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Rat Bohemia
by Sarah Schulman
| List Price: |
$10.95 |
Unavailable for
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Paperback
Publisher: Plume
An exploration of how gay men and lesbians are abandoned by their families as soon as AIDS enters their lives, and the courageous and unusual ways they lead their lives, despite this loss.
Sarah Schulman's Rat Bohemia is a witty, moving and sometimes shocking look at how lesbians and gay men are treated by their biological families. Set in contemporary New York, Schulman's characters--Rita, a rat exterminator who works for the city, Killer, a lesbian bohemian, and David, a gay writer with AIDS--are all trying to figure out how to live in a city that is falling apart and how to make peace with the families who ignore them or treat them badly. Schulman's eye for urban detail and her wicked, ironic sense of humor all contribute to making this a profoundly affecting and deeply disturbing look at lesbian and gay life today.
| Customer Reviews: |
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| Dealing with Loss |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Schulman, Sarah. "Rat Bohemia", Arsenal Pulp Press, 2008. (reprint)
Dealing with Loss
Sara Schulman first published "Rat Bohemia" in 1995 which was right in the middle of the AIDS crisis and people took notice. Rat Bohemia is part of New York City where the members of the GLBT community come together to deal with the losses they feel. Here is a story that hurts in its boldness and honesty. Roaming the city is Rita Mae, a rat exterminator by profession and she is an optimist like all bohemians claim to be. Bohemians are those who stand outside of the acknowledged social structure in which we live. Rita and friends look for new ways and avenues to truth and honesty--not just about their own lives but also about the lives of those that live around them because others cannot seem to be bothered.
The book engenders grief because it means we have to return to that awful period when so many died needlessly. We also lost the sense of Bohemia.
In the new introduction to "Rat Bohemia" Schulman tells us that at least 75,000 New Yorkers died to AIDS and that is about twenty percent of the total losses in America. New York has changed because of AIDS and gay neighborhoods became gentrified as residents died. Gay people, at that time, in many cases, left their unsupportive families and when they were gone, their families rarely intervened and therefore many were buried under terrible conditions. Those who had AIDS were risk-takers who lived among people who did not want them in society and they paid very heavily for being "out".
Are we allowed to forget? I certainly hope that no one ever forgets because this was out holocaust and Sarah Schulman reminds us of it.
She brilliantly looks at how our disenfranchisement is found as a political evil in every aspect of life and it hurts to read it but IT MUST BE READ. It is a part of out lives as incendiary as this book is, it is above all honest.
I am not sure that "Rat Bohemia" is even a novel, it is more of a remembrance and a hurtful nostalgic look at a world, people and a counterculture that is lost forever. It is also somewhat of a manifesto for those that demand that their families accept them. "Rat Bohemia" is "a dispatch from real life" and is perhaps one of the important books that deals with the way we lived and live now.
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| Rats! This Book Stunk |
| Customer Rating: 1 out of 5 |
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Interesting blurb and sale price helped me decide to buy this book. It was boring and did not live up to the hype. Not wirth more than $2, so if you see it in the dollar bin, then that's the only time to buy it.
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| Simple truths behind the complexity of lesbian experience |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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Rat Bohemia articulates one of the simple truths behind the complexity of lesbian and gay experience - the overpowering need for parental acceptance and the lifelong pain and coping necessitated by its absence.
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