LibGuides: Brock Experience: San Francisco: Place & Voice

Disasterama! by Alvin Orloff
ISBN: 9781941110836
Publication Date: 2019-10-08
A brilliant and often humorous memoir about the San Francisco queer punk/camp underground in the 80s and early 90s.

Explores the devastating effects of AIDS and how the camp counterculture used humor to stay sane.

An superb addition to the #ownvoices queer history genre.

Author Alvin Orloff has previously written three humorous queer novels, including I Married an Earthling, Gutter Boys, and Why Aren't You Smiling?

As manager of one of the premier LGBTQ+ bookstores in the US, author Orloff is deeply enmeshed in queer literary community and will be instrumental in marketing.

Includes 60 iconic b/w photos from the period

Place & Voice: A queerly refreshing exercise in opening our ears.

This course can be found at the intersection of place, media and freedom of speech for marginalized communities, including LGBTQ+ and BIPOC. With its history and culture of diversity, San Francisco is rich ground for students to hear a compelling array of answers to the question “Who gets a voice?”

In this course, students will contemplate the civic question, “who gets a voice,” especially as it relates to the development of rights for marginalized communities. Freedom of speech can sometimes be challenged by lived experiences, oppressive and divisive societal institutions, and intersectionality. Therefore, development of rights for marginalized and oppressed communities (e.g., LGBTQ+, BIPOC) is at the forefront of this question. Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) work in college campuses, communities, organizations, and corporate marketing work for and against marginalized communities as a whole to change and/or reinforce politics, laws, and rights for those communities. In this way, having a voice and asking “who gets a voice” becomes one of the pivotal civic elements in addressing these issues.