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The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination

Sarah Schulman

4.18 · Rating details · 1,478 ratings · 169 reviews

In this gripping memoir of the AIDS years (1981–1996), Sarah Schulman recalls how much of the rebellious queer culture, cheap rents, and a vibrant downtown arts movement vanished almost overnight to be replaced by gay conservative spokespeople and mainstream consumerism. Schulman takes us back to her Lower East Side and brings it to life, filling these pages with vivid mem ...more

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Hardcover, 179 pages

Published February 6th 2012 by University of California Press (first published January 1st 2012)

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Jul 14, 2013 Elaine rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2013

There are times during this book when I wanted to throttle Schulman - some of her political analysis is facile and even knee-jerk, and she endows swathes of the population with a host of characteristics that she condemns as "gentrified", by which she sometimes means just traits that she doesn't like.

But there were also times when I felt like standing up in my train seat and cheering her on, because this book is saying in its cacophonous, slightly obnoxious way many true and heartbreaking things There are times during this book when I wanted to throttle Schulman - some of her political analysis is facile and even knee-jerk, and she endows swathes of the population with a host of characteristics that she condemns as "gentrified", by which she sometimes means just traits that she doesn't like.

But there were also times when I felt like standing up in my train seat and cheering her on, because this book is saying in its cacophonous, slightly obnoxious way many true and heartbreaking things that I have thought, wondered about or tried to avoid thinking. About the gentrification of New York, which I am both a part of and horrified by. (Although I could take her romanticization of
"her" East Village to task on an any number of levels, there is also much that is true and moving in what she writes. I am several years younger than Schulman, but still managed to bear witness to the transformation of the EV from gritty stinky dangerous urban landscape that was largely Latino but still with traces of early 20th century immigrations to a post-frat yuppie playground. And although she writes, in 2010, that she hopes the credit crisis has brought the gentrification of New York to a halt, I am part of - and saddened witness to - the absolute gentrification and mallification of more and more of Brooklyn with every passing week. The neighborhood I live in, where 15 years ago, everyone knew each other, men spoke Sicilian and Pugliese dialects on street corners outside social clubs and the best cannoli, pizza, mozzarella, sausage and panelle in the city could all be found in a few block stroll, welcomed its first Lulu Lemon a few weeks ago. And yes, I know I'm the target audience for the Lulu Lemon).

Schulman's sprawling yet slender book is "also" about the enormous trauma of losing a generation of gay men and others to AIDS, and about how that trauma is largely undiscussed and unacknowledged. (As a very young woman in New York in the early 90s, I used to deliver meals to dying men, horribly disfigured, men who to a man were at least a decade younger than I am now. At first, it irked me that they weren't more grateful for our charitable efforts. Then I realized how angry most of them were - and how they had every right to be so, abandoned, more or less, as they were.) The decade that separates me from Schulman means that my friends didn't die or (mostly) get infected, but I did once tease an older gay friend and colleague about surrounding himself with handsome men many years his junior. He, a consummate lawyer who never loses his cool, looked at me almost saddened by my ignorance, "Elaine, all my friends are dead." Schulman's book is that knife-like statement writ large and angry. She is a survivor, she is saying, and so are all of us, and our culture, and attention must be paid.

She also says stuff I think but daren't speak about often. About how the most transgressive of movements has become about marriage, that most conservative of institutions. And about the way that AIDS is a part of that. I don't agree with all of her analysis by any means. But I'm glad she's talking about it. Just as I'm glad that she's talking about women - and what the current self-inflicted cult of motherhood does to feminist anger and energy, and our hope that society could actually be different for women, and glad she's talking about the deep inequities in our society and the fundamentally meretricious story that is told people about the power of education to change those inequities. (The book touches on a lot of things!)

There's so much in this book. Not all of it is easy, especially since I can guess what Schulman would make of me (a few mutual friends float through this book - I wonder actually, if I've ever met her, but suspect she'd dismiss my straight/cis/white/uber-privileged self as so much cannon fodder - even though I'd love to have a conversation/ argument with her), and not all of it is right. But it's been a while since I have read a book that made me think, react so much - rolling my eyes one page, saluting her the next. And it only takes a few hours to read. Recommended - but not simple. ...more

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Dec 06, 2011 Mattilda added it

I've been waiting for this book for years, and take a look at this incredible paragraph:

"The deaths of these 81,542 New Yorkers, who were despised and abandoned, who did not have rights or representation, who died because of the neglect of their government and families, has been ignored. This gaping hole of silence has been filled by the deaths of 2,752 people murdered by outside forces. The disallowed grief of 20 years of AIDS deaths was replaced by ritualized and institutionalized mourning of ...more

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Apr 12, 2012 Liz rated it liked it

not three stars like "it was okay", three stars like "love-hate". I really want people to read this so we can talk about it, it's pretty short, come on

really into her fundamental thesis that it's productive to compare the erasure of marginalised (in this case, queer) histories to the erasure of marginalised neighbourhoods through gentrification — often literally, as in the case of the process of gentrification in new york being sped up by the aids-related deaths of queers in rent-controlled apar not three stars like "it was okay", three stars like "love-hate". I really want people to read this so we can talk about it, it's pretty short, come on

really into her fundamental thesis that it's productive to compare the erasure of marginalised (in this case, queer) histories to the erasure of marginalised neighbourhoods through gentrification — often literally, as in the case of the process of gentrification in new york being sped up by the aids-related deaths of queers in rent-controlled apartments. really into everything she says about history, historical erasure, the generation gap between young and old queers, the traumatic weight of AIDS deaths, the insidious professionalisation of the arts and consequent erasure of queer voices.

really not into the (commonly made) mistake throughout the book where she equates gentrification with homogenisation — gentrification is more often justified politically as a form of "integration", like bringing rich people or white people into predominantly poor or PoC neighbourhoods. it's very reliant on the idea of "mix", on urbanism as "mix", on selling the idea of living in a diverse bohemia. rich white gentrifiers generally don't just want to live in suburbia with smaller bathrooms, they want to consume multi-ethnic bohemia, the problem is that they do, it is consumed, eaten. like she's totally right that gentrification has more to do with capitalism and government policy than with artists. but artists in NYC in particular had a crucial and well-documented role in its gentrification. they didn't control it, they didn't cause it. but they were used for it.

really really not into her unforgivably silly and misogynist anti-child screed that blames lesbians who have children for like the individualisation and rightward trend of queer movement today because like they make schulman responsible for helping organising childcare which is demobilising and it's not like they have the energy to mobilise politically for childcare assistance which would be okay. what the fuck? fuck you. ...more

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Mar 03, 2016 Oriana rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: why-werent-you-better, read-2016

This is an incredibly fascinating, incredibly frustrating, incredibly heartbreaking, and incredibly enraging book.

So much of it is deeply moving, a howling cry from the trenches lamenting the endless horror of the AIDS crisis and the myriad ways an entire segment of our society was failed, over and over, by every single one of the powers that be. Schulman has clearly been through the shit, fighting for her life and the lives of all the queer artists around her who were dying, dying, dying.

But t ...more

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Feb 08, 2012 Alvin rated it it was amazing

I've always thought of Sarah Schulman as a hero for her work as an AIDS activist and Gay Libber, so I had high expectations for this book. I was not disappointed.

I know of nobody else who's so carefully analyzed the horrific consequences of gentrification and excessive social stratification on both culture and the individual human psyche. (Hint: people with gentrified minds tend to become boring conformists and/or social climbing snobs who identify with the ruling class, don't know understand h I've always thought of Sarah Schulman as a hero for her work as an AIDS activist and Gay Libber, so I had high expectations for this book. I was not disappointed.

I know of nobody else who's so carefully analyzed the horrific consequences of gentrification and excessive social stratification on both culture and the individual human psyche. (Hint: people with gentrified minds tend to become boring conformists and/or social climbing snobs who identify with the ruling class, don't know understand how privilege works, and don't know how to organize politically.) She gives a clear, concise history of the gentrification process from an economic and urban planning point of view, but also anchors it in concrete examples that bring it to life in all its ugliness. She does this while simultaneously recounting the history of AIDS and AIDS activism that was occurring at the same time. Can you say erudite?

A large part of the book is given over to a beautiful evocation of queer Bohemia as it existed before AIDS and gentrification. Schulman not only describes the social life of the era, but pays homage to a host of individual geniuses and trailblazers lost to the plague. There is no way to read this section without being awed and moved.

My one quibble with the book is that it's shot through with political assertions that, if one doesn't share all of Schulman's political beliefs (and I don't), may strike one as dubious. Fortunately, she makes these assertions openly, clearly, concisely, and passionately - which makes for lively reading. Unfortunately, she tends to have a rather low opinion of those who hold opposing viewpoints so every time I disagreed with something I imagined her muttering at me, "What can you expect from a privileged, white, male assimilationist?" (That may just be my post-traumatic-stress-disorder reaction from growing up around dogmatic Marxists.)

On a final note, Schulman talks a lot about her personal life as a queer novelist, activist, and teacher, analyzing these roles from a socio-political perspective of ruthless objectivity. Like Joan Didion only perhaps even more-so. She is clearly an admirable human being, devoted to both her ideals and the flawed human beings around her those ideals are meant to uplift. ...more

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Oct 18, 2014 6655321 rated it it was ok

Shelves: history-and-other-fictions, white-women-and-srs-bidness, guidebooks-and-other-misleading-inf, sexuality-and-other-terrors, queer-as-in-fuck-you

I wanted this to be better and there are parts of it that are so right on that i was pacing about nodding in support and then Schulman just crashes into a wall of blind support for the fucking worst ideas, nostalgia or some of the most blindly hagiographic discussions of New York City (a city which she credits with an almost absurd aura of culture mixing ignoring that white gay men who sereoconverted in the mid 1980s were sometimes part of art scenes that were displacing non-white non-middle cla ...more

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Feb 28, 2012 Jessica Silk rated it it was amazing

I agree with others who said this is an important book. Two parts I would like to share/save for myself:

"It's never going to change," a wealthy, white, male, MFA-trained playwright told me about the exclusion of women playwrights from the American theater. "And if you try, people will say you are difficult."
On the other hand, Audre Lorde--Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet--told me, "That you can't fight City Hall, is a rumor being spread by City Hall."

"Be we currently live with a stupefying ...more

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Aug 18, 2012 Sarah rated it really liked it

Shelves: history, nonfiction, lgbtqa

It's really easy for me to read books that I find comfortable. Books that make me happy, or soothe me, or amuse me. But I know that the books that upset me, or make me uncomfortable, or leave me awake in the middle of the night are frequently the ones that I really need to read.

I've been someone who has celebrated gentrified GLBTQ victories, and not even realized the ways in which they can be problematic. I'm a middle class cisgendered white girl who sometimes can't even see the structures of my ...more

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Jun 11, 2018 Julie Ehlers rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction

This book is definitely flawed and initially I spent quite a bit of time arguing with it. Fortunately, though, I quickly realized that Schulman was talking about things that I had literally zero firsthand experience with, and the thing to do was to STFU and listen. Everyone should read this book, but you should especially read it if you consider yourself a progressive and assume that you and Schulman are already in agreement about everything. There's a lot to think about here. ...more

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Jul 10, 2017 Merritt K. rated it it was amazing

This book is one gut punch after another -- even if you think you know what happened in the plague era of American AIDS history, you truly don't know how much you've lost until you read this kind of reflection. Absolutely essential to anyone seeking to understand contemporary queer culture and how we got here. ...more

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Apr 25, 2012 Caroline rated it liked it

Shelves: read-in-2013

How do I rate this book? Do I take away because I disagree with the author on many points, even if I understand and respect her anger and perspective? Do I give it 5 stars because it gave me so much to think (and talk) about? I have such conflicted feelings about this book. There are so many important messages, but there are just as many problematic messages. Perhaps more.

The strength and the weakness of this book is often how self-centered it is. The passion that drives Schulman's conviction a How do I rate this book? Do I take away because I disagree with the author on many points, even if I understand and respect her anger and perspective? Do I give it 5 stars because it gave me so much to think (and talk) about? I have such conflicted feelings about this book. There are so many important messages, but there are just as many problematic messages. Perhaps more.

The strength and the weakness of this book is often how self-centered it is. The passion that drives Schulman's conviction also drives many knee-jerk statements. She fails to discuss art and counter culture outside her own sphere, meanwhile making sweeping statements about the state of art in the 1990s and on. The period she describes as the beginning of this mental/cultural gentrification coincides with the time I was growing up and finding amazing resources for being a young radical.
She laments the lack of uncomfortable art following the AIDS crisis, but this is exactly the time of Riot Grrrl, a strong and powerful 'uncomfortable' art movement addressing feminist and queer issues. Boundaries were being pushed, just not in her scene. Her discussion of parenting is one of the most insulting things I have ever read on the topic and is little better than an argument telling women to stay barefoot and pregnant. The lack of discussion of race is striking. So much of this book exists in a vacuum, without really acknowledging it. But as a memoir of sorts, is it necessary? This is one of the many things I kept coming back to: every time I had a differing point of view from Schulman, I also had to think about how much of that is reflected in our different experiences, and how much that perspective influences how valid her (or my) points are.

But there were absolutely wonderful things about this book, particularly in the way it addresses being an activist. Schulman addresses the need to convey the costs of activism, to dispel any image of activism being for people who have nothing to lose. Instead, you can lose important things (for example, a homophobic family) but it is worth the cause, and the progress. She also addresses the need and importance of accepting being uncomfortable: with ourselves, and in interacting with others.

Overall, I found the writing lacking clear direction and too inaccessible. I am a highly educated person with a fair amount of counter culture history and theory under my belt, and I often struggled. That being said, I would definitely like to read this book again, and perhaps in a book club where I could discuss it with others. ...more

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Feb 17, 2018 Richard rated it it was amazing

Shelves: essays-crit, memoir, favorites, trauma, queer

BRILLIANT! ENRAGING! I want to quote the entire book. It's hard to talk about it. Really, you should just read it and let Schulman speak directly to you. If you are interested at all in supremacy, in erasure of history and culture. Queer folks especially should read Schulman and this book in particular, especially now when articles are coming out arguing that young queer people do not need to care about their history, the history of the people who created the opportunity for them to come out. Th ...more

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Feb 10, 2012 Charles Rice-Gonzalez rated it it was amazing

Urgent, wonderful and a must-read. With Gentrification of the Mind Sarah Schulman continues to be a contemporary voice for our society and culture that builds on our past and offers options for a vibrant future. This book will open your mind. I've read it three times which is as many times as I've her previous book Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia. She continues to raise the bar for writers and delivers a powerful experience to readers. ...more

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Mar 27, 2018 Conor Ahern rated it really liked it

Shelves: author-lgbtq, author-female, history, queer, politics, new-york, non-fiction

Part history, part memoir, part poetic meditation on what it means to live certain principles in a combative world, this book takes the AIDS epidemic and its aftermath as its subject, honoring those lost and pondering the vacuum their absence has left behind. Sarah Schulman is an academic and a writer who was involved with the endlessly creative and transgressive ACT UP group in the 1980s, and she is unsparing in her critique of the sanitized, jejune New York we've inherited from those who peris Part history, part memoir, part poetic meditation on what it means to live certain principles in a combative world, this book takes the AIDS epidemic and its aftermath as its subject, honoring those lost and pondering the vacuum their absence has left behind. Sarah Schulman is an academic and a writer who was involved with the endlessly creative and transgressive ACT UP group in the 1980s, and she is unsparing in her critique of the sanitized, jejune New York we've inherited from those who perished in the chaos and despair of the plague decades prior.

Schulman as much reminds as admonishes, telling us of all the warm souls and incandescent minds the world lost out on because of our sanctimony, or judgment, or indifference. Reading this, I was reminded of tales that my Jewish friends will tell of their grandmothers' non-sequitur lamentations over the loss of not just life but potential in the European Holocaust, something that we in younger generations can accept only because we have never inhabited a world where such horror was unthinkable. Such an incomprehensible, unconscionable loss.

Everyone should read this book. Schulman could have just written a maudlin AIDS dirge, but while she honors AIDS' victims, she also challenges us to embrace and cultivate weirdness, difference, adversity, and discomfort. If there's one lesson to take from this book, it's that queerness is about breaking the paradigm, not working to fit within it. And in this unfortunate political moment where anthems are held in higher esteem than the lives of people of color, urban wealth inequality has reached cartoonish heights, and the child survivors of gun massacres are criticized for not sufficiently respecting the politicians who have failed them, I think the following is important to keep in mind:

[W]e currently live with a stupefying cultural value that makes being uncomfortable something to be avoided at all costs. Even at the cost of living a false life at the expense of others in an unjust society. We have a concept of happiness that excludes asking uncomfortable questions and saying things that are true but which might make us and others uncomfortable. Being uncomfortable or asking others to be uncomfortable is practically considered antisocial because the revelation of truth is tremendously dangerous to supremacy. As a result, we have a society in which the happiness of the privileged is based on never starting the process towards becoming accountable. If we want to transform the way we live, we will have to reposition being uncomfortable as a part of life,
as part of the process of being a full human being, and as a personal responsibility.

...more

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Jul 15, 2013 Jason Gordon rated it really liked it

Sarah Schulman's book discusses the connection between the gentrification of cities and the gentrification of ideas. In the process of actual gentrification one population is not merely displaced or replaced by another, but a homogenized population is substituted for a diverse one. The gentrification of ideas undergoes a similar process. Diverse ideas are replaced by homogenized ones that reflect dominant attitudes and perceptions held by the powerful -- in effect 'alienating people from a concr ...more

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Jul 12, 2019 alex rated it did not like it

Shelves: biography-and-memoir

super ambivalent about this – some sharp observations about the assimilationist politics of cis gay white men & a valuable testimony from someone who survived the AIDS crisis, but i hated the I Am A Tortured Artist Take It Or Leave It strain, further thickened in the smug voice of the Misunderstood Older Person With Insider Knowledge & First-Hand Experiences, especially when it was used to legitimise her dissing of younger queers. that kind of woe-is-I attitude feels toxic, limiting and dangerou ...more

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Mar 12, 2012 Ammi Emergency rated it it was amazing

This is one of the most important books I've read in years. I read it in a day and have talked about its thesis every day since. So vital, so life giving, and exceptionally gorgeously written on a prose level too. ...more

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Jan 13, 2021 Navya rated it it was amazing

Shelves: queer, memoir-biography, non-fiction, history, readharder2021, 2021

4.5 stars

I am not quite sure what to say about the book, except that I absolutely loved it. I did not always agree with it though - it often made me swing from "YES THATS THAT AND SCHULMAN IS A GENIUS AND A GODDESS" to "uh, what", and often within the same paragraph. In her defense, Schulman does say that this might happen right in the introduction, so I won't hold it against her. That's one of the things I loved the most about this book, actually - reading it did not feel like a passive proces ...more

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Mar 30, 2012 A rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, read-2012

This is the most important book I've ever read. ...more

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Sep 03, 2015 rosalind rated it really liked it

Shelves: nonfiction, activism, disability, lgbtq, public-policy

really, really great, even if i disagreed with some of what schulman said. but if uc press feels like sending me a copy that doesn't have 20 pages missing, that'd be cool. ...more

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Jul 09, 2020 Li Sian rated it really liked it

A really important book about the generation of gay men that were lost to AIDS, and how their deaths (their deaths, chronicled in heartbreaking - and occasionally ironic, hilarious - detail on these pages) paved the way for the gentrification of the East Village and Manhattan as a whole. Schulman made me want to read more, explore more, take in art produced by this generation of lost and dead people.

It's weird, reading a book about the conservatism of the then-current (this book was published n ...more

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Apr 20, 2017 Heather rated it it was amazing

This was a fascinating read about the effects AIDS had by decimating a generation of bold queer artists.

She speaks about the "criminal class" which used to have a larger part in the artistic identity. And many more marvellous, provocative ideas.

And a surprisingly easy read for the complexity of subject matter. I tore through it. ...more

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Jan 21, 2021 Reagan Schweppe rated it really liked it

I cried reading this book, too. It was excellent, if a little opinionated. Thanks to Runnie for the recommendation!

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Jul 06, 2013 Finn rated it liked it

i read the other reviews here on goodreads and mostly agree. there were points where i was happy to think about an issue in a totally new light and other moments where i really wish i'd been spared the author's asides that were really unnecessary to her argument and ultimately turn off readers. (last night a friend told me she started the book and couldn't finish because she was so fed up with the author's off the cuff opinions about how rural places are not a place where new ideas can flourish i read the other reviews here on goodreads and mostly agree. there were points where i was happy to think about an issue in a totally new light and other moments where i really wish i'd been spared the author's asides that were really unnecessary to her argument and ultimately turn off readers. (last night a friend told me she started the book and couldn't finish because she was so fed up with the author's off the cuff opinions about how rural places are not a place where new ideas can flourish or blue states should secede from the red states..)

This book is clearly written for queer people and for that reason i think i've been given a few ideas to chew over that i'm grateful for, but it's hard for me to tell if other people who are not queer will gain the same usefulness. As the title suggests the book is not so much about the economic process of gentrification. it's about the cultural and social consequences of gentrification for queer people in cities. She uses the term "gentrified" all the time. it's hard to get used to. "gentrified art." "gentrified literature." words like colonization, white culture, western culture, capitalism, etc. all seem to get subsumed into this idea of "gentrification". it's unclear if this is purposeful to try to make you consider the changing landscapes of our cities in a new light, or if it's just ignorant and sees history in a really short-sighted way where "before gentrification" (post stonewall, pre AIDS epidemic in NYC) is seen as a time where these problems did not exist.

That being said she does talk about a history that has, for the most part, been ignored. and i think she's right in talking about gentrification's roll in erasing the history of queer people in cities as these beautiful rabble rousers living these free crazy lives and shaking up the foundations of art, heterosexuality, sex, and family. Much of that generation died of AIDS. At the same time those outliving the deceased were not permitted to take over lease agreements and since the AIDS crisis coincided with the rapid gentrification of neighborhoods where many queer people lived, the cities were effectively purged of most of these beautiful people. and with this whole missing gap in our own history it is easy to see how queer itself is now "gentrified" as schulman puts it.

basically you got to wade through some boring and/or questionable politics to get to the tidbits that make this book worth reading in the end. ...more

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Mar 15, 2012 Colin rated it really liked it

Shelves: autobiography, disabilitystudies, genderstudies, activisms, antiracism, queer, history

This is a really important, personal, thought-provoking book. I'm interested in the conversations this book could and should create. I do have some critiques; most importantly, I think Schulman fails to adequately address the depth and power of white supremacy in the process of gentrification. Instead she seems to equate the intention of white queers moving into neighborhoods that are predominately communities of color as either "good" (if you're a working white queer artist looking for variety) ...more

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Mar 14, 2020 Laura Linart rated it really liked it

Last summer, at a house party, I hid in a corner with a woman I like very much and discussed the lack of lesbian visibility. I tell this anecdote from time to time, for comic effect. But it's actually pretty sad, if you think about it.

I put a lot of books on my reading list and then, by the time I get to them, forget why I added them. This one in particular surprised me. Typically, I am not drawn to AIDS literature (and Schulman notes the concept of 'AIDS literature' is itself a symptom of gent ...more

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Sep 12, 2012 Elizabeth rated it really liked it

I read this in February and thought it was quite something. So powerful and captured my attention all the way through. Sad, bracing, and a critical work that helped me to understand individual and societal struggles of the 1980s as well as those of today. A crucial study that does not shy away from the truth.

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Apr 28, 2020 Pamela rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-in-2020

There was this tweet a while ago about the Dead Kennedys. The gist of it was: at 15 you think they know everything, later you realize everything is more complex and nuanced, later still you start to see things as part of an unchanging, unchangeable system, before (hopefully!) coming back around to realizing the Dead Kennedys were right about everything.

This book is kind of like that - it slaps the cobwebs away and makes you see all the bullshit you've slowly become resigned to over the years. E ...more

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Apr 05, 2017 Christine rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: queers, feminists, activists

Shelves: biography, non-fiction

"The deaths of these 81,542 New Yorkers, who were despised and abandoned, who did not have rights or representation, who died because of the neglect of their government and families, has been ignored. This gaping hole of silence has been filled by the deaths of 2,752 people murdered by outside forces. The disallowed grief of twenty years of AIDS deaths was replaced by ritualized and institutionalized mourning of the acceptable dead. In this way 9/11 is the gentrification of AIDS. The replacement ...more

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May 17, 2020 Chelsea Lawson rated it really liked it

I came across this book through How To Do Nothing, by Jenny Odell, and was planning on just scanning it when I took it out from the library. I got hooked though.

Other reviews on this page have summed up my thoughts well. Sometimes the way Schulman put many different issues all under the name of gentrification irked me, but on the whole the book struck me as true.

I am now much more in tune with the pain and grief homosexuals in this country hold, from deaths of whole communities in the 80s and ...more

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About Sarah Schulman

Sarah Schulman

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Sarah Schulman is a longtime AIDS and queer activist, and a cofounder of the MIX Festival and the ACT UP Oral History Project. She is a playwright and the author of seventeen books, including the novels The Mere Future, Shimmer, Rat Bohemia, After Delores, and People in Trouble, as well as nonfiction works such as The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination, My American History: ...more

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“There is something inherently stupid about gentrified thinking. It’s a dumbing down and smoothing over of what people are actually like. It’s a social position rooted in received wisdom, with aesthetics blindly selected from the presorted offerings of marketing and without information or awareness about the structures that create its own delusional sense of infallibility. Gentrified thinking is like the bourgeois version of Christian fundamentalism, a huge, unconscious conspiracy of homogenous patterns with no awareness about its own freakishness. The gentrification mentality is rooted in the belief that obedience to consumer identity over recognition of lived experience is actually normal, neutral, and value free.” — 9 likes

“When there is no context for justice, freedom-seeking behavior is seen as annoying. Or futile. Or a drag. Or oppressive. And dismissed and dismissed and dismissed and dismissed until that behavior is finally just not seen.” — 4 likes

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Preview — The Gentrification of the Mind by Sarah Schulman

The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination

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See a Problem?

Preview — The Gentrification of the Mind by Sarah Schulman

The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination

Get A Copy

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topicDiscuss This Book

Readers also enjoyed

Genres

About Sarah Schulman

Books by Sarah Schulman

Related Articles

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Quotes from The Gentrificatio...

new topic
Discuss This Book