In the early days of the HIV-AIDS crisis, journalist John-Manuel Andriote was struck by how the gay and lesbian community mobilized, and how many in the general public responded with an outpouring of volunteerism and support.

He wrote about this pivotal time in his book, Victory Deferred: How AIDS Changed Gay Life in America, published by the University of Chicago Press in 1999 and updated in 2011.

“The LGBT community was organizing to save their lives and allies supported and joined them,” said Andriote, a journalist and author based in Atlanta. “This community-level organizing literally built the LGBT equality movement.”

Recognizing the relevance of lessons learned from this unique period in history to readers today, Andriote decided to make the book available to all. Twenty-six years after its release, Victory Deferred is now an open access book—free to anyone as a digital download.

“AIDS taught us about our own power to create change, to stand up for ourselves, and not only demand change, but to bring that change about,” said Andriote, 67, who is gay and has been living with HIV since his 2005 diagnosis. “We learned how to do it under duress. Those are really important things to know—about an individual’s ability to accomplish things on our community’s behalf.”

By making the book open access, Andriote said he hopes to keep alive the stories of the early activists and build awareness about the ongoing challenges for equal rights.

Read now: https://archive.org/details/victory-deferred.-open-access-edition.-final

“There’s no other book that is a journalistic history drawing from hundreds of first-hand, original interviews with people on the front lines of the AIDS epidemic,” he said. “It makes the connection between the community organizing and the national political movement.”

The book won a Lambda Literary Award (Editors’ Choice Award), and was a finalist for the American Library Association Stonewall Book Awards and the New York Publishing Triangle’s Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction.

Recognizing the historical importance of Andriote’s work, the Smithsonian Institution has preserved his research as part of the nation’s record. In 2008, the National Museum of American History, in Washington, D.C., archived his notes and recordings for the book, as well as all correspondence between Andriote and his editor at The University of Chicago Press. All of his work products are available for scholars and researchers to review. The crisis prompted many people to be public about their sexuality and become politically active, Andriote said, and preservation of those stories is important.

“Our stories are fully equal pieces of American history.”

John-Manuel Andriote, author of Victory Deferred

“The reason I started writing about AIDS grew very much out of my personal sense of full equality,” he said. “Writing about gay men and how it’s affecting my community grew out of my sense that our stories are human stories. Our stories are fully equal pieces of American history. They are part of what makes up this country—and the fact that the Smithsonian recognized this just felt great.”

Andriote was introduced to the idea of open access publishing through an editor at University of Massachusetts Press. He had secured the copyright for Victory Deferred in 2008. He formatted the book for open access publication and worked with the University of Chicago Library to publicize it, and with the Internet Archive to host the open access version.

John-Manuel Andriote

Last October, on the 25th anniversary of the publication of Victory Deferred, Andriote shared his open access publishing experience in a webinar, Rereading a Heroic Legacy: How AIDS Built the LGBT Equality Movement, hosted by the University of Chicago Library.

Andriote is also the author of “Stonewall Strong: Gay Men’s Heroic Fight for Resilience, Good Health, and a Strong Community” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017).

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