This is a copy of a review I did for GoodReads in January 2022, of the book, “The American People: Volume 1: Search for My Heart: A Novel” by Larry Kramer. It’s really worth revising this now, especially in today’s climate. I really do believe we harbor hatred and unkindness to our detriment: hatred and unkindness of any kind, even to ourselves but especially to ourselves—more on that to come.
When I first posted this, I was very broken. I still am. But I will recover, as we all do.
I still recommend reading this book. Only more so. Read it. Read it quickly. Then read it again, slowly. Take some time away, and in the interim, read Ingrid Banwell’s “Men of Earth.” Read Rebecca Solnit’s “Hope in the Dark”. Then read Sven Lindqvist’s “The Dead Do Not Die.” Read anything by Ursula leGuinn and Arundhati Roy. Read Aaron Reynolds “Effin Birds” and Lily O’Farrell’s lovely, wonderful VulgaDrawings (@vulgadrawings).
Then return to Larry Kramer and read this again.
5 of 5 stars
I couldn't put this book down. It is an amazing, fascinating read; a wonderful, hilarious, astonishing, maddening, challenging, deeply affecting book. It leaves me still with such deep sadness for us, a people still in deep trauma from our beginnings. I realize that Mr. Kramer is not writing a historical document ... and yet.
It is not in dispute that this country has committed evil on itself as well as others. There is always an effort to disguise the true intent. This or that policy/law/subjective interpretation of administrative regulation is to make us safe, secure, protect others from themselves. It NEVER goes well. It ALWAYS results in more trauma: systemic racism, systemic misogyny, systemic discrimination, systemic poverty, institutionalized torture, trafficking, child marriage, medical experimentation, death, genocide, ecocide.
And so I ask, what in any of this book is more surprising or less believable than the truth?
This book should be read far and wide. It should be read and discussed with Kiese Laymon's "How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America", an amazing set of essays as remarkable for the writer's stylistics as the content; Sven Lundqvist's "Exterminate All the Brutes", a gut punching truthtelling of colonialization; and Ursula le Guinn's "Left Hand of Darkness" and Octavia Butler's ... everything she wrote!, which give us other worlds in which to see (and question) the truth of ourselves.
We MUST question ourselves, and our history. If we can't readily document a history different from that which Mr. Kramer proposes, we should ask ourselves why. We have to have a society that thinks critically, that questions. It is our responsibility to do so. We live or die together. We like to think that what affects one does not affect another. But the truth is so very different. Tribes, while nice; do not obviate our need to eat, sleep, pee, love and be loved.
So many reviewers speak with intimate knowledge of Mr. Kramer and his work. I regret this is my introduction to him. A year after first reading it, the words he scored into my psyche still prowl in heart and mind, agitating me to ... what? Perhaps to speak up, to write this. I wish I had read him earlier. I look forward to Volume 2, but will need to wait a bit. I know I will not be able to put it down either, and it's an intensive journey.
