F*g Hags, Divas and Moms: The Legacy of Straight Women in the AIDS Community

by Victoria Noe

Overview

Bronze Medallion, 2020 Readers Favorite Awards

B.R.A.G.Medallion - 2019

Finalist, Literature of the Year, A&U Magazine - 2019

 

The history of the AIDS epidemic has largely been told from the perspective of gay men: their losses, struggles, and contributions. But what about women - in particular, straight women? Not just Elizabeth Taylor and Princess Diana, but thousands whose accomplishments have never been realized?

Drawing on personal interviews and archival research, F*g Hags, Divas and Moms: The Legacy of Straight Women in the AIDS Community is the first book to share the stories of women around the world, throughout the epidemic. Victoria Noe assures their place in women's history, for their determination to educate and advocate, to end the epidemic once and for all. 

Product Details

BN ID:	2940163828609
Publisher:	King Company Publishing
Publication date:	03/29/2019
Sold by:	Draft2Digital
Format:	eBook
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

In the spring of 2006, I was deep into my third career as an educational sales rep to Chicago Public Schools (after working in theater and as a fundraiser for arts and AIDS organizations), which allowed me flexibility after our daughter was born. I told my friend Delle Chatman that I had an idea for a book: stories of people who were grieving the death of a friend. She was supportive and enthusiastic, though I’d never written a book before. She was also in remission from ovarian cancer. Six months later, she was dead.

Eventually,I broke up the book into a series of six small ones, which became the Friend Grief series. I assumed when the series finished that my writing career would be over.

I ran into Tracy Baim, publisher of Windy City Times, Chicago’s weekly LGBT paper, in the summer of 2011, who asked me to contribute to her "AIDS@30" series. I was skeptical about whether I would even remember much. But as soon as I sat down at the computer, the memories surged along with the emotions: loss, frustration, rage. 

That brought me back to the AIDS community, not as a fundraiser but a writer and activist.  I joined ACT UP/NY and participated in actions. My essay, “Long Term Survivor”, about those of us who lived through the dark, early days of the epidemic, won the 2015 Christopher Hewitt Award. 

After listening to a panel presentation by the women of ACT UP/NY in 2014, I realized that the literature of the AIDS epidemic ignored the accomplishments of women. And though some have acknowledged the critical involvement of lesbians, especially in the early years, none had focused on straight women. 

In 2019, Fag Hags, Divas and Moms: The Legacy of Straight Women in the AIDS Community gave long-overdue recognition to women around the world who have changed the course of hte epidemic, largely in obscurity. And it forced me to tell my own story, too. It has been one of the great joys of my life to introduce these women to the world.

In addition to ACT UP/NY, I’m a member of Authors Guild, Alliance of Independent Authors, and Chicago AIDS Garden steering committee. 

As I said, this is my fourth career. Will there be a fifth? Will I write another book? Or both? I promise whatever it is, it won’t be boring.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

The Volunteers

The Educators

The Nonprofit Executives

The Medical Establishment and Their Patients

The Researchers

The Spiritual Community

The Moms

The Divas

The Fag Hags

The Fictional Women

The Activists

The Artists

The Caregivers

Closing Thoughts

Acknowledgements

Notes

Permissions

About the Author

Books by Victoria Noe

Editorial Reviews

07/08/2019

In this well-researched but somewhat aggrieved history, Noe, a writer and AIDS activist, recounts the history of the AIDS epidemic with a focus on the unsung contributions of straight women. Noe writes, “Straight women have entered the AIDS community throughout the epidemic for various reasons, but all with the same intent: to make a difference.” Noe traces “the battle lines drawn in the first years of the epidemic” and identifies key players such as Elizabeth Taylor (“She was hands-on when it counted, because the epidemic was always personal to her. Friends were dying”) and Princess Diana (who, in 1987, at the first HIV/AIDS hospital unit in London, “shook hands—no gloves, no hesitation—with a man with AIDS... to prove that the virus could not be passed through casual contact”). Noe also includes “stories of women who were largely unknown, but whose influence affected thousands,” including volunteers, educators, activists, nonprofit executives, doctors, researchers, spiritual leaders, artists, mothers, caregivers, and “fag hags” (“denoting a straight woman who associates with gay men”). In telling her own story (she writes of being antagonized and resented by gay colleagues as a social worker), Noe takes a somewhat resentful tone, but in general, this lucid and detailed account provides a valuable timeline for those interested in and impacted by the AIDS crisis. (BookLife)Correction: An earlier version of this review misstated the book's title.

Publishers Weekly

Noe's book celebrates one sector of this compassionate network of caregivers with empathy, appreciation, solidarity, and immense pride. An obvious labor of love for the author and a moving tribute to the unsung heroes of the AIDS crisis. - Kirkus Reviews

Offering a new and long overdue perspective on the AIDS epidemic (and one that is still very much on-going within the gay community and around the world in the general population), Fag Hags, Divas and Moms: The Legacy of Straight Women in the AIDS Community is an extraordinary compendium of information and illustrative personal stories. Exceptionally well-written, organized and presented, Fag Hags, Divas and Moms is unreservedly recommended for both community and academic libraries. - Midwest Book Review

This lucid and detailed account provides a valuable timeline for those interested in and impacted by the AIDS crisis. - Publishers Weekly/BookLife

From the Publisher

2019-06-06
Public speaker and activist Noe (Friend Grief and Men, 2016, etc.) chronicles the sometimes-overlooked efforts of women who helped battle the AIDS epidemic.In 2014, the author attended a panel discussion that featured gay and straight women who played prominent roles in the fight against AIDS. She felt that their impassioned stories needed more widespread attention. In this book, she informatively writes about tireless support workers, such as Terri Wilder, who dedicated her life to AIDS activism and awareness, and the late activist Iris De La Cruz, as well as more famous public figures, such as Elizabeth Taylor and Princess Diana. Other chapters focus on other women who were hospice volunteers, caregivers, mothers, pioneering researchers, and medical educators who were trained on the front lines of the epidemic. Many of these women were HIV-positive themselves and found that the system, with its consistent "lack of accurate, stigma-free sex education," failed them, as it had the gay male community in the 1980s and '90s. Noe writes proudly and engagingly of her own social and political advocacy and activism, including her work at a residential program for AIDS survivors,lobbying on Capitol Hill for the Ryan White Care Act in 1990, and joining ACT UP/NY in 2013. She remembers being known as a "fag hag" then, but she tells of how she learned to embrace that moniker. This essential book is most poignant when Noe channels the pain, loss, and helplessness of the 1980s, when AIDS-related hospital programs "did not have unanimous workplace support" and half of most primary care physicians refused to treat AIDS patients. Instead, she points out, men and women with AIDS had to rely on the kindness of strangers—people who nursed the ill, defended them, and, above all, loved them unconditionally. Noe's book celebrates one sector of this compassionate network of caregivers with empathy, appreciation, solidarity, and immense pride.

An obvious labor of love for the author and a moving tribute to the unsung heroes of the AIDS crisis.

Kirkus Reviews