 1/4 of the way there. And it seemed impossible to read anything else while in the middle of it.

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David Wojnarowicz has been one of my favorite artists since I first discovered him in the early 1980's. He is remembered most for his controversial works and the conservative backlash against them. He was a gay man and much of his subject matter considered his sexuality and the AIDS crisis. He was a street kid for a period of time and wrote a comic about that time period that I adore, 7 Miles a Second (I just saw that it's being re-released by Fantagraphics this February). His work is deeply personal and done in many mediums. He was a prolific writer, as well, and published a number of semi-autobiographical works. I admire his body of work, his courage, and the journey of his life. He died of AIDS in 1992 - a sad loss - but his works remain controversial everywhere they are exhibited. Fire in the Belly is a very good, very detailed biography of Mr. Wojnarowicz diligently researched and well-written. A no-holds barred read, this is highly recommended.… (meer)

Marion, Indiana is the last place you'd think of as a KKK hotbed. Yet, in 1930, two African-Americans (and nearly a third man) were lynched by a mob who thought that they had raped a white woman. The author's grandfather was part of the group, and she combines the search for the truth, conversations with the elderly survivor, and later in the book, interviews with Klan members in the area. You're left with a distinctly uneasy feeling that the final revelations of an ex-Knight do not entirely appease.… (meer)