by Salvador Vidal-Ortiz, American University

In this presentation, I will engage with the foundational feminist, queer, and racial justice roots of the book Queer Brown Voices: Personal Narratives of Latina/o LGBT Activism, which discusses LGBT Latina/o activists in community organizations in the 1970s throughout the 1990s in the U.S./Puerto Rico. This lecture will first outline the feminist, feminist of color, queer, and queer of color roots and influences of the project, the political need for the documentation of these histories, and mechanisms of producing a book based on oral histories with people from Latina/o LGBT communities. It will also discuss the academic-activist collaboration so integral to the book project. The personal narratives of the 14 activists—conforming a microcosm of a social movement web so rarely discussed in Latino history, or in LGBT history books—reveal experiences of oppression and resilience; they also document their volunteering, employment, and consulting in various groups (they worked in Latina/o ‘mainstream’ organizations, Gay & Lesbian White NGOs, and/or formed their own Latina/o LGBT groups). I will provide this background in my presentation of the intersectionally, co-constituted processes of organizing among Latina/o queer participants, and discuss the relationship of feminist first person narratives to that of queer brown stories. Biography Salvador Vidal-Ortiz is associate professor of sociology at American University. He will be talking about his 2015 co-edited volume, Queer Brown Voices: Personal Narratives of Latina/o LGBT Activism. He co-edited NYU Press’ The Sexuality of Migration: Border Crossings and Mexican Immigrant Men (2009), has a co-authored book, Race and Sexuality, with Polity Press (2018), and just co-edited a book in Spanish, about trans people and education in Argentina, titled Travar el Saber: Educación de Personas Trans y Travesti en Argentina. He is working on his book manuscript on race, gender and sexuality in Santería, an Afro-Cuban religion, as is practiced in the U.S. Thursday 25th April, 5 pm - 7 pm Stein Rokkan Room (S12.234) Building S – Level 12 Institut de Sociologie Avenue Jeanne, 44 1050 Bruxelles Free entry