ABSTRACT
The tenth chapter treats Tony Kushner’s widely lauded Angels in America. Kushner takes us to a time when sexual minorities have well-established communities, providing mutual support and a degree of autonomy relative to the larger society, from which they remained excluded or marginalized. The AIDS epidemic made clear that this situation was not viable, just, or consistent with America’s self-concept. Yet Kushner presents us with a surprisingly optimistic view of the U.S. and of the future of sexual minorities in the U.S. In some ways, the play may be viewed as continuing the celebratory nationalism of the nineteenth century, but with a post-Stonewall understanding of gay rights and their place in American society.
