“The Fantasy & Necessity of Solidarity”

Author Sarah Schulman talks with Emmy Winner Charlotte Robinson host of OUTTAKE VOICES™ about her new book “The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity” published by Penguin Random House. Schulman is a longtime social activist from the fight for abortion rights in post-Franco Spain to NYC’s AIDS activism in the 1990s to campus protest movements against Israel’s war on Gaza and beyond bringing her own experience growing up as a queer female artist in male-dominated culture industries. In these challenging times as our democracy is at a moral crossroad, this must-read book couldn’t be more timely. For those who seek to combat injustice, solidarity with the oppressed is one of the highest ideals yet it does not come without complication. In this searing yet uplifting book Sarah delves into the intricate and often misunderstood concept of solidarity to provide a new vision for what it means to engage in this work and why it matters. Here in America with this new administration we’re beginning to understand and realize that the only people that will save us from this authoritarian regime are ourselves. Drawing parallels between queer, Jewish, feminist and artistic struggles for justice Schulman challenges the traditional notion of solidarity as a simple union of equals arguing that in today’s world of globalized power structures true solidarity requires the collaboration of bystanders and conflicted perpetrators with the excluded and oppressed. Currently in America we are learning that action comes at a cost and it is not always as effective as we would like it to be but doing nothing is far more dangerous. We talked to Sarah about these current issues and her inspiration for writing “The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity”. 

Sarah Schulman is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, nonfiction writer and AIDS historian. Her books include The Gentrification of the Mind, Conflict Is Not Abuse and Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987–1993 and the novels The Cosmopolitans and Maggie Terry. Schulman’s honors include a Fulbright in Judaic Studies, a Guggenheim in Playwriting and honors from Lambda Literary, the Publishing Triangle, NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists, the American Library Association and others. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, New York, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times and The Guardian. Schulman holds an endowed chair in creative writing at Northwestern University and is on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace. 

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