My Government Means to Kill Me-Rasheed Newson
This book is packed with information mixed with an engaging fictional narrative
Content Warnings: Racism, homophobia, violence, sexual harassment, mild sexual content,
Favorite Quote: “Neither movement welcomed us to lead the parades. You had to sort of choose one, knowing that the side you cast your lot with would still question your loyalty.”
My Government Means to Kill Me is a historical fiction novel that explores the contributions and experiences of Black gay men in the fight for a public and government response to the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Packed full of real historical information, this novel balances the entertaining narrative of a coming-of-age novel with the insight of a historian. Told through the perspective of a fictional character Trey Singleton, the novel brings readers intimately into the gay rights movement, its leaders, and its organizations.
Trey is a young mid-western man who turns his back on his family’s wealth to move to New York where he feels his unconcealable queerness would be more accepted. Here he makes friends with another Black gay man who makes his way cruising wealthy White closeted men. Trey also finds a second home at one of the last remaining bathhouses in New York. Here Trey forms an instrumental friendship with the legendary civil rights activist Bayard Rustin. Under Rustin’s influence, Trey begins to grow into an active member of his various communities.
Though Trey largely stumbled into his role of an activist, he soon learns to use his charm and eloquence to build connections with people and makes it his mission to atone for a perceived sin of his past by helping others. This leads him to joining the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) early in its development.
Though Trey is a fictional character who did not have a real impact on the gay rights movement, he stands in the place of countless of real people who did. Through the eyes of Trey, readers are given an understanding of the time. We see the intersectional oppression he faces as an effeminate, Black, gay man. We learn about the innerworkings of cruising culture and gay dating in the 80s. And we see how historical narratives were shaped to sell civil rights movements to the public as well as the truth of their founding and organization. It is important in view this piece of work as still primarily fiction as it takes liberties describing real historical figures and movements including conversations that may or may not have taken place behind closed doors.