20 Rasheed Newson interview

Rasheed Newson, television writer and producer and author of My Government Means to Kill Me, discusses the fallout from the HIV/AIDS crisis. In conversation with host Cody Sisco, Rasheed talks about the ascendance of sex positivity thanks to PrEP, how his novel imagines a young gay Black man in 1980s New York encountering ACT UP, and the legacy of the Gay Liberation and Civil Rights movements.

Photo credit: Christopher Marrs

Rasheed is the author of My Government Means to Kill Me, which examines the political and sexual coming of age of a young, gay, Black man in New York City in the mid-1980s. The novel was a 2023 Lambda Literary finalist for Gay Fiction and was named one of the β€œThe 100 Notable Books of 2022” by The New York Times. Rasheed lives with his husband and their two children in Pasadena.