Book Club

5 takeaways from Book Club’s author discussion with Tucker Shaw

"It's important for us as queer people and also for straight people to know that history [of the HIV/AIDS epidemic]"

Tucker Shaw. Courtesy

By Annie Jonas

It is common for a film to be adapted from the pages of a book. It is less common, however, that a book be developed from a Twitter thread, like Tucker Shaw’s debut novel, “When You Call My Name.”

The YA novel, described by the Denver Post as a “love letter to 1990 New York City, set against the AIDS epidemic and self-discovery,” was born out of a conversation Shaw overheard between two young gay men on the train one day. He chronicled the experience in a viral, moving Twitter thread, which HIV+ Magazine said “broke gay Twitter.”

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At a recent Boston.com Book Club event, Shaw said he felt pulled to write the book  after many young people came to him saying they had no idea about the epidemic or its effects on the gay community.

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“I think that’s a shame because I think that it’s important for us as queer people and also for straight people to know that history,” he said. “Not just because it’s important to know the history, but also to understand what we are capable of, and how we are able to come together in very messy ways to help take care of each other.”

The novel follows two contrasting young gay men as they navigate queer love and friendship alongside the immense death and grief of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Adam is a 17-year-old film student from Greenwich Village who grew up in a loving family. Ben, on the other hand, has just left his home after his mother finds his hidden gay magazines and heads for New York to pursue fashion.

“I think they represent two different ways of entering this world with either some preconceived ideas, some dreams, or some fears,” Shaw said.

While the book is not autobiographical, Shaw said he drew inspiration from his own life as a young gay man growing up and coming of age in the late eighties and early nineties.

“I had been walking around with some feelings and memories from this period of time that I was never really quite sure how to make sense of,” he said. “So I thought maybe there was a little space for me to add something to the record.”

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While this is Shaw’s first venture into the realm of fiction, it is by no means his first rodeo. A prolific writer and editor for decades, Shaw’s work has appeared in magazines (Out, Quake, Parade, Cook’s Country), newspapers (Denver Post), advertising (Anderson & Lembke/McCann), digital media (Alloy.com, Time Warner), and more.

Book Club’s discussion between Shaw and Christina Pascucci-Ciampa, owner of All She Wrote Books in Somerville, covered topics around the novel’s YA categorization, the importance of chosen families for the queer community, and how sorrow and joy can – and should – exist at the same time.

Read on for takeaways from the discussion or watch the video below and sign up for more Book Club updates.

Shaw drew inspiration from his own coming-of-age experience to create the characters of Adam and Ben 

Shaw said he drew from his own experiences and passions growing up and coming of age during the AIDS epidemic to write both of the main characters, who he said represent different parts of himself.

“[Ben’s] love of fashion and magazines specifically was always really central to who he was in my head partly because I was obsessed with that stuff at that time,” he said.

Shaw recalls going to the magazine shop with his friend Jorge to flip through the glossy pages of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.

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“We would just go through every single page because that was fantasy. Here were these beautiful worlds where people were doing beautiful things,” he said. 

Adam, a film student, falls in love with an older man named Callum, and describes wanting to shoot a movie set in Callum’s apartment, which Shaw said was taken from his own creative desires and dreams.

“Both of those things sort of come from inside me. Magazines were my obsession at that time, as was the idea of creating a film or a story, or a song that reflects my own life,” Shaw said.

Categorizing the book as a YA novel was strategic

Adam and Ben are both fresh out of high school when they arrive in New York City in 1990. Shaw said their coming of age journeys and the categorization of the book as a young adult novel was intentional and important, so that young readers would be able to easily fall into the world.

“I wanted people to feel like they could belong in this world and to recognize it,” he said. “I really wanted my protagonists to be at that period in their lives when they’re still figuring out things like sex, things like ‘who am I,’ as a distant thing from my family, all the while coalescing with all this other stuff that was happening in the world. I really wanted to get into that nexus.”

Having the characters find their footing in their newfound queer identities and in the community during the AIDS epidemic was also important and integral to the book’s YA categorization. 

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“Obviously, when you’re talking about HIV and Aids, you talk a lot about sex, and it’s very, very fraught,” Shaw said. “And it’s already fraught when you’re 17, 18 years old.”

A side character is Shaw’s favorite in the book – and for good reason

When Ben arrives in New York City, he is essentially homeless and tracks down his brother, Gil, a doctor at the fictional St. Hugh’s hospital, for a place to stay. Rebecca, Gil’s girlfriend, is a fashion photographer, and acts as Ben’s mentor when she sees his talent for fashion.

Rebecca is more than just a side character or a foil for the protagonists; she has a rich inner world and distinct characteristics – not to mention that she also happens to be Shaw’s favorite character. And, she represents the role many women held as caretakers and support systems for the dying and their loved ones during AIDS epidemic.

“We would not have gotten through it at all without women – queer women specifically – but women in general took care of us,” Shaw said. “I can remember women saying ‘we need to take care of our brothers now.’ And they did, and they stood up, and they took care of us, and Rebecca represents that to me.”

The importance of chosen families

It is common in the queer community to have a chosen family made up of friends and peers who you lean on for support and love in addition to (or, sometimes, in the absence of) biological familial support. 

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“​​Most queer kids grow up in families that aren’t queer at all, and there are certain things your parents just can’t do for you, no matter how much they love you, or how stable your family is, or unstable, or anything else. They have not walked in your shoes,” Shaw said.

Ben and Adam come from different families and take different journeys as they explore their queerness, but they come together through friendship to form a chosen family.

“Adam is just so lucky to be able to have [a supportive family] and Ben doesn’t have that. And in my mind his relationship with Adam is sort of the beginning of [a chosen family],” he said.

Holding sorrow and joy together, at once 

Adam and Ben’s storylines are peppered with both the good and the bad, often at the same time. In one scene, Adam is processing the initial shock and sharpest part of grief of the death of a loved one while the gay pride parade is going on outside. He asks himself: does love conquer all?

“He’s not sure, and I’m not sure. I’m not sure that really anybody can ever be sure that love conquers all,” Shaw said, “but I believe that falling in love in complicated or difficult circumstances – even dire, deadly circumstances – is worth it. You have to fall in love, because that’s what we’re here for.”

After living through the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the deaths of loved ones and friends, Shaw has come to know grief well. If there’s anything he’s learned along the way, it’s that “finding light in grief is not a betrayal.”

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“You can hold sorrow and joy in your head at the same time. We all do it all the time, so there’s no reason that that shouldn’t be allowed,” Shaw said.