Faithful to his self-taught training, David Wojnarowicz challenged the boundaries between languages, media and actions, and escaped univocal definitions: he was a painter, musician, photographer, writer, Super 8 filmmaker and decisive protagonist of the effervescent social and cultural environment of the New York's East Village in the 1980s. From his visceral work, his collaborative spirit stands out –in fluid communion with others–, but also rebellious. A member of the act-up collective, Wojnarowicz was an activist closely involved with the identity politics of homosexuals before and during the AIDS epidemic, a disease that deprived him of friendships and love and that took even him in 1992, at the age of 37. years. Throughout his career, art and militancy were in permanent dialogue and reinvention, and both had to win the street to circulate outside the corset of traditional institutions, occupying spaces that were not intended for them.

Few artists managed to capture the emotional, sexual, and political chaos of modern urban life in as perceptive a manner as Wojnarowicz. "The windows are my television and the streets are my newspaper," he says in these intimate diaries, which he began writing at the age of 17 and continued until his death. In them we witness his day to day, his improvised trips, the disjointed flow of his thoughts and sensations. Despite having had a very tough childhood, and having lived through the worst years of the Reagan administration in absolute precariousness, Wojnarowicz never failed to capture glimpses of beauty, even if they were the reverse of deep loneliness and recurring insecurity. Inspired by Burroughs and Genet, but also by the environment of no wave, postpunk and chemical drugs, he wandered the streets and abandoned piers on the banks of the Hudson River, prostituting himself and integrating fleeting communities. In this book, the backstage of the scenes that are the protagonists of his most famous works appears, and the constant recording of his body is present, which worsens when he receives his hiv-positive diagnosis. He is aware of having contracted a virus that also embodies the worst of a sick society; one that increasingly marginalizes and excludes dissidents and leaves them to their fate. In the Shadow of the American Dream exhibits the private record of a sensitive and committed Wojnarowicz, overwhelmed by the demands of survival, pursuing pleasure and freedom even when there is no more light at the end of the tunnel.