“A Whisper of AIDS,” Mary Fisher’s impassioned speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention—in which she revealed her own HIV diagnosis as a heterosexual, married white woman from a prominent political family—is often ranked as one of the best American speeches of the 20th Century. Nearing its 33rd anniversary and just as relevant as when it was first delivered, the speech embodies all that Fisher stands for: using her privilege in service to others and giving a voice to those who are voiceless.
Decades later, amidst constant threats to federal HIV funding and ongoing public health crises, Mary Fisher remains a steadfast and vocal activist, in addition to being a celebrated artist and author of a seventh book, Uneasy Silence: An Activist Seeks Justice and Courage Over a Lifetime of Change.
With a forward written by actor Judith Light and a back-of-the-book blurb from Nancy Pelosi, Uneasy Silence is a blunt and often poetic sociopolitical essay collection that calls for advocacy, compassion, and empathy.
Windy City Times: What made you want to write this book? I believe it’s your seventh book and would it be the fourth memoir?
Mary Fisher: Actually, the third memoir. I’d have to live a few more years to write another one. [laughs] Being isolated during COVID and watching everything that’s going on made me know that if I still had a voice, I wanted to speak out. I believe that writing the book and speaking through my own uneasy silence might help others to speak through theirs.
WCT: In terms of your RNC speech in Houston in 1992—if you could go back, would you have done anything differently?
MF: That’s quite a question. No, I don’t think so. I can’t imagine doing anything different than what I did.
WCT: Did the aftermath of your speech in any way change your view of your political party at the time? I know that it was a catalyst for you to become, as you call it, an “accidental activist,” but how did that affect you from a political standpoint?
MF: Interestingly, I grew up in a in a republican family. I worked for a republican president: Gerald Ford. We’re talking years and years and years ago. And I believe at that time the party was already beginning to be divided. For me, the aftermath was, well, it was interesting because that was the same year that Pat Buchanan had his famous culture speech and [columnist] Molly Ivins said, [“It probably sounded better] in the original German.”
WCT: Right.
MF: My hope was to try and help the republican party understand what was going on. For me it was like, “Make the decision; go public.” That was a big decision in the beginning. And then this speech got bigger than I thought it would get, and there were people that weren’t happy about it. Now I realize that was their problem, not my problem.
WCT: This book is very much about talking through your truth. With whom do you hope your message of not being silent resonates most?
MF: Everyone who’s being silent in the face of what’s being done to the country was my goal. I would like to reach everybody and say, “You don’t have to be silent.” We have to talk, we have to say what we feel. We have to try to help others and care for others.
WCT: Speaking of caring for others, you also talk a lot about Project Angel Food. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
MF: Project Angel Food is an organization that works through L.A. County, a huge county in California. I had worked with them years before, but when COVID hit, I had to sit. You couldn’t travel and all of that. I had talked to a few people and said I would love to go be in the kitchen because what they do is remarkable. They create medically tailored meals for people that are facing HIV and AIDS, cancer, heart disease, renal failure, diabetes… I’m very much a part of it and a portion of the proceeds from Uneasy Silence will go to Project Angel Food.
WCT: Do you see any similarities in the way that people have been treating COVID and how HIV and AIDS were treated around the time you were diagnosed with HIV?
MF: Oh, absolutely. In the very beginning of the pandemic, it was so like it was in the ‘80s and ‘90s for HIV and AIDS. It just doesn’t make any sense to me. I’m not able to kind of put all the pieces together and say, “Why are we not trying to do more about this?” And then I hear recently that they’re going to stop the mRNA vaccine [research].
WCT: Yes, I watched the RFK Jr. video as well and I can’t say I was shocked.
MF: I suppose it shouldn’t shock us, right? It’s every day… taking away the researchers and the biomedical research that’s happening at all these universities, and now UCLA is being, well, I say “attacked” but, I mean, they’re taking away grants. It just makes no sense to me.
WCT: You talk about a lot of different things in the book, from poverty to grief to gender bias to human and civil rights. With everything going on in the current administration, how did you cull it down?
MF: I think I have to stay with what’s my mission and what I believe in my heart. I spent a lot of time in my life in Africa, India and Haiti, working with women, finding a community that I believed I was a part of because they all had HIV or AIDS and I felt very welcomed there. I felt very much a part of their lives and believed that we were all helping each other because we were doing it together. That’s activism.
WCT: In terms of the advancements that have been made when it comes to HIV and AIDS, do you feel like your activism has evolved?
MF: My life has evolved; it’s changed. But my activism, I think, has kind of remained the same. When you talk about the speech I gave in ’92? I almost think I could give that speech today.
WCT: Oh, for sure. Listening to your speech again, really it could be given yesterday, today, and maybe tomorrow.
MF: I mean, it sounds silly, it was 33 years ago. But truly, it’s just wanting people to care. We still have, I think, approximately [40,000] people a year who get infected with HIV. It’s not over. We don’t have a cure. We do have medication, which I’m so grateful for, because if we didn’t have it, I wouldn’t be here. And that’s part of what I’m so afraid of us losing now. Because if you don’t have access to insurance or access to the medications, you’re still going to die.
WCT: I think some people forget that sometimes. It can still be a death sentence depending on your circumstances. It’s not always going to be, you take a pill and you’re going to be fine. I do feel like something got lost along the way in the messaging.
MF: Yes, I hear you. I don’t know if it’s the messaging so much as we lost so many people. We lost people that were there to talk about it. I have the ability to have wonderful doctors and health care, and part of the reason that I decided to go public is I knew that they couldn’t take that away from me. And yet I saw it being taken away from so many people. And so, I don’t think that we lost the messaging…
WCT: We lost the storytellers who experienced it.
MF: This is my community and these are the people I love. We are family. I started off doing this because I didn’t want my children to feel the stigma as they grew up. I don’t think that that’s changed. I think that people still feel a tremendous amount of stigma around being infected and in the LGBTQ community and all of those things. It’s crazy that we don’t take care of each other in a better way.
I fought for many years in those days to say to a lot of groups, like HRC and the gay community, “Don’t leave us because women are here, but we don’t have a voice.” We lost a lot of people who were willing to speak out. I always used to have this conversation with [playwright who helped found ACT UP] Larry Kramer. He would tell me, “You can go whisper and do all of this behind the scenes. I’m going to yell and scream for you.” And I said, “OK.” And that’s how we kind of did our thing and became very good friends. I think that his sadness towards the end of his life was that young people just didn’t understand it, weren’t paying attention, and that the whole thing was going to start over again. I don’t know. I think that we’ve done better, but I don’t know that we’ve done great.
WCT: In the book you say, “I’ve never been thankful to have AIDS, but in ways both tender and profound, AIDS has given my life meaning in ways I could not have imagined.”
MF: It’s about the people. It’s about the incredible, wonderful people I’ve met who are either infected or affected. The people who have sort of pushed me and mentored me because my personal mission is and has been to bear witness for the costs that we’ve paid in losses to AIDS. I promised I would not let them be forgotten. I have to fulfill that ‘til the day I die.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
To purchase Mary Fisher’s Uneasy Silence, published by RTM Books, or to revisit her 1992 RNC speech, visit maryfisher.com. A portion of the proceeds from Uneasy Silence will be contributed to Project Angel Food.