From the Margins to the Mainstream: AIDS Literature and the LGBT Community

Abstract

This essay examines how stories about the American HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980’s and 1990’s written by people from a greatly affected marginal group (the LGBT community) have become part of the nation’s cultural memory. The publication and reception of the discussed works by the mainstream reflects how the American people not only began to acknowledge the fact that the epidemic was everybody’s problem, but also came to accept the LGBT story as part of the national narrative.