Description:
Unfolding Corpus is a collection of visual and written works by Black, Brown, and queer people responding to and living with HIV, culled from a journal published between 2003-08. Unfolding Corpus uses a mix of art, poetry, and essays from the original journal to draw parallels between HIV, COVID, and monkey pox, as well as revealing the wrongs waged on low income, Black, Brown, and queer bodies across time and across pandemics.
Review Quotes:
"We are winning. It is not just that so many of the individuals represented in Unfolding Corpus have had extremely successful careers as artists, activists, and educators. It is not even that we are all at least for the moment surviving the AIDS, white supremacy, misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, and predatory capitalism pandemics that march on with ever increasing vigor in this country and elsewhere. What is true, however, is that in our organizations and families, at speeches, rallies, marches, bars, mountain retreats, and beachside resorts, we have created a community together, a home, something worth defending. Not all of us have made it this far. Some of us have been turned to ash. Still, our struggle is both resilient and sacred. Now is your time to step forward. Our comrades' tools are hidden, sharp and well-oiled, between the covers of this book. Pick them up. Make them yours. Fight back! Win!"
--Robert Reid-Pharr "author of Black Gay Man: Essays"