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[Last name, First name], Oral history interview conducted by [Interviewer’s First name Last name], [Month DD, YYYY], [Title of Collection], [Call #]; Brooklyn Historical Society.
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Ivan Keith Weinstein
Oral history interview conducted by Robert Rosenberg
April 14, 1992
Call number: 1993.001.21
0:01 - Dealing with HIV/AIDS diagnosis, partner's reaction, and earliest awareness of being gay
12:11 - How HIV changed sexual practices, his relationship to the medical profession, and family
24:54 - Becoming involved in AIDS community projects
28:44 - Choices around HIV treatment and care
32:50 - National, citywide and Brooklyn politics and HIV
39:30 - Remembering Brooklyn firsts: person he heard of with HIV, gay experiences
48:38 - HIV/AIDS, his political views, and dealing with stigma
Interview Description
Oral History Interview with Ivan Keith Weinstein
Ivan Keith Weinstein was a partnered, thirty-year-old, gay man living with HIV in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn at the time of this 1992 interview. Before he entered into what he called "forced retirement," due to his health, Weinstein was in the security industry. Afterwards, he worked a lot within the community, specifically as a stage manager for the AIDS Theater Project.
In this interview, Ivan Keith Weinstein discusses his experience as a partnered gay man living with HIV in Brooklyn in the early 1990s. He covers the difference for him in what it means to be living with HIV vs. getting an AIDS diagnosis; the choices he had to make about dis-closure with his friends and family on account of his partner's comfort level; the lack of good services for people living with HIV in Brooklyn; and the impact that living with HIV has had on his personal relationships, his work, sex life, and engagement with the medical profession. Towards the end of the interview, a different interviewer comes in and prompts the narrator to discuss the first person he knew with HIV in Brooklyn and the differences in stigma and care in Manhattan versus Brooklyn. Interview conducted by Robert Rosenberg.
The AIDS/Brooklyn Oral History Project collection includes oral histories conducted for an exhibition undertaken by the Brooklyn Historical Society in 1993. The project attempted to document the impact of the AIDS epidemic on Brooklyn communities. Recordings initially made on magnetic tape concerned the epidemic and were with narrators who had firsthand experience with the crisis in their communities, families and personal life. Narrators came from diverse backgrounds within Brookyn and the New York metropolitan area and had unique experiences which connected them with HIV/AIDS. Substantive topics of hemophilia, sexual behavior, substance abuse, medical practice, social work, homelessness, activism, childhood, relationships and parenting run through at least one, and often several, of the oral histories in the collection.
Citation
Weinstein, Ivan Keith, Oral history interview conducted by Robert Rosenberg, April 14, 1992, AIDS/Brooklyn Oral History Project collection, 1993.001.21; Brooklyn Historical Society.People
- AIDS Theater Project
- Weinstein, Ivan Keith
Topics
- AIDS (Disease)
- Family life
- HIV infections
- HIV-positive persons
- Sexual health
- Social group work
- Stigma (Social psychology)
- Theater
Places
- Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)
- Flatbush (New York, N.Y.)
- New York (N.Y.)
Finding Aid
AIDS/Brooklyn Oral History Project collection