I talked to Schulman about the choice to venture into oral history and the kinds of AIDS stories she’d like to see told today. Narrated by a chorus of artists and executives, single mothers and drug users, it’s also a political primer, sifting through the movement’s strategies - which ranged from self-taught study groups that identified potential treatments to theatrical “die-ins” at government buildings - in search of lessons for today’s activists. Two decades later, those interviews form the basis of her recent doorstopper history of ACT UP, “Let the Record Show.” The book is an attempt to bear witness to the massive failures of policy and empathy that necessitated the movement’s existence. Schulman, who was a member of ACT UP in addition to covering it, began collecting oral histories of surviving members in 2001, working alongside the documentary filmmaker Jim Hubbard.
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