First published 2025
American artists have wielded their creativity as weapons against social injustice for decades. O'Neill-Butler documents how creative communities mobilized for change from the 1960s onward, rejecting the notion that art exists separate from politics. She traces artist-led movements that challenged exclusion, fought for housing rights, raised HIV/AIDS awareness, and confronted Indigenous injustice. The book profiles influential collectives like the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, Women Artists in Revolution, and fierce pussy, alongside individual activists such as David Wojnarowicz working with ACT UP and Nan Goldin's Prescription Addiction Intervention Now. Through extensive oral histories with movement participants, O'Neill-Butler reveals how artists chose solidarity over celebrity, collective action over market success. The book connects contemporary activism to longstanding traditions of feminist and civil rights organizing, showing how wheat pasting and wheat planting alike became tools of resistance.
Genres: biography, 20th-century, non-fiction, 21st-century, social-movements, art-history, activism, american-history
Vibes: documentary-style, inspiring, intimate, politically-engaged, thought-provoking
Tropes: collective-action, grassroots-movements, oral-histories, solidarity-over-individualism
Setting: America, United States
Period: 1960s onward, 20th century, 21st century
240 pages · Hardcover · Verso
Content warnings: addiction, death