fucking everyone dyin’ and shit…fuckin’… that shit is made up man, i don’t know no kid with AIDS, you know what I’m sayin? Ain’t no one I know died from that shit…
Kids (1995)
The Beatnuts- No Escapin’ This
song from new york-based 90s colombian/dominican rap duo The Beatnuts. this song was made in 2001, but its title is fitting.
an efficient and elegant exposition scene from Michael John LaChiusa’s 2006 musical Bernarda Alba
(Source: Spotify)
“Now, for example, people with freckles aren’t thought of as a minority by the nonfreckled. They aren’t a minority in the sense we’re talking about. And why aren’t they? Because a minority is only thought of as a minority when it constitutes some kind of a threat to the majority, real or imaginary. And no threat is ever quite imaginary. Anyone here disagree with that? If you do, just ask yourself, What would this particular minority do if it suddenly became the majority overnight? You see what I mean? Well, if you don’t – think it over!
All right. Now along come the liberals – including everybody in this room, I trust – and they say, ‘Minorities are just people, like us.’ Sure, minorities are people – people, not angels. Sure, they’re like us – but not exactly like us; that’s the all-too- familiar state of liberal hysteria in which you begin to kid yourself you honestly cannot see any difference between a Negro and a Swede….”
So, let’s face it, minorities are people who probably look and act and – think differently from us and hay faults we don’t have. We may dislike the way they look and act, and we may hate their faults. And it’s better if we admit to disliking and hating them than if we try to smear our feelings over with pseudo liberal sentimentality. If we’re frank about our feelings, we have a safety valve; and if we have a safety valve, we’re actually less likely to start persecuting. I know that theory is unfashionable nowadays. We all keep trying to believe that if we ignore something long enough it’ll just vanish….
Where was I? Oh yes. Well, now, suppose this minority does get persecuted, never mind why – political, economic, psychological reasons. There always is a reason, no matter how wrong it is – that’s my point. And, of course, persecution itself is always wrong; I’m sure we all agree there. But the worst of it is, we now run into another liberal heresy. Because the persecuting majority is vile, says the liberal, therefore the persecuted minority must be stainlessly pure. Can’t you see what nonsense that is? What’s to prevent the bad from being persecuted by the worse? Did all the Christian victims in the arena have to be saints?
And I’ll tell you something else. A minority has its own kind of aggression. It absolutely dares the majority to attack it. It hates the majority–not without a cause, I grant you. It even hates the other minorities, because all minorities are in competition: each one proclaims that its sufferings are the worst and its wrongs are the blackest. And the more they all hate, and the more they’re all persecuted, the nastier they become! Do you think it makes people nasty to be loved? You know it doesn’t! Then why should it make them nice to be loathed? While you’re being persecuted, you hate what’s happening to You, you hate the people who are making it happen; you’re in a world of hate. Why, you wouldn’t recognize love if you met it! You’d suspect love! You’d think there was something behind it – some motive – some trick…”
excerpt from A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
timeline of AIDS- 1994
- (from aids.gov)
- AIDS becomes the leading cause of death for all Americans ages 25 to 44.
- On February 17, Randy Shilts, a U.S. journalist who covered the AIDS epidemic and who authored And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, dies of AIDS-related illness at age 42.
- On May 20, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) publishes Guidelines for Preventing Transmission of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Through Transplantation of Human Tissue and Organs.
- On August 5, the U.S. Public Health Service recommends thatpregnant women be given the antiretroviral drug AZT to reduce the risk of perinatal transmission of HIV.
- Pedro Zamora, a young gay man living with HIV, appears on the cast of MTV’s popular show, “The Real World.” He dies on November 11 at age 22.
- On December 23, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves an oral HIV test, the first non-blood-based antibody test for HIV.
- The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issues guidelines requiring applicants for grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to address “the appropriate inclusion of women and minorities in clinical research.”
the green dress
this is what I imagine Adela’s green dress to look like- vibrant, youthful, freeing. this is the dress that was once intended for her quincenera/debutante ball (which was cancelled due to her father’s death). this dress is especially important to her because it a) represents the life and freedoms she had before her mother took over the household and b) because of its color, it directly disobeys her mother’s rules, providing Adela with a rebellious outlet.
