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A review by yung_sch0lar
Hold Tight Gently: Michael Callen, Essex Hemphill, and the Battlefield of AIDS by Martin Duberman
5.0
Thoroughly researched. Captivating, gut-wrenching, inspiring, and heartbreaking all at the same time. I shed many tears reading this book. And it's amazing how much more clear-eyed, compassionate, and incisive the reporting and storytelling is here than in And the Band Played On. While reading that book was important for me at the time that I did, I am honestly somewhat amazed (and pretty frustrated) that books like Hold Tight Gently have not knocked Shilts' book off its pedestal within AIDS histories.
Mike Callen and Essex Hemphill are figures who should be far better known and far more revered than they are. And so much of that is simply because they left us so soon. Now, mostly, what we have is the work and the legacies they left behind. And thank god for that.
Mike Callen and Essex Hemphill are figures who should be far better known and far more revered than they are. And so much of that is simply because they left us so soon. Now, mostly, what we have is the work and the legacies they left behind. And thank god for that.