The Gentrification of Spirits

Gentrification des esprits is a captivating look back at the AIDS crisis and ACT UP activism in New York in the 1980s and 1990s. Sarah Schulman, herself a New Yorker and LGBT activist, remembers the disappearance of the city center, practically overnight, of queer rebel culture, low-cost rents and the prolific artistic movement that was developing in the heart of Manhattan, replaced by conservative gay spokespersons, as well as by mass consumerism. She describes with precision and commitment "replacing one community with another" and the process of gentrification which affected these districts concomitantly with the crisis of AIDS. Sarah Schulman