White Nights and Ascending Shadows: An Oral History of the San Francisco AIDS Epidemic

Across the world, people have created a movement to fight AIDS. San Francisco's contribution to this fight grew out of the Gay Liberation Movement. Kaposi's Sarcoma brought death, disease and queerness irretrievably out of the closet. Previously hushed whispers around booming health care costs turned to screams. The San Francisco AIDS story is a tale of how gay rights became human rights.
-- Life story interviews with thirty PWAs (persons with AIDS) function as a group to tell the oral history of a period, San Francisco from 1968-95
-- Maps the 70s migration to San Francisco, the election of the nation's first openly gay official, his assassination, the onset of a disease, and its impacts on a city
-- Sheds light on the complexities of American social problems
-- Contains inspirational, shocking and often tragic stories