Chicago House Creates Unique Engagement Opportunity with Virtual Book Club
CHICAGO, IL – In an effort to create community amidst the isolation of COVID-19, Chicago House trustees Nabeela Rasheed and Kelly Saulsberry co-hosted a weekly virtual conversation over the past eight weeks anchored by Chicago-based author Rebecca Makkai’s 2018 novel The Great Believers. The conversation featured special guest speakers as well as observations from regular attendees, with ongoing discussions encompassing policy, healthcare, coalition building, stigma, chosen family, and more, all through the unique lens of HIV in Chicago.
While the conversations were loosely modeled after a traditional book club, with weekly suggested reading and opportunities for participants to offer reflections and make connections to the text, Chicago House’s virtual “book club” functioned more as a space to examine the past, present, and future of HIV in Chicago. The fact that the conversations took place via Zoom and Facebook Live in the midst of COVID-19 lent ample opportunity to draw parallels between the early days of the HIV epidemic and a modern-day global pandemic.
The Great Believers opens in Chicago in 1985 as protagonist Yale fights to secure a career-defining bequest in his development job at Northwestern University; meanwhile, the looming threat of a mysterious and as-yet-unnamed sickness circles closer and closer, claiming the lives of Yale’s young and otherwise healthy gay friends. Thirty years into the future, Yale’s friend Fiona embarks on a frantic trip to Paris as she attempts to locate and reconnect with her adult daughter. Between the two plots lie themes of love, community, and resilience in the face of immeasurable loss.
While the characters in The Great Believers are fictional, the storyline closely echoes the lived experiences of countless individuals who recall the initial waves of panic and devastation wrought by HIV/AIDS in Chicago. The community response detailed in the novel—planning meetings in living rooms, calls to action at a fictionalized Howard Brown benefit at Ann Sather—mirror the conditions that birthed Chicago House and similar direct service organizations in 1985. The personal and political tensions among the book’s characters are also true to life: Yale and his social circle clash on the efficacy of HIV testing, debate over what “safe” sex looks like in the midst of an epidemic, come to grips with the mounting loss of acquaintances and community members, and mourn the cruelly brief window of carefree gay liberation while navigating stigma and rejection from employers, family members, the government, and the medical establishment. David Munar, president and CEO of Howard Brown Health and a past book club guest, remarked, “For me, reading this book felt like reading parts of my diary that I never wrote.”
In the course of eight weeks, Rasheed and Saulsberry welcomed several special guests to lend their expertise on weekly themes tied to Chicago House’s mission, history, and work. Guests included Chicago House CEO Michael Herman and Chief Development Officer Eric Wilkerson, AIDS Foundation Chicago Director of Policy Aisha Davis, ALMA co-founder and current board president Julio Rodriguez, and Munar, each bringing unique experiences and perspectives to the virtual table.
Book club members also highlighted the ever-increasing importance of empathy and the power of fiction to open us up to others’ lived realities. As Davis remarked in her book club appearance discussing HIV policy, “If you find your heartstrings being tugged at while reading this novel, remember that there are 27,500 people living that same narrative in Chicago.”
To close out this particular chapter of its virtual book club, Chicago House welcomed author Rebecca Makkai on May 28th to share the inspiration behind The Great Believers and the future of HIV in Chicago. In an informal conversation spanning more than two hours, Makkai touched on what makes Chicago’s LGBTQ+ community and history of activism so unique, the lasting influence of activist Larry Kramer, and the research that shaped her lush and vivid recreation of 1980s Chicago in the novel.
Chicago House will use this iteration of “book club” to inform future discussions, seeking to center works by authors of color and explore other connections to the agency’s mission beyond HIV. Do you have a book suggestion that aligns with Chicago House’s work? Get in touch with us.