Queer Activist Summer Reading List

As we approach our annual OutWrite LGBT Book Festival this summer, now is a great time to start thinking about your summer reading list.   Here are some amazing books for LGBT activists to dive into this summer.  Most of these I have already read, and a few are on my personal list to tackle this summer.

Don’t Tell Me to Wait

Kerry Eleveld

I’m very excited that Kerry Eleveld is coming to DC June 9th to talk about this new book: Don’t Tell Me to Wait: How the Fight for Gay Rights Changed America and Transformed Obama’s Presidency.   I would love this book, if only for the fact that that so may friends and fellow activists are highlighted in the book including Dan Choi, Paul Yandura, Chris Geidner, Bil Browning, Robyn McGehee, and many others.  But I think more importantly for you, this book is an important insiders look about how change actually happends in Washington, looking at both the ‘inside’ players and those of us on the outside.

Get this book nowDon’t Tell Me to Wait: How the Fight for Gay Rights Changed America and Transformed Obama’s Presidency

What Belongs to You

Garth Greenwell

What Belongs to You is a beautiful novel that broaches a subject often kept in the shadows: the world of hustling — gay men paying for sex. Greenwell tells the story of an American teacher working in modern-day Bulgaria, and Mitko, the young hustler he becomes enamored with. The teacher first meets Mitko in a public restroom, and returns there again and again, paying for sex. As the teacher confronts his own feelings about their arrangement, he tries to unravel Mitko’s tangled life story while revealing more of his own.”

Get this book now: What Belongs to You: A Novel

Love Unites Us

I am very proud to share with you that this amazing new book:Love Unites Us: Winning the Freedom to Marry in America will be the featured book at this year’s OutWrite LGBT Book Festival.   It is so important to take time to look back and see how far we have come as a movement.   “The June 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges is a sweeping victory for the freedom to marry, but it was one step in a long process. Love Unites Us is the history of activists’ passion and persistence in the struggle for marriage rights for same-sex couples in the United States, told in the words of those who waged the battle.”

Get this book now:Love Unites Us: Winning the Freedom to Marry in America

Baltimore

Lady Dane Edidi

For a brief time last year the country focused attention on the Baltimore Protests in the wake of the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody.  Of course, to really understand what happened you have to know the history of Baltimore.   Who better to give us a glimpse into this world than transgender performance artist Lady Dane Edidi, who began her studies at the Baltimore School for the Arts.

Lady Dane’s collection:  Baltimore: a Love Letter (A Book of Poetry and other Writings) is a wonderful collection, but it is the powerful title poem is my favorite, exactly because it shows you Baltimore through Lady Dane’s eyes.   I first heard Lady Dane Edidi read this poem at the 2015 Capturing Fire Festival, and I highly recommend it.

Order this book on Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi’s website

Queer Brown Voices

“In the last three decades of the twentieth century, LGBT Latinas/os faced several forms of discrimination. The greater Latino community did not often accept sexual minorities, and the mainstream LGBT movement expected everyone, regardless of their ethnic and racial background, to adhere to a specific set of priorities so as to accommodate a “unified” agenda. To disrupt the cycle of sexism, racism, and homophobia that they experienced, LGBT Latinas/os organized themselves on local, state, and national levels, forming communities in which they could fight for equal rights while simultaneously staying true to both their ethnic and sexual identities. Yet histories of LGBT activism in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s often reduce the role that Latinas/os played, resulting in misinformation, or ignore their work entirely, erasing them from history.”

Queer Brown Voices: Personal Narratives of Latina/o LGBT Activism is the first book published to counter this trend, documenting the efforts of some of these LGBT Latina/o activists.

Get this book now Queer Brown Voices: Personal Narratives of Latina/o LGBT Activism

Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around

“As an organizer, writer, publisher, scholar-activist, and elected official, Barbara Smith has played key roles in multiple social justice movements, including Civil Rights, feminism, lesbian and gay liberation, anti-racism, and Black feminism. Her four decades of grassroots activism forged collaborations that introduced the idea that oppression must be fought on a variety of fronts simultaneously, including gender, race, class, and sexuality. By combining hard-to-find historical documents with new unpublished interviews with fellow activists, this book uncovers the deep roots of today’s “identity politics” and “intersectionality” and serves as an essential primer for practicing solidarity and resistance.”

Get this book now Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement Building with Barbara Smith (SUNY series in New Political Science)

Eating Fire: My Life as a Lesbian Avenger

Kelly Cogswell was at the DC Center last summer discussing this book and I’m so glad I got a chance to meet her.   The Lesbian Avengers played such an important role in our movement yet there is not as much historical information out there about them as one might like.

“When Kelly Cogswell plunged into New York’s East Village in 1992, she had just come out. An ex–Southern Baptist born in Kentucky, she was camping in an Avenue B loft, scribbling poems, and playing in an underground band, trying to figure out her next move. A couple of months later she was consumed by the Lesbian Avengers, instigating direct action campaigns, battling cops on Fifth Avenue, mobilizing 20,000 dykes for a march on Washington, D.C., and eating fire—literally—in front of the White House.”

At once streetwise and wistful, Eating Fire is a witty and urgent coming-of-age memoir spanning two decades, from the Culture War of the early 1990s to the War on Terror.

Get this book now: Eating Fire: My Life as a Lesbian Avenger

LGBT Summer Reading List
Queer Activist Summer Reading List

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Queer Poets: 10 Favorite Moments from Capturing Fire

Capturing Fire

Capturing Fire is an international spoken word and poetry that takes place in Washington DC.  Poets gather for panel discussions, workshops, performances, and of course a poetry slam.    Fortunately some of the best queer poetry performances over the years have been captured on video and have been viewed hundreds, some even thousands of times on youtube.  Our most popular video by featuring Joanna Hoffman has over 80,000 views!  Unfortunately, we do not have video footage from 2015 which include some of my favorites, including performances by Lady Dane Edidi and Venus Selenite.  Still, over the years we have amassed an amazing collection of queer poetry.  I offer below, ten of my favorite performances from Capturing Fire featuring some truly amazing queer poets.

Joanna Hoffman – Pride

Patience Rowe – Freedom Piece

Sam Sax: After My Boyfriend’s DragShow

trigger warning – hate violence

J Mase III – Ally Fail

J.T Bullock – This Dance Floor

Shyla Hardwick – Worms

Regie Cabico – It’s not so much his kiss I recall…

Jessica Genia Simon – For the Jewish Queers

Paul Tran – On Beauty (For Queer Colored Boys)

trigger warning – sexual assault

Gabe Moses – Stimming


If you liked these poems, you can find more on the Center Arts youtube page.  You can also follow Capturing Fire on Twitter or like Capturing Fire on Facebook.

Capturing Fire

 

 

 

One Wheaton: Wedding at Cana

Wedding at Cana

Wheaton College, in Wheaton, Illinois, has been in the press quite a bit lately due to the controversy surrounding Larycia Hawkins.  Hawkins came under fire when she wore a hijab to express solidarity with Muslim Women.  Wheaton officials insist that it is not the hijab at issue, but rather statements made in solidarity with Muslims.   Now, the the first black female professor to attain tenure at Wheaton faces possible expulsion, and we are once again reminded of the deeply rooted xenophobia that exists in America.

Those of us that are familiar with this evangelical Christian college, however (not to be confused with Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts) are probably not quite as shocked at this development as the rest of the world.  After all, evangelical Christians are more often interested in converting others to Christianity than with expressing any solidarity or commonality with other religions.  Growing up in such an evangelical Christian household I was taught to believe other religions were misguided at best, but much more likely just plain evil.

Wheaton is also, of course, a school that only loosened up their conservative Christian restrictions on smoking, drinking, and yes, even dancing (think Footloose) in 2003.  Certain types of dancing are now acceptable these days, but more risque dance (think Dirty Dancing) is still unacceptable for students

Wheaton has, in fact,  long struggled to reconcile both reason academic integrity with its evangelical base.  Even today (and after much debate) students at Wheaton are taught a very limited version of evolution.  Teachers are allowed to discuss evolutionary changes only within established species.  A very literal interpretation of the origin story prevents them from acknowledging the widespread belief that evolution of the human species predated the arrival of Adam and Eve.

And of course Wheaton still refuses to acknowledge that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals are fully equal members of society; worthy to love, and worthy to be loved.   They choose to ignore the longstanding positions of the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association and what is now more than three decades of research on the matter.  Despite what most of us now understand not only academically, but as a matter of common sense,  Gay students are encouraged to be celibate, or worse yet, to try and convert to heterosexuality.

In the past few years, LGBT alumni of Wheaton have come together to form OneWheaton, offering hope to current Wheaton students.   To celebrate their fifth anniversary, OneWheaton commissioned a play written by Rachel Mariner with Lisa Maria Madera.

In this play, Wedding at Cana, a gay man tries to convince his Evangelical mother to attend his wedding with the assistance of his sister who thinks all religion is stupid and dangerous.  Many of you know Rachel Mariner is my sister, and an alumni of Wheaton College   I am immensely proud to have a sister who is both an amazing person and an amazing playwright.

For all the articles that have appeared in the news about Professor Larycia Hawkins, there has been very little discussion about Wheaton College itself and the prevailing culture of evangelical Christianity.

This play offers tremendous insight into this world.  A staged reading of the play took place October 10, 2015 at the Memorial Park Leisure Center in Wheaton, IL.  You can listen to the staged reading on SoundCloud:

Listen to Wedding at Cana now on SoundCloud

It is easy to be shocked and appalled by what is going on right now at Wheaton.  We live in a time when it is easier than ever to be isolated from people who think differently than we do.  Understanding our differences is hard.   Finding the humanity in people we so strongly disagree with can be even harder.  Art at it’s best has the ability to help us on this journey, and Rachel’s play does exactly that.

https://soundcloud.com/onewheaton/wedding-at-cana

Wedding at Cana
Wedding at Cana, a play by Rachel Marine