IT WAS VULGAR AND IT WAS BEAUTIFUL

A powerful story of art collective Gran Fury - who fought back during the AIDS crisis through organizing, direct action, and community-made propaganda - offers lessons in love and grief to today's marginalized communities.

This timely history of activism and public health will appeal to audiences urgently interested in collective protest, especially during the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, which, like the AIDS crisis, was worsened by state negligence. Lowery's work deepens our understanding of the AIDS crisis, and offers a vision of grieving and political action relevant to our own troubled times.

By the late 1980s, the AIDS pandemic was deeply impacting gay and lesbian communities in America, and disinformation about the disease was running rampant. Out of the activist group ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), an art collective that called itself Gran Fury was formed, to create graphics and media that campaigned against corporate greed, government inaction, and public indifference to AIDS. Lowery examines Gran Fury's art and activism, from the iconic images like the Kissing Doesn't Kill poster, to the act of dropping thousands of fake bills onto the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. It Was Vulgar offers a complex, moving portrait of a group that expressed through art the profound trauma of surviving the AIDS crisis and formed essential solidarities between gays and lesbians in the activist community.

It Was Vulgar will attract readers interested in queer history and AIDS activism who also supported books like Cleve Jones' When We Rise, David France's How to Survive a Plague, and even Darnell L. Moore's No Ashes in the Fire. Gran Fury and ACT UP's strategies are today employed by a variety of activist groups, including survivors of school shootings, harm reduction organizers, and activists for universal healthcare.

This title will inspire and motivate today's activists and reinforce their belief in the power of art to create social change and drive political movements is illuminating in this era when violence and unending structural racism continue to target the most vulnerable.

Jack Lowery is a writer and teacher, whose writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Times Literary Supplement and The Awl. He completed his MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Columbia University, and has taught in the Undergraduate Writing Program at Columbia University. As an editor, he has published the poetry of David Wojnarowicz. He lives in Brooklyn.