The Child (24 page)

I never stopped working as an active participant citizen, most directly in my more-than-twenty-year collaboration with Jim Hubbard. Just as the doors were closing on lesbian fiction, Jim and I embarked on The Act Up Oral History Project (
www.actuporalhistory.org
). Thank you Jim for your friendship, understanding, and commitment.

Thank you to Meg Wolitzer.

In 2004, I ran into my friend Diamanda Galas, the great composer and performer, at a coffee place in our shared neighborhood. I told her that I had been struggling for many years to publish a
highly engaged novel, and I explained the content and point of view and why they made the book unacceptable. Diamanda told me that she was going to phone a gay male friend of hers who was an editor and tell him–as she memorably put it–“Treat this sister with respect.”

This is how Don Weise, of Carroll and Graf, came to this novel and decided to publish it. Thank you Don and thank you so much, Diamanda.

Gratitude to all my true friends, and you know who you are, especially: KT, Julie, Leslie, Jack and Peter, Nuar, Claudia and John and my godchild Ula, Jackie, Gina, Bina, Rabih, Allison and Amy, Heidi, (Uncle) Bob, Erica and Simon, Kevin and Dodie, my cousins: Marcia, Amotz, Gala, Alon, and Ori, my pals at work, my neighbors, Patrick, Dudley, Jessica, Tayari, Mardi, Michael, Michael and Steve, Alex, Roz, Larry and Scott, Annie, Ronnie, Patty and Cynthia, Yehudit and Tal, Linda and Jana, Gaelle, Genevieve, Susan, Audrey, Alix, Adrian, and my darling the late John Belusso. Thank you for being accountable and for keeping your promises.

 

—Sarah Schulman
March 2007

Sarah Schulman is the author of eleven books: the novels
The Child
,
Rat Bohemia
,
Shimmer
,
Empathy
,
After Delores
,
People In Trouble
,
Girls, Visions and Everything
, and
The Sophie Horowitz Story
, the nonfiction works
Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS and the Marketing of Gay America
and
My American History: Lesbian and Gay Life During the Reagan/Bush Years
, and the play
Carson McCullers
. She is co-director of the ACT UP Oral History Project. Her awards include a Guggenheim, Fullbright, two American Library Association Book Awards, and she was a Finalist for the Prix de Rome. She lives in New York.

THE CHILD

Copyright © 2007 by Sarah Schulman

 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form by any means–graphic, electronic or mechanical–without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may use brief excerpts in a review, or in the case of photocopying in Canada, a licence from Access Copyright.

 

ARSENAL PULP PRESS
Suite 200, 341 Water Street
Vancouver, BC
Canada V6B 1B8
arsenalpulp.com

 

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the British Columbia Arts Council for its publishing program, and the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and the Government of British Columbia through the Book Publishing Tax Credit Program for its publishing activities.

 

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to persons either living or deceased is purely coincidental.

 

 

Printed and bound in Canada

 

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

 

Schulman, Sarah, 1958-
The child / Sarah Schulman.

 

eISBN : 978-1-551-52272-2

 

1. Young gay men--Fiction. I. Title.

 

PS3569.C5393C’.54 C2008-904092-9