S5E8: Queer Utopia and Activism

Image credit: Mark Gevisser by Fiona McPherson

Efemia Chela asks Mark Gevisser and Sarah Schulman about their books The Pink Line and Let the Record Show, respectively. 

They share lessons from the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), debate visibility politics, the idea of a queer utopia, the relationship between legal reform and social change as well as how to avoid burnout.

Efemia Chela is a Zambian-Ghanaian editor living in Johannesburg. She has an MA in Development Studies from the University of the Witwatersrand. Mark Gevisser is the award-winning author of Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred, Lost and Found in Johannesburg: A Memoir and The Pink Line: Journeys across the World’s Queer Frontiers (Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2020). Sarah Schulman is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, nonfiction writer and AIDS historian. She is the author of 20 books, most recently Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP, New York 1987-1993 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021).

In this episode we stand in solidarity with the 15 journalists and one media worker currently held in pre-trial detention in Diyarbakır, Turkey. Their names are: Lezgin Akdeniz, Safiye Alagaş, Serdar Altan, Zeynel Abidin Bulut, Ömer Çelik, Suat Doğuhan, Mehmet Ali Ertaş, Ramazan Geciken, Mazlum Doğan Güler, İbrahim Koyuncu, Abdurrahman Öncü, Aziz Oruç, Mehmet Şahin, Remziye Temel, Neşe Toprak and Elif Üngür. You can read more about their case here.

This is the final episode of season five. We’re taking a break and will be back with season six. Thank you so much for listening!