At Abrons Arts Center in New York City, opening night for “Sez Who? Sez Me!” Mor, @more_is_more, Deb Fowler of History Unerased & Sara Burningham of Making Gay History Podcast.
Experience a world where trans people of color don’t just survive, but thrive.
We’re in snowy Chicago for #ThirdCoast17 Audio Festival. Find Sara Burningham or Will Coley for your own limited edition sticker.
“Virginia has changed so rapidly over the past 20 years. It’s gone from a state where no politician would dare to condemn the Confederacy to a state where a suburban district would elect a transgender candidate,” said Stephen J. Farnsworth, a political-science professor at the University of Mary Washington. “The Old Dominion gives way to a very different New Dominion.”
Just as we did for our first two seasons, we’re taking a deep dive into my decades-old audio archive to bring you the voices of LGBTQ history. For the start of this new season, we’re bringing you the second part of a conversation that host Eric Marcus had with Sylvia Rivera back in 1989.
Listen at this link: http://bit.ly/mgh-rivera-part2
Or subscribe here: http://bit.ly/mgh-subscribe
Sylvia Rivera would have loved knowing that in the years since her death in 2002 she’s become an icon—a symbol of LGBTQ people fighting back against police repression and fighting for respect and equal rights. But she’d also want you to know that she was a human being, born in the Bronx in 1951. Eleven years later the self-described effeminate child found himself homeless and hustling on 42nd Street to scratch out enough money to get by. Sylvia was all of seventeen when she crossed paths with history at the Stonewall Inn on the night of June 28, 1969. She died at 51, having struggled with addiction and homelessness for much of her life, even as she continued to fight for trans rights and LGBTQ equality.
Photo: Sylvia Rivera posing in front of fountain, 1970
Credit: Photo by Kay Tobin courtesy of Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library
In the first episode of our third season, we visit Sylvia Riveras’s kitchen, for the second part of a never-before-heard interview from 1989. Pull up a chair for a conversation with the Stonewall veteran and trans rights pioneer who reflects on a life of activism while she cooks a pot of chili. Listen via your podcatcher (see link in bio) or retype this link in your web browser: http://bit.ly/mgh-rivera-part2
First episode of Season 3! Welcome back to Sylvia Rivera’s kitchen, for the second part of a never-before-heard interview from 1989. Pull up a chair for a conversation with the Stonewall veteran and trans rights pioneer who reflects on a life of activism while she cooks a pot of chili. Listen via your podcatcher or at this link : http://bit.ly/mgh-rivera-part2
STAR stands for the “Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries.”
Photo credit: Photo by Harvey Wang from Holding On: Dreamer’s, Visionaries, Eccentrics and other American Heroes (W.W. Norton & Co 1995).
It’s in this landscape—one where trans people must hold our history close, the better for it to fuel our march forward—that Jackie Shane has burst forth once more, her work a totem of empowerment and confidence during troubled times.
Wendell Sayers was born 113 years ago today. Listen to his story in the episode from our 1st season at this link: http://bit.ly/mgh-sayers .
We’re back with more stories from queer history as told by the people who lived it. Drawing on decades-old archival audio tape, you’ll hear intimate, personal interviews with LGBTQ civil rights pioneers.
• Sylvia Rivera at a gay rights demonstration in Albany, New York, 1971. Photo by Diana Davies courtesy of the New York Public Library’s Manuscripts and Archives Division. .
• Phyllis Lyon (left) and Del Martin in an undated photo (as seen in the 2003 documentary “No Secret Anymore: The Times Of Del Martin & Phyllis Lyon”). Photo courtesy of A.F. Archive/Alamy.
• Block (left) and J. J. Belanger cheek-to-cheek in a photo booth at the PGE Exhibition, Hastings Park, Vancouver, Canada, 1953. Photo courtesy of ONE Archives at the USC Libraries.
• Sgt. Perry Watkins near his home in Tacoma, Washington, 1983. Photo by Steve Stewart from his book: Positive Image: A Portrait of Gay America, published in 1985 by William Morrow & Company.
.
Making Gay History mines Eric Marcus’s 30-year-old audio archive of rare interviews to create intimate, personal portraits of both known and long-forgotten champions, heroes, and witnesses to LGBTQ history. In this preview we offer a taste of what’s to come in Season Three, featuring the extraordinary voices of J.J. Belanger, Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, Morris Kight, Sylvia Rivera, Perry Watkins, Deborah Johnson and Zandra Rolón Amato, and Ellen DeGeneres. Listen via your podcatcher or at MakingGayHistory.com
.