The Dream of a Common Movement collects essays, interviews, and speeches by the late feminist and civil rights activist Urvashi Vaid, whose pioneering writing and organizing over the course of four decades fundamentally shaped the LGBTQ+ movement. Vaid explores the LGBTQ+ movement’s impact on the AIDS epidemic and its challenges as it developed a national presence. She calls out movement leaders and donors for not addressing gender, race, and class issues and passionately argues that the goal of any liberation movement should be transformation, not assimilation. In personal essays, Vaid describes a double consciousness forged by the experience of immigration and a complicated relationship with her Indian-American and lesbian identities. Whether she was focused on the Donors of Color Network, the 22nd Century Initiative, the Lesbian Political Action Committee, or other initiatives she launched, Vaid was steadfast in her vision of a more just society and believed deeply in the power of people coming together to effect change. Offering a window into the breadth of her progressive vision for social change, this volume inspires readers to never stop organizing and marching.
- Cover
- Contents
- Foreword by Tony Kushner
- Introduction by Jyotsna Vaid and Amy Hoffman
- Part 1. Building a Movement
- 1. Formative Influences: Preface to Virtual Equality (1995) and Letters to Family (1979–1994)
- 2. A National Lesbian Agenda: Keynote Address at the National Lesbian Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, April 27, 1991
- 3. We Stand for Freedom as We Have Yet to Know It: Speech at the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation (1993)
- 4. A Shared Politics of Social Justice: An Interview with Urvashi Vaid (1998)
- 5. Awakened Activism: AIDS and Transformation (1995)
- Part 2. Expanding Its Scope
- 6. Inclusion, Exclusion, and Occlusion: The Queer Idea of Asian-Pacific Americanness (2000)
- 7. Race, Power, Sex, Citizenship, and the LGBT Movement (2008)
- 8. What Can Brown Do for You? Race, Sexuality, and the Future of LGBTQ Politics (2010)
- 9. Assume the Position: Class and the LGBT Movement (2011)
- 10. After Marriage = Virtual Equality (2016)
- Part 3. Taking Stock
- 11. Queer Dreams and Nonprofit Blues: The Context in Which Queer Nonprofits Operate (2013)
- 12. Homo/mentum of the “Status Queer”: A Critical Look at the LGBT Movement (2015)
- 13. Irresistible Revolution: Understanding the LGBT Movement (2017)
- 14. The 22nd Century Initiative to Counter Authoritarianism (2021) (Cowritten with Scot Nakagawa)
- Part 4. The Promise—and Precarity—of Justice
- 15. Politics as an Act of Faith: Ten Lessons from LGBT Activism (2009)
- 16. Forward-Looking 377 Order Holds Lessons for the World (2018)
- 17. It’s Time to Re-embrace a Politics of Radical, Queer, Outsider Activism (2019)
- 18. Chemo Killed the Small-Talk Gene (2014)
- 19. Longevity Is a Precarious Dream (2022)
- Urvashi Vaid—A Biography
- Bibliography of Works by and on Urvashi Vaid
- Editor and Contributor Biographies
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Index