Rat Bohemia: 9

by Sarah Schulman

Book Overview

First published in 1995, this award-winning novel, written from the epicentre of the AIDS crisis, is a bold, achingly honest story set in the "rat bohemia" of New York City, whose huddled masses... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0525937900
• ISBN13: 9780525937906
• Release Date: October 1995
• Publisher: Dutton Books
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 0.91 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Dealing with Loss

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.

Simple truths behind the complexity of lesbian experience

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.