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Unfolding Corpus: Radical Creativity and Vulnerability in Times of Plague (Q+ Public)

$29.95

Publish Date: April 13, 2027

Publisher:

Rutgers University Press

ISBN:

9781978842168

Pages:

240

Age Range:

16 - 19

Language:

English

Available for Preorder!

Description

Unfolding Corpus: Radical Creativity and Vulnerability in Times of Plague is a carefully curated collection of visual and textual works by artists and writers from past issues of Corpus, a community produced journal, which was originally published between 2003 and 2008. Unfolding Corpus uses contributions from the original journal to draw parallels between HIV, COVID, and monkey pox. The mix of art and other visual works with varied textual works, including poetry, is used as a meaning-making strategy meant to both disrupt and reveal the wrongs waged on low income, Black, Brown, and queer bodies across time and across pandemics. Unfolding Corpus holds radical story telling about desire, pleasure, connectedness, gender, age, class, race, and place. This short book once again confronts a hostile state and cultural environment by celebrating a world in which queer and trans sexuality can flourish, be seen, and be understood by superimposing past works with present day realities.

About the Author

GEORGE AYALA, PsyD, is Deputy Director of the Alameda County Public Health Department. He has dedicated himself to promoting health and protecting human rights in community with Black, Brown, and queer people. Dr. Ayala is the coauthor of Breaking Barriers: Sexual and Gender Minority-led Advocacy to end AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean.

PATO HEBERT is a visual artist and teacher. Hebert’s artwork explores the challenges and possibilities of interconnectedness. He has worked in HIV advocacy since 1994 and has been living with long COVID since 2020. He serves as Arts Professor in the Department of Art & Public Policy at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Praise for Unfolding Corpus: Radical Creativity and Vulnerability in Times of Plague (Q+ Public)

"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

"This book is critical for students craving radical, abolitionist models for liberation in our fascist age. Ayala and Hebert have brought us an AIDS archive of sex, care, and brilliance that will breathe life into our movements and make ways for us to dream new worlds."

— Jennifer Brier

"Celebrating the entwining of paper, pleasure, and public health, this is a beguiling collection. Edited with tender care and committed to the stories of queers of color with HIV/AIDS, it gives us unembellished expressions of queer lust, love, and loss."

— Alexandra Juhasz