Angels Into Dust: Early Chronicles of Chicago's LGBTQ Community, 1977-1997 (The New Town Anthology)

A selection from Jon-Henri Damski’s 23+ years reporting on and living amidst a wandering, lost, festive, determined and sometimes desperate band of people. Damski follows this loose-knit group as it ends up settling north of Belmont and East of Wrigley field––keeping us up close and personal through the political battles, to human rights set-backs and victories. Damski writes even as his up-from-the-gutters people become part of an official Chicago neighborhood.
"New Town"--as it was unofficially known--was never a real place, Damski tells us. But it certainly had its share of real characters: From hustlers to drag queens, the politically involved to the apolitical, bartenders to dancing queens. Some folks never wanted a relationship, some could never live without one. Some hated sex, some were bathhouse regulars--and some from both of those camps stayed closeted, whether by orientation or AIDS. And then others marched or made money. And Damski wrote.
In Angels into Dust, Damski’s brings back the voices, the spirits and stories of a people in the process of self- discovery: they find themselves, then a community and finally, they get trapped in a plague. Yet death had already long been a part of this minority’s struggle to survive in the Windy City; many, many died, but through Damski’s words we can again feel what its like to survive.

This is a digital facsimile of the limited-edition 1997 release.