May 21, 2025
Solidarity with the oppressed is one of the highest ideals in any fight against injustice—but following through often presents complications. In her searing new book The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity, award-winning writer and cultural critic Sarah Schulman delves into the intricate and often misunderstood concept of solidarity, offering a new, uplifting vision of what it means to engage in this work and why it matters.
Schulman presents a range of case studies throughout Solidarity, including the fight for abortion rights in post-Franco Spain, AIDS activism in 1990s New York City, recent campus protests against Israel’s war on Gaza, and her own experience growing up as a lesbian artist in male-dominated culture industries. As these topics move to the forefront of our lives, she offers a thought-provoking analysis of society, examining what is and isn’t working in today’s political movements, and presenting a clear-eyed—even hopeful—vision for the future.
Alexander Chee, the bestselling author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel and The Queen of the Night, and veteran ACT-UP activist, joined Schulman in conversation.
Featured Book
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The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity
By Sarah Schulman
Published by Penguin Publishing Group
From award-winning writer Sarah Schulman, a longtime social activist and outspoken critic of the Israeli war on Gaza, comes a brilliant examination of the inherent psychological and social challenges to solidarity movements, and what that means for the future
For those who seek to combat injustice, solidarity with the oppressed is one of the highest ideals, yet it does not come without complication. In this searing yet uplifting book, award-winning writer and cultural critic Sarah Schulman delves into the intricate and often misunderstood concept of solidarity to provide a new vision for what it means to engage in this work—and why it matters.
To grapple with solidarity, Schulman writes, we must recognize its inherent fantasies. Those being oppressed dream of relief, that a bystander will intervene though it may not seem to be in their immediate interest to do so, and that the oppressor will be called out and punished. Those standing in solidarity with the oppressed are occluded by a different fantasy: that their intervention is effective, that it will not cost them, and that they will be rewarded with friendship and thanks. Neither is always the case, and yet in order to realize our full potential as human beings in relation with others, we must continue to pursue action towards these shared goals.
Within this framework, Schulman examines a range of case studies, from the fight for abortion rights in post-Franco Spain, to NYC’s AIDS activism in the 1990s, to the current wave of campus protest movements against Israel’s war on Gaza, and her own experience growing up as a queer female artist in male dominated culture industries. Drawing parallels between queer, Palestinian, feminist, and artistic struggles for justice, Schulman challenges the traditional notion of solidarity as a simple union of equals, arguing that in today’s world of globalized power structures, true solidarity requires the collaboration of bystanders and conflicted perpetrators with the excluded and oppressed. That action comes at a cost, and is not always effective. And yet without it we sentence ourselves to a world without progressive change towards visions of liberation.
By turns challenging, inspiring, pragmatic, and poetic, The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity provides a much-needed path for how we can work together to create a more just, more equitable present and future.
Featuring
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Sarah Schulman
Sarah Schulman
Sarah Schulman is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, nonfiction writer, and AIDS historian. Her books include The Gentrification of the Mind, Conflict Is Not Abuse, and Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP, New York 1987–1993 and the novels The Cosmopolitans and Maggie Terry. Schulman’s honors include a Fulbright in Judaic Studies, a Guggenheim in Playwriting, and honors from Lambda Literary, the Publishing Triangle, NLGJA, the American Library Association, and others. Her writing has appeared in the New Yorker, New York, Harper’s magazine, the Atlantic, the Nation, the New Republic, the New York Times, and the Guardian. Schulman holds an endowed chair in creative writing at Northwestern University and is on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace.
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Alexander Chee
Alexander Chee
Alexander Chee is the bestselling author of the novels The Queen of the Night and Edinburgh, and the essay collection How to Write an Autobiographical Novel. He is a contributing editor at the New Republic, and an editor at large at Virginia Quarterly Review. His work has appeared in The Best American Essays 2016, the New York Times magazine, the New York Times Book Review, the New Yorker, T magazine, Slate, Vulture, among others. He is winner of a 2003 Whiting Award, a 2004 NEA Fellowship in prose and a 2010 MCCA Fellowship, and residency fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the VCCA, Civitella Ranieri and Amtrak. He is an associate professor of English at Dartmouth College.
