Queer Brown Voices Summary

Queer Brown Voices is the powerful collection of personal narratives that combines the traditional testimonios with institutional history. These personal essays tell the fascinating stories how how lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Latinas/os navigated LGBT activism from the 1970s to the 1990s. Queer Brown Voices helps illustrate the roles and organization of Texan Latinas/os in the LGBT movement. While these narratives clearly emphasize how the experiences of queer people of color cannot be understood within the unity of Latinas/os identities and LGBT identities; rather, within the intersections of these identities. This collection represents many types of activism from organizing support groups, performing community outreach, and facilitating

consciousness-raising sessions, the most notable of these types of activism being the use of various artistic platforms.
For centuries, the arts have been used as a means of political statement. For example, much of dance during the seventeenth century (and continued into the eighteenth century) French court under King Louis XIV served as a marker of social ranking and political prowess. I, for one, have always found the arts as one of the most powerful modes of political activism. When I was just four years old my mother took me to see Swan Lake. Although I was so young I was able to understand the emotional struggle between good and evil, later learning this version of the ballet was used by the Russian communist party as proof of the Soviets cultural superiority during the Cold War. Though written approximately 100 years prior to most of these author’s first introduction to LGBT activism, the idea of art as activism has changed very little as a means to distribute a political statement.
In “Creating Spaces to Break the Circle of Silence and Denial,” Mona Noriega discusses her involvement with Latina Lesbians en Nuestro Ambiente (LLENA), an acronym which means complete or full in Spanish.

LLENA provided a space for lesbian latinas that they could call their own and feel a sense of wholeness. As a way to be heard and understood LLENA “organized cultural activities, poetry readings, and performance art,” which provided the members a way to reach out to people in the community who might not otherwise hear their message. Prior to her involvement with LLENA, Noriega worked with female poets of color creating chapbooks. She basically acted as an independent book publisher during a time when it was difficult to get a woman’s voice heard, even more so to be a published, female, person of color. Like Queer Brown Voices, Noriega’s work acted as an outlet for those stories which were less commonly be heard. Similar to Noriega’s hand in independent publishing, Letitia Gomez’s participation in ENLACE not only provided points of contact for LGBT Latinas/os, HIV/AIDS education to the Latina/o community, and provided a sense of place for LGBT Latinas/os through “parties and bailes”, but also sponsored LGBT arts programs that were just forming in the 1980s, such as the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. In this way, both Noriega and Gomez assisted the discussion of LGBT Latina/o struggles through the arts by making them more accessible to a wider

audience.
Like Noriega and Gomez’s efforts to expand the discussion of LGBT Latina/o struggles, Jesús Cháirez’s activism too was influenced by his interests in the arts.

In Cháirez’s, “From the Closet to the LGBT Radio Host in Dallas,” he illustrates his endeavors to create a Latino arts collective called Artists Relating Together and Exhibiting (ARTE). ARTE was an inclusive group of artists which strived to showcase as many Latina/o artists regardless of sexual orientation, however he does note that if any members were found to be homophobic they were asked to leave. In addition to this, Cháirez’s worked to form a strictly “gay Latino” radio show under the direction of Dallas’s KNON-the Voice of the People-a nonprofit radio show. Titled Sin Fronteras, without borders in Spanish, his radio show acted as the voice of the LGBT Latina/o community in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Sin Fronteras only featured out Latinas/os as a way to actively promote gay Latina/o pride. This radio show primarily featured gay Latina/o singers and poets. In this way, Cháirez also provided an outlet for artists to express the struggles of LGBT Latinas/os even though these stories were often overlooked when considering the entirety of the LGBT community.

Although through different mediums, these three authors provided means of art as a method of activism by giving artists a way of discussing the struggles of LGBT Latinas/os. The amazing thing about art is a method of activism is that it can provide a way of reaching

out to people who you may not otherwise come into contact with. Especially with the Cháirez’s radio show, this show was able to provide a sense of belonging to a lot of closeted Latinas/os in the Dallas-Fort Worth listening area. By being “out and about” this show was able to give these people a combined identity of being LGBT and Latina/o.
Art as a platform for activism is not always an easy path, and often requires a heightened sense of what you stand for and your role within the movement. Art typically has no other use than to be expressive and can often be the purest form of expressivity. Unlike protesting or community organizing, which is another common form of activism, art can be used to reach people who would not typically come into contact with the movement. Art, by nature, is somewhat voyeuristic and revealing and therefore is inherently provocative and difficult to disregard. Because of this “in your face” nature of the arts, it is often a great medium for activism and progressive movements. This ability to reach a larger audience and the expressivity of the arts is why, I believe these three authors chose to support and advocate for LGBT Latinas/os rights and bring to light their struggles through artistic mediums.