There have been numerous books written about the fight for gay rights in the United States, but Cleve Jones's memoir When We Rise offers a perceptive, incisive and personal insider's recollection by someone at the epicenter of that movement since the early 1970s. Born in 1954, Jones writes, "I was born into the last generation of homosexual people who grew up not knowing if there was anyone else on the entire planet who felt the way that we felt." At 18, he came out to his parents and moved to San Francisco, where he immersed himself in grassroots gay politics and intoxicating sexual freedom.
"In the gay community, trying to achieve consensus is like trying to herd cats," writes Jones, explaining that the LGBT community is often divided by barriers of class, race, faith and nationality. Nevertheless, the San Francisco gay community united around Harvey Milk, and when he became the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California, Jones worked in his office. After Milk was assassinated in 1978, Jones co-founded the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, and in 1985, he conceived the idea of memorializing those who had died of AIDS and created the NAMES Project Foundation and AIDS Memorial Quilt.
As a political insider, the feisty, funny and insightful Jones makes a powerful narrator for such landmark LGBT decisions as the repeal of the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy and the legalization of same-sex marriage. When We Rise is a rousing firsthand history of an activist's life and his passion for justice. --Kevin Howell, independent reviewer and marketing consultant