Cultivating Artistic Networks and Literary Legacies
Just as the introductions to these volumes articulated the purpose of these volumes and the ideas undergirding them, many discussed the arduous processes by which they came to be. Some collections, like Má-Ka Diasporic Juks and Between the Lines, were rooted in existing artistic communities. This was also the case for volumes produced by the Other Countries Collective, a New York City-based writers’ collective that produced multiple collections, including Sojourner: Black Gay Voices in the Age of AIDS (1993). These volumes embodied the communities that produced them and offered a window for readers to understand decades later their approaches to forging artistic networks, conveying their lived experiences, and envisioning more just worlds to inhabit.
Other ethnoracial anthology projects, particularly the earliest, required greater dimensions of organizing. Through LGBTQ+ publications and community center bulletin boards, editors worked to connect artists, fundraise, and bring these collections into existence. “There was no existing network to tap into,” Beam related at the beginning of In the Life.[1] Although periodicals existed when he proposed the volume to his publisher, Beam needed to solicit materials “via press releases to the gay media and the Black media,” knowing “only a handful of Black gay male writers and artists.”[2] One of Beam’s announcements ran in Boston’s Gay Community News on March 2, 1985:
“BOSTON - Manuscripts and artwork by Black gay men about the Black gay male, experience in North America are being solicited for an anthology. The book, edited by Joseph Beam, a Philadelphia Black gay activist and writer, will be published in 1986 by Alyson Publications.
Manuscripts may be submitted in the following forms: essays and short fiction (up to 5,000 words), poetry (no more than five poems), brief excerpts from plays and novels, letters, journal entries, performance pieces, and interviews. Of particular interest are experiences of: intimate relationships, coming out, interactions with family, rural living, youth, religion, prison life, aging, the arts, gay activism, oral history, the military, and erotica. Artwork in the form of photography and drawings may be submitted (please send copies, not originals). All manuscripts should by typed and double-spaced on 8x2" by 11" white paper with the contributor's name on each page.
Deadline for submissions is April 30, 1985.
A Black gay archive is now forming. Everyone is encouraged to grant written permission for submission of their manuscript or artwork to this archive.
Manuscripts and copies of artwork should be sent in duplicate to: Beam/BGA, P.O. Box 30024, Philadelphia, PA 19103.”[3]
A shorter and earlier version appeared in the San Francisco gay and lesbian newspaper Coming Up!; it was published between an advertisement for The Rawhide II, “the Biggest and Best Country and Western Dance bar in San Francisco,” and images in the community calendar’s listings of dance performances.[4] These announcements, outlining themes and logistics, enabled Beam and other anthologists to develop artistic networks and bring their volumes into existence. As Beam declared in his call for entries, “A Black gay archive is now forming.” These anthologies archived the past but also the present, insisting on the necessity of preserving this emerging network of voices for the future.
When looking through historical gay and lesbian periodicals, these types of announcements frequently appeared in classified sections. A single page from the November 1989 edition of the Coming Up! solicited contributions for five different anthologies being organized around “lesbian marriage,” “poems about AIDS,” poems by women “on any subject (except brutality),” writing about “How Child Abuse Affects Pregnancy & Childbirth,” and works by Italian-American women.[5] When communities of artists did not exist, the organizers of collections relied heavily upon existing networks of periodicals and newsletters. Sharon Lim-Hing detailed the extensive organizing necessary to produce The Very Inside and ensure that it was representative of all facets of the lesbian and bisexual API community: “We put notices and ads in journals, magazines, and newspapers and sent stacks of flyers to conferences, events, bookstores, publishers, schools, community centers, writers’ groups, and all sorts of organizations.”[6] The October 1981 issue of Coming Up! advertised a salsa dance fundraiser in Berkeley, California, for a Latin American Lesbian Anthology, which would become Compañeras: Latina Lesbians (1987). Editor Juanita Ramos noted in the book’s introduction that organizing efforts started in 1980 to form la Colectiva Lesbiana Latinoamericana, including a sister dance benefit at Hunter College sponsored by Lesbians Rising.[7] Queer anthology projects, especially those organized around ethnoracial identities, required a significant amount of coordination. These labors of love relied on existing networks to get the word out, provide mutual aid for artistic projects, and congregate artists with similar backgrounds and interests.
After beginning with a trickle, Beam ultimately received over 100 manuscripts and portfolios as a support network eventually emerged. Following his initial calls in Black media and gay media venues, he spent years listening to “stories of failed loves, tales of looking for employment…, moving through writing blocks.” “We supported each other,” he summarized, declaring that “together we are creating and naming a new community.”[8] Each of these anthologies stands as a testament to artists organizing around shared experiences and artistic goals as they sought to be seen and heard. The legacy of these volumes is not only this cooperative spirit, but also the publishers that emerged to support these projects, including Sister Vision Black Women and Women of Colour Press and Assotto Saint’s Galiens Press. And, of course, the participants’ voices became voices for their communities and generations; some of the best-known are Paula Gunn Allen, Cherríe Moraga, Barbara Smith, Rigoberto González, Michelle Cliff, Gloria Anzaldúa, Essex Hemphill, and John Keene.
In Cruising Utopia (2009), Muñoz described haunting “networks of commonality and the structures of feeling” in queer literature. These networks slowly came into relief through anthologies as writers build new worlds both through their art and their organizing. I close with Muñoz’s forward for Virgins, Guerrillas, & Locas, which reflected on the power of the anthology: “This book is a brick. But it is not a brick that sinks. It’s something else. It’s heavy with meaning and love. It feels good in our hands. We can throw it and it will fly in the air with tremendous force. But we need to hold onto it. We can and must use it to build a world of possibility, for this book is a building block imbued with possibility. [It] is a crucial component in a project that we can best understand as world-making.” These anthologies are building blocks that today offer insights into how queer new worlds were and are built through an impulse to connect, organize, and imagine with fellow queers.
[1] Beam, In the Life, xxi.
[2] Beam, In the Life, xx.
[3] Joseph Beam, “Black Gay Anthology,” Gay Community News, March 2, 1985, 2.
[4] “Call for Writing,” Coming Up!, November 1, 1984, 26.
[5] “Call for Entries,” Coming Up!, November 1, 1989, 29.
[6] Lim-Hing, The Very Inside, “Introduction.”
[7] Juanita Ramos, ed., Compañeras: Latina Lesbians : An Anthology (New York: Latina Lesbian History Project, 1987), xv–xvi; Coming Up!, Inc, “Antologia Lesbiana Latino Americana,” Coming Up!, October 1, 1981, 4.
[8] Beam, In the Life, xxi.