Activism

Throughout his novel, My Government Means to Kill Me, Newson thematically inspects activism through the Gay Rights Movement. When Trey talks with his mentor, Bayard Rustin at Mt. Morris bathhouse, he questions James Baldwin’s lack of participation in the Gay Rights Movement. The narrator is irked by the fact that the acclaimed author “doesn’t lead pride parades [and is] not out there on gay rights the way he was on civil rights. He hasn’t said or written a thing about the AIDS crisis” (161). While he is not alone in his criticism, Rustin reminds him that “since the day he was born, Jimmy presented himself as he is, and he’s written openly in his novels about the gay life” (160). The author enacts this conversation in order to assert that activism can take a multitude of different forms. While protests, demonstrations, and orations are...