Dedicated to N&H, whose Year of Queer Literature reading project inspired this review series celebrating stories of queer love, resilience, and reflection.

My Government Means to Kill Me (2022) by Rasheed Newson is a kinetic, funny–fierce coming-of-age novel set in 1980s New York City. It follows Trey, a young, Black, gay man who breaks from his wealthy Midwestern family and lands in a world of desire, chosen family, and organizing—right as AIDS devastates queer communities and catalyzes a generation of activists.

Newson stitches real history into fiction—think mutual aid, rent strikes, Bayard Rustin shout-outs, and the rhythms of ACT UP-style direct action. The effect is intimate and documentary at once: a reminder that movements are built by ordinary people who refuse to be erased.

What it’s about

Trey arrives in New York with more bravado than plan. He finds work, friends, and mentors; he finds sex, love, and the edges of his own fear; and he gets swept into the city’s organizing pulse as the epidemic grows impossible to ignore. Hospitals, bathhouses, police lines, soup kitchens—Newson’s New York is alive with contradictions and community. Trey learns that liberation isn’t a feeling; it’s a practice performed in public and sustained in private.

For readers wanting more on this era’s emotional landscape, see our review of Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers (another powerful AIDS-era narrative), and for a complementary memoir voice, try Edgar Gomez’s High-Risk Homosexual.

Major themes

Activism and community as survival

Soup lines, protest logistics, and bedside vigils show how care and outrage braided together. For a wider lens on transparent communication and showing up for one another, visit our Communication, Conflict & Consent hub and the related guide on safer introductions and disclosure timelines.

Race, class, and intersectionality

Trey’s Blackness and class background complicate who gets seen, who gets care, and who gets credit in predominantly white queer spaces. For community resources rooted in care work, explore organizations like GMHC and Housing Works, both featured in our Organizations We Love section.

Sex, shame, and self-definition

Newson treats sexuality as both risk and ritual of self-creation. If you’re unpacking secrecy and visibility in your own life, our Transparency & Disclosure hub gathers essays and tools about privacy, honesty, and the costs of silence.

Strengths

• Voice: Trey’s narration is sly, candid, and emotionally available—equal parts horny, hopeful, and haunted.
• Historical texture: Cameos and references ground the story without turning it into a lecture.
• Intersectional clarity: The book makes visible how race and class shape access to safety and dignity.

Where it may not work for everyone

• Pacing whiplash: The story races; some side characters blur.
• Tonality shifts: Jokes and grief elbow each other in adjacent paragraphs—exhilarating to some, jarring to others.
• Preachy edges: A few scenes read like manifestos, which fits the moment but may test patience if you prefer subtext.

Why it matters now

Newson reanimates a time when silence equaled death and love became logistics. The novel insists that liberation travels hand-in-hand with mutual aid, and that joy—especially erotic joy—isn’t a luxury but a strategy for surviving hostile systems. If you’re building your own political literacy, pair this novel with our pieces on truth-telling and complexity and why we lie in relationships.

“Activism isn’t a feeling—it’s a muscle. You have to keep using it, or it forgets what it can do.”

Conversation prompts

• Which scenes best captured the labor of care—and who performed it?
• Where do you notice race and class shaping access to safety in the book (and in your community)?
• What forms of visibility feel empowering vs. extractive for you?
• How do you sustain your “muscle” for activism without burning out?

Who will love this

• Readers who want character-first historical fiction saturated with movement energy.
• Fans of The Great Believers and emotionally rich queer narratives.
• Anyone curious about how private choices ripple into public change.

Keep reading

• From Irish satire to AIDS-era grief, our take on Boyne’s epic: The Heart’s Invisible Furies.
• Memoir lens on Latinx identity and masculinity: High-Risk Homosexual.
• Browse the full series on Queer Reads & Reflections.

Closing reflection

Newson’s novel crackles with life—its humor and hunger make the politics human-sized. Trey’s arc argues that resistance is learned in community: at the clinic, in line for soup, on a lover’s shoulder, and in the street. It’s not neat, and it’s never finished. But it is, defiantly, alive.