When We Rise : The Im/Mobility of White Homonormativity in AIDS Memory Media

When We Rise (2017) is a mini-series chronicling the gay liberation movement from 1972 to the overturning of California's Proposition 8 in 2013. In this article, I develop im/mobility as an intersectional analytic for analyzing performances of racialized sexuality through a close reading of the series. Contributing to critical cultural scholarship about race, sexuality, and the public memory of AIDS, this paper offers a new lens to examine AIDS memory media and extends intersectional commitments for racial rhetorical criticism. I argue the series is symptomatic of white homonormativity by narratively framing same-sex marriage as paramount for gay liberation and using the AIDS crisis as a critical event that gains its salience only in service of promoting marriage equality.