Coming-out Stories Research Articles

Invisibly Invisible: An LGBTQ+ Self-Advocate Perspective on the Anti-LGBTQ+ Movement

Despite historical shifts toward inclusion for individuals with Disabilities, negative views and societal stigmas still persist, specifically regarding gender and sexuality. Concurrently, there has been an increase in anti-LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) legislation, which poses a significant risk to the well-being and civil rights of LGBTQ+ individuals with Disabilities. In this article, Nicole Adler, a self-advocate who identifies in the LGBTQ+ community, tells her coming-out story. She emphasizes the critical need to proactively support and advocate for the rights and well-being of sexual and gender minorities within the Disability community. Nicole emphasizes the significance of inclusive sex education and provides a call to action for educators to better support LGBTQ+ students with Disabilities. Nicole hopes to inspire and encourage others by sharing her thoughts on the importance of advocating for LGBTQ+ individuals with Disabilities through this article.

“I Am a Lesbian”: Black Queer Subjectivities in The Watermelon Woman and Pariah

Abstract In 2011, cultural critic Nelson George asserted, “Pariah is important, not simply as a promising directorial debut, but also as the most visible example of the mini-movement of young black filmmakers telling stories that complicate assumptions about what ‘black film’ can be by embracing thorny issues of identity, alienation and sexuality.” However, filmgoers, myself included, were offended at the New York Times comparison of Pariah to Lee Daniel's Precious (2008), another “Black” movie, but with such radically different content that one wonders if the reviewers actually watched Dee Rees's Black lesbian coming-out story. Much like Cheryl Dunye's The Watermelon Woman, another film written, directed, and produced by a Black lesbian, Pariah was marketed as a “Black” film, effectively ignoring its queerness. And while both movies received favorable reviews, neither film did very well at the box office, suggesting that Black moviegoers had little interest in Black lesbian film. Hence, this essay will address the ways in which two Black lesbian filmmakers, Cheryl Dunye and Dee Rees, wrote, produced, and directed films that sought to counter common stereotypes regarding queer Black subjectivities, specifically those of Black lesbians, and how their struggles to produce, market, and distribute these films are indicative of the challenges that Black lesbians in the United States still face due to racism, sexism, and homophobia. To be sure, Black lesbian filmmakers are “contest[ing] the dominant gendered and sexual definitions of racial difference by working on black sexuality” (Hall 1993, 274), in this case, Black queer subjectivities in the form of Black lesbians. Stuart Hall also reminds us that the struggle over cultural hegemony “is never about pure victory or pure domination . . . it is always about shifting the balance of power in the relations of culture, it is always about changing the dispositions and the configurations of cultural power, not getting out of it” (107). Thus, late-twentieth- and early-twenty-first-century Black lesbian filmmakers were engaged in challenging contemporary discourses that ignore the particularities of race and gender when it comes to representing LGBT experiences in film, thus hoping to exert agency over their representations in popular culture. I assert that both Pariah and The Watermelon Woman work to expand the archive of Black lesbian filmic representations by focusing on the ways in which Black lesbian identities are validated, embraced, and complicated by Black women in the United States. At the same time, these films reveal the unique challenges that Black lesbian filmmakers face from the film industry, as well as from their own communities.

With and Without, Wise and Otherwise, José and José

With and Without, Wise and Otherwise, José and <i>José</i>

Sports Journalism and Women Athletes: Coverage of Coming Out Stories by William P. Cassidy

Reviewed by: Sports Journalism and Women Athletes: Coverage of Coming Out Stories by William P. Cassidy Michael Tsai (bio) Sports Journalism and Women Athletes: Coverage of Coming Out Stories William P. Cassidy Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, ix + 127 pp. ISBN 9783030305253, $59.99 hardcover. Building on his incisive study of how journalists reported the coming out of two American male professional athletes (Sports Journalism and Coming Out Stories: Jason Collins and Michael Sam), William P. Cassidy has turned his attention to how the media covered the coming-out stories of prominent female athletes Billy Jean King, Sheryl Swoopes, and Brittney Griner in his latest book Sports Journalism and Women Athletes: Coverage of Coming Out Stories. Cassidy's 2017 examination of how American print media reacted to the public announcements by NBA veteran Jason Collins and Michael Sam (a standout collegiate defensive end drafted by the NFL's Los Angeles Rams) offered fresh insight into the breadth and depth of reporting and analysis devoted to the events over their initial thirty-day coverage cycles. In content analysis of some 248 print stories, the author found that, contrary to the perception of sports sections as the "toy departments" of daily newspapers, sports journalists dug deeper than presenting facts, reached beyond official sourcing, and addressed social issues outside the traditional boundaries of sports coverage. In the new book, Cassidy acknowledges previous analysis of media coverage of LGBTQ athletes from a perspective of cultural hegemony—thereby accounting for the vast disparity between overall coverage devoted to men's and women's sports as well as perceptions about the comparative impact and newsworthiness of male and female athlete coming-out stories—and expands the conversation utilizing the same media sociology approach he applied to his analyses of the Collins and Sam examples. [End Page 113] Cassidy's book is meticulously researched and firmly grounded in established theory and practice. In the first of four chapters, the author lays out the justification for his examination, citing the traditional lack of coverage of women's sports, the unique challenges faced by women in professional sports, and evolving media coverage of lesbian athletes. In King, Swoopes, and Griner, Cassidy selected three very distinct subjects whose coming-out stories effectively span the history of out lesbians in professional athletics. The chapter devotes the most space to explaining the unprecedented circumstances surrounding King's public disclosure that she had engaged in a years-long affair with hairstylist Marilyn Barnett, a response to a lawsuit Barnett had filed against King that revealed their relationship. As Cassidy notes, "When King was outed in 1981, it marked perhaps the first time journalists were forced to directly discuss lesbian athletes in sports" (2). The extended history lesson on King, which documents the range of positive and negative reactions and representations in the press and the issues they raised, establishes a baseline for the examination of Swoopes's more contrived and significantly less controversial coming out (via a 2005 story cowritten with LZ Granderson for ESPN's website and magazine), which coincided with her newly signed endorsement deal with Olivia, a travel company marketed to lesbian clients. While Swoopes's announcement received generally positive coverage, Cassidy observes that much of the reporting and commentary either questioned the significance of the story (given the widely held assumption that many female athletes are gay) or reframed the story as a set-up for the question, "How much harder would it be for a male athlete to come out?" By the time Griner came out eight years later, the reaction from the media seemed to be a collective shrug of indifference. While it is true that King, a pioneering feminist icon whose fame and popularity transcended her involvement in sports, and Swoopes, who ranks among the most dominant WNBA players of the generation next to Cynthia Cooper and Lisa Leslie, had higher profiles when they came out, the physically imposing Griner was a Wilt Chamberlain-like presence in college basketball and one of the few female basketball players to regularly garner highlights on ESPN's SportsCenter before becoming the overall No. 1 pick in the 2013 WNBA draft. The muted reaction was largely attributed to Griner's own understated...

Peer education on sexual diversity in Dutch secondary education: Peer educators’ perceptions of activities and perceived outcomes

Process evaluations of peer education on the topic of sexuality and relationships pay little attention to the activities implemented by peer educators. Process evaluation with other target groups indicate clusters of activities that refer to educator skills, offering a safe place to learn, and efforts to change attitudes. An overarching factor named life experiences influences how peer educators implement activities. In this study, a peer education for social acceptance of LGBT was created and implemented in pre-vocational secondary schools. Students trained as peer educators implemented peer education, and after the implementation, they were interviewed about their activities. Sharing the coming-out story appeared to play a central role in the peer education intervention and its perceived outcomes.

Playing with Genre and Queer Narrative in the Novels of Malinda Lo

<p dir="ltr">Malinda Lo has been an invaluable voice in the emerging field of queer YA fiction, both for her accessible statistics on the representation of LGBTQIA+ identities in traditional publishing, and for the content of her novels. Her fictional works place sapphic protagonists into genre narratives – sci-fi, fairy tale, thriller – that are traditionally presumed to be the realm of straight heroes. But the queer rebellion in Lo’s writing goes beyond simply casting queer characters into genres and roles that have historically been considered heteronarrative: Lo’s work is an example of what I define here as ‘queer narrative play’, a process of deliberately and visibly troubling, tweaking, and upturning readers’ expectations of the roles and functions of queer characters within recognisable genre frameworks, deftly challenging the historical binary that has existed between ‘mainstream’ genre fiction and ‘marginal’ queer coming-of-age stories. <p dir="ltr"><span>Following from Tzvetan Todorov’s suggestion that “genres function as ‘horizons of expectation’”, this paper will explore how Lo’s body of work playfully challenges the traditional representation of LGBTQIA+ characters in a variety of methods; from creating speculative worlds that remove the need for narratives such as the coming-out story, to drawing readers’ attention to tragic queer tropes in order to make later subversions of them visible. Queer narrative play is an example of the ways in which contemporary YA writers may enact a rebellious conversation between author and reader, creating playful and progressive new works by reshaping the pre-existing materials of literary expectations, and Lo’s work makes for a stellar example of the craft. </span> <div><span><br /></span></div>

Revisiting the dominant coming out discourses in China’s LGBT activism and research: Lesbians’ chugui experiences within the family

This article, by illustrating coming-out stories of lesbians and their families, inspired by and extending Amy Brainer’s theorization of LGBT family of origin relationships based on her studies in Taiwan, critically revisits the dominant coming-out discourses in the LGBT activism and research in contemporary mainland China. I first argue that, although the belief that the Western-rooted idea of coming out and Chinese family traditions are incompatible is influential within China’s LGBT activist circles, what is seldom recognized is that “chugui”, the Chinese translation of “coming out”, has already become a local term. However, grassroots but creative definitions of “chugui”, such as “to cultivate a better parent-child relationship”, is rejected by LGBT activist elites. I then point out an imbalance in China’s LGBT research that mainly pays attention to strategies of not coming out to parents, which actually underestimates parents’ agency and even otherizes parents in the name of “filial piety”. Rather, the emerging liberalistic ideal of family relationships, especially mother-daughter relationships, enables coming-out practices to become intersubjective journeys for both LGBT children and their parents to rethink gender and sexuality. Finally, I criticize the narrowly defined “family”, or “home”, in China’s dominant coming-out discourses, which disproportionately focuses on one’s family of origin and presumes it as a heteronormative fortress. I call for studies that recognize queer empathy and solidarity in a family of origin and connects one’s experiences in her family of origin with her later life in chosen families, which may be the family of origin of her child(ren).

The Deepest Breath by Meg Grehan

Reviewed by: The Deepest Breath by Meg Grehan Kiri Palm Grehan, Meg The Deepest Breath. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021 [192p] Trade ed. ISBN 9780358354758 $16.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9780358355458 $9.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 4–6 Eleven-year-old Stevie doesn’t understand why her classmate Chloe’s smile sets butterflies dancing in Stevie’s tummy. She also keeps track of Chloe’s weekly nail polish colors, admires her magic tricks, and notices her eyes when she’s never thought about anyone’s eyes before. When it begins to dawn on Stevie that she has her first crush, she worries that there’s something wrong with her. Irish author Grehan offers an encouragingly smooth coming-out story; though Stevie is uncertain of how others will feel about her revelation, her mother, friends, and even other adults in her community support and encourage her on her journey of self-discovery. First-person free verse opens readers to Stevie’s strategy of researching her feelings the way she researches the ocean and other things that frighten her. While other aspects of Stevie’s life, such as her distant father, are alluded to, Grehan keeps the plot focused on Stevie’s first crush and eventual acceptance of her attraction to girls. Filling a needed niche for younger queer and questioning kids, this is a gentle, hopeful read with a kid-friendly romance and a protagonist whom readers will want to befriend. Copyright © 2021 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Gay male athletes’ coming-out stories on Outsports.com

For two decades, Outsports.com – the world’s first website dedicated to the LGBT+ community’s experiences in sport – has provided sexual minority athletes with the opportunity to share their stories. In this research, we examine the published coming-out narratives of 60 out gay male athletes across a variety of different sports. Our analysis indicates that, prior to coming-out, many of these athletes felt the need to adopt an identity predicated on masculine stereotypes, thus distancing themselves from homosexuality. Upon coming-out to teammates, however, most of these athletes experienced acceptance and inclusivity which, in turn, led to improved health and wellbeing. Additionally, we document the changing nature of homosexually themed language on these men’s sports teams. Finally, we recognize the importance of mediums such as Outsports in providing athletes across the world the opportunity to share their coming-out stories. Accordingly, this research advances a body of evidence documenting sport’s growing inclusivity for the LGBT+ community.

“Something a bit more personal”: Digital storytelling and intimacy among queer Black women

Coming-out stories are important cultural texts wherein individuals articulate and interpret experiences of identifying as sexual minorities. Yet, much of the extant literature on coming-out stories examines narratives by white, middle-class gay men and lesbians. Critical inquiry into coming-out stories told by privileged queer subjects points to the formulaic and normative characteristics of their narratives, where sexual difference is downplayed or challenged. The goal of this article, then, is to ask whether and how coming-out narratives told by queer Black women conform to or depart from the “coming-out formula story.” Using an intersectional approach to narrative analysis, this article investigates the performative and discursive strategies that 50 women use in telling their coming-out stories on YouTube. Findings show that queer Black women’s use of intimate candor—the performative and discursive strategy of publicly revealing interior, often sexually explicit, aspects of the self—is a means through which women center desire and queerness; articulate a vision of queer Black womanhood; and complicate the coming-out formula.

American queeroes: coming-out narratives in the Captain America fandom

ABSTRACTThis article examines three Captain America fanfictions that imagine the eponymous hero’s cinematic representation as queer in an effort to gauge the impact of a queer Captain America on U.S. society and culture. At the same time, these texts scrutinise the public perception of heroes as agents of heteronormativity, as heterosexual subjects, and objects of a heterosexual gaze, through the incorporation of (social) media responses in their fictional microcosms. Moving beyond the reductive equation of heroic masculinity and heterosexuality, the analysed texts open up more inclusive discourses of desire, disclosure, and dissent by following the coming-out stories of their heroes. The virtual spaces of fandom are put into conversation with the closet, which renders private, and possibly queer, identities invisible, and coming out as an act of publicly (re)gaining agency and self-determinacy. The article offers a queer reading of one of Marvel’s most beloved characters by reassessing the Captain America films and laying bare the constructedness of hetero-heroism that structures and motivates the films’ narratives. American queeroes in fanfiction are thus not just fantasies – they constitute reactions to and efforts against the oppressive framework of heteronormativity which obscures and limits the potential queerness of characters in mass media representations.

I’m Not a Girl by Maddox Lyons

Reviewed by: I’m Not a Girl by Maddox Lyons Kiri Palm Lyons, Maddox I’m Not a Girl; written by Maddox Lyons and Jessica Verdi; illus. by Dana Simpson. Roaring Brook, 2020 [40p] Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-374-31068-4 $18.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad 5-7 yrs In this picture book, Hannah’s mom always picks out pretty dresses for her kid to wear on picture day and Halloween, and Hannah doesn’t know how to get her to [End Page 402] stop. He wishes his parents, classmates, and friends would see him for who he really is: a boy. When he meets two new friends at the pool who accept his identity without question, they tell Hannah about their transgender cousin, and this knowledge and ready acceptance give Hannah the courage to come out to his parents. This story offers a straightforward view of gender identity and coming out, with the promise of acceptance from loving parents and a supportive community. Author and tween activist Lyons chooses to use Hannah as a mirror for his own coming-out story in this #ownvoices tale, and an endnote from his mother explains that Maddox chose to write this story after the Lyons family struggled to find books about trans kids during his transition. However, the book is programmatic, and Hannah’s first step into transition is oversimplified. Digital art by Simpson (Phoebe and Her Unicorn, BCCB 10/14) is broadly cartoonish, with a simple wide-eyed character design that is adjusted for each new addition to Hannah’s community. As a creative work, this title is therefore lacking, but as a conversation starter or introductory resource, this book provides clear language and the promise of hope. Back matter includes notes from the author and illustrator as well as a list of resources for families. Copyright © 2020 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

How It All Blew Up by Arvin Ahmadi

Reviewed by: How It All Blew Up by Arvin Ahmadi Alaine Martaus Ahmadi, Arvin How It All Blew Up. Viking, 2020 [288p] Trade ed. ISBN 9780593202876 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9780593202883 $10.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 8-12 When school bullies threaten to out eighteen-year-old Amir Azadi to his conservative Iranian Muslim parents, the usually responsible Amir does the unexpected: he runs away to Rome. Suddenly on his own in a strange city, he quickly falls in with a group of supportive young gay men, who jovially teach him about gay icons and Italian culture. Yet even as Amir slowly builds self-confidence and embraces life out of the closet, even finding an adorable Italian boy to date, he can't forget the drama he left behind. Largely focused on Amir's sweet, angst-filled narration, this novel offers readers a heartfelt coming-out story infused with a thoroughly enjoyable travelogue. While the characterization of Amir's new friends sometimes dips into cliché, readers will appreciate the comfort he finds with the memorable, outrageous band. A narrative frame involving airport security, meanwhile, gives Amir's family a chance to voice their stories, rounding out Amir's narrow perspective. It's those details that give the story its power and will lure readers to embrace Amir while daydreaming about far-off lands. Copyright © 2020 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Emergent Subjectivities: The Year in Korea

Emergent SubjectivitiesThe Year in Korea Heui-Yung Park (bio) Some of the most significant additions to life writing works published lately in South Korea include representations of marginalized subjects in society, such as the sick, the queer, and North Korean defectors, joining those familiar texts featuring well-known politicians and celebrities and ordinary individuals, including those of the working class. Political memoirs, such as Ko Kŏn hoegorok: Kongin ŭi kil (2017) by Ko Kŏn, prime minister of Korea from 1997 to 1998 and then from 2003 to 2004, and Yi Hoe-ch'ang hoegorok: Chŏngch'iin ŭi kil (2017) by Yi Hoe-ch'ang, one of the presidential candidates from 1997 to 2007, still tend to fill up the shelves of the bookstores and other marketplaces online and off each year, showcasing their writers' political beliefs as public figures. On the other hand, in Ku Tal's Ilgaemi chasŏjŏn: chikdingdŭl iyŏ gaemigul esŏ annyŏng hasin'ga? (2017), an office worker at a publishing company represents her experience of being subjected to unfair treatment, including low salary, poor working conditions, and unreasonable dismissal by her employers, as many other workers are. Most striking recently, however, are those life stories that give voice to those often overlooked and rejected in Korea due to their vulnerabilities, such as sickness, different sexual orientations, and the division of territory in the Korean peninsula. Kim Kuk-hyŏn's Bongsŏnhwa pulkkae p'ida: Kim Kuk-hyŏn am t'ubyŏnggi (2018) and Ha Su-yŏn's T'umyŏnghan nanaldŭl (2017) present experiences of illness and recovery that offer suggestions for self-help for patients and their families. Sin kajok ŭi t'ansaeng (2018) offers coming-out stories of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender couples and communities, and asks for rights equal to those of the heterosexual majority. Kim Su-chin's Aoji esŏ Sŏul kkaji: Pukan yŏsŏng ŭi p'yŏngbŏmhan Namhan sŏnggonggi (2017), Kim Ryŏn-hŭi's Na nŭn Taegu e sanŭn Pyŏngyang simin imnida (2017), and T'ae Yŏng-ho's 3-ch'ŭng sŏgisil ŭi amho: T'ae Yŏng-ho chŭngŏn (2018) are North Korean narratives, each somewhat political in its own way, presenting different images of North Koreans than those usually perceived in the South. Taken together, these life stories of the sick, the queer, and North Korean [End Page 77] defectors suggest that various vulnerable subjects are emerging as subjects from the margins of Korean society. Narratives of Illness and Recovery: Agency of the Sick T'ubyŏnggi in Korean means records of fighting illness, referring to an autobiographical story of a recovered or recovering patient or a survivor who has won over sickness. Kim's Bongsŏnhwa pulkkae p'ida and Ha's T'umyŏnghan nanaldŭl narrate the progressive stages from their illness to recovery, offering an optimistic ending to their life-and-death struggle. With detailed information about the course of their treatment and lives as patients, these stories highlight their agency and personal efforts to overcome their sickness, giving hope and encouragement to those readers in need. By doing so, they modify the common perception of patients as weak and vulnerable, presenting the alternative of empowered subjects able to run their own bodies. Bongsŏnhwa pulkkae p'ida is a collection of Kim's diaries, kept for about five months, from the time when he began popular remedies for treatment in the countryside to some time after his partial recuperation. In July 2017, when in his early sixties, Kim was diagnosed with a recurrence of liver cancer. His diaries chronicle his daily activities and reflections, and the kinds of treatment he tried. His primary focus was on how to overcome his illness through regular exercise, natural food, and positive thinking, rather than dwelling on his bodily pain, and therefore to claim a sense of empowerment over his sick body. In addition, Kim's close attention to the vitality and permanence of the animate and inanimate objects around him in nature, such as birds, flowers, mountains, rocks, and trees...

Becoming Culturally (Un)intelligible: Exploring the Terrain of Trans Life Writing

This article offers a metatheoretical exploration of how we think through, understand, and categorize trans life writing. It explores Judith Butler’s theory of cultural intelligibility, the use of the waves metaphor, the conflation of trans life writing with coming-of-age and coming-out stories, and counternarratives of cultural unintelligibility.

Coming Out in Poland

Coming out of the closet, a concept originating in American culture and consistent with the paradigm of conversion, has been embraced by many Polish LGBT+ activists. However, literary coming-out narratives have played a relatively minor role in Polish homoerotic writings while a prominent American gay coming-out novel has not had significant resonance after it was published in Polish translation, suggesting that neither the coming-out story nor the rhetorical act of coming out has been adopted without reservation. Moreover, a contemporary call for Polish lesbian women and gay men to come out in order to promote marriage equality seems more directly aligned with the present-day U.S. political context than with any broadly accepted local activist position on the question of same-sex marriage. Given the absence of consensus about the meaning and the goal of coming out, or even its appropriateness, verbal coming out cannot function as performative speech in the Polish context, where it is better understood as periperformative speech (Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick).

Coming-Out Confessions: Negotiating the Burden of Lesbian Identity Politics in South Africa

ABSTRACTFor lesbians, “coming out” or disclosing one’s sexual orientation has come to be seen as a marker of self-acceptance, actualization, and the imperative first step in the authentication of a liberated subjectivity and social identity. However, other critical schools of thought, largely informed by Foucault’s middle writings, have argued that “coming out” is merely a confessional response to an incitement to discourse about sex. This study explored constructions of coming out by a group of self-identified lesbians in South Africa. Data were collected via eight semistructured interviews and subjected to discourse analysis. Although the coming-out stories appear to conform to some discursive practices characterizing confessional modes of response to incitements to speak, they are also de-emphasized as central to the constitution of selfhood. The changing conditions of possibility for the production of sexual subjectivity in contemporary South Africa seem to disrupt understandings of coming out as either solely a confessional or liberatory practice.

LGBT at USNA

This research addresses significant cultural changes in terms of gender relations that are occurring in the United States military today and in particular at the academy level. This article focuses on the LGBT community at the United States Naval Academy and posits that, in order to fully understand and support the success of LGBT midshipmen at the United States Naval Academy, it is important to understand the diversity of the LGBT community in general from a grassroots perspective. Depending on self-identification and the process in self-identification of individual midshipmen, for example, experiences vary greatly. This paper seeks to analyze the experiences of those individuals identifying as LGBT at USNA based on an ethnographic study involving the collection of coming-out stories by and interviews with midshipmen as well as participant-observation research in the community. It is the researcher's initial conclusion that a support network for LGBT midshipmen is essential when it comes to their development as young adults, as officers and as potential leaders in the military.

Missing the Drama: Staging Communities without Conflict

Missing the Drama:Staging Communities without Conflict Sharon Mazer (bio) We were in the Basement, a rough-and-ready theatre in Auckland, the largest city in New Zealand. The theatre has been built into the back of an old brick building on Queen Street, and is known for its funky appeal to younger, more diverse audiences than its mainstream neighbors in Auckland’s Arts Precinct.1 The Basement’s black box had been set up for an awkward, rather claustrophobic mix of cabaret and bench seating, almost engulfing a smallish rectangular stage planted on the long side and elevated about a foot off the floor. The audience was predominantly Māori and Pasifika, hip, and queer. The show was part of the Auckland Pride Festival (February 5–21, 2016), and the party was definitely perking along. The play was Puzzy, by Kiki (Kiana Rivera), a Hawaiian-based Samoan-Filipina lesbian playwright.2 The string of identifiers is essential here, because that’s what the play is essentially about: the coming-out story of Mele, a Samoan-Filipina Jehovah’s Witness who struggles against being labeled even as she comes to face up to her grandmother’s disapproval. The role of Mele was played by one young woman, Frankie Adams, while the other three women on stage (Nora Aati, Gaby Solomona, and Malia ‘Ahovelo) stepped in and out of the spotlight with her as friends and lovers, family and others. Across town at TAPAC (The Auckland Performing Arts Centre), the house was also packed, for At the End of My Hands: Stories for Deaf and Hearing Audiences.3 Onstage: six actors (four Deaf,4 two hearing) and a musician playing a variety of instruments, including piano and drums. The stage was bare except for three black cubes. Three translucent muslin panels hanging vertically upstage broke up the blackness of the box and offered opportunities for a bit of shadow play. At the End of My Hands was less scripted, more improvised than Puzzy. The stories were dispersed among the performers, a constellation of personal narratives, rather than centered on a singular protagonist, but the episodic structure was much the same: fragments of scenes in collage. Mixing sign, spoken word, and pantomime, the actors took turns describing and enacting episodes from life on the edge between Deaf and hearing communities. There were no “interpreters” as such, no translation or accommodation in either linguistic direction. With twice as many Deaf as hearing performers, those of us not fluent in New Zealand Sign Language had to employ a fair bit of empathy and imagination to keep up with the play. [End Page 7] At TAPAC, we were seated more conventionally, in rows facing the proscenium. But as at the Basement, it seemed that both the frame of the stage—what separated us from the performers—and the line between ordinary life and its theatricalized double had been transcended in the way Carol Martin describes in her introduction to Dramaturgy of the Real on the World Stage. In her words, “much of today’s dramaturgy of the real uses the frame of the stage not as a separation but as a communion of the real and the simulated; not as a distancing of fiction from nonfiction, but as a melding of the two.”5 Likewise, Hans-Thies Lehmann begins, in Postdramatic Theatre, by seeing the theatre as “a place where a unique intersection of aesthetically organized and everyday real life takes place.” 6 In these Auckland theatres what was performed seemed to be, in Lehmann’s words, “a real gathering.”7 Our sense of communion was intense, profound, contagious. Both Puzzy and At the End of My Hands were embraced by their audiences, many of whom clearly saw the actors speaking truths that were, if not their own, nonetheless resonant with their own experiences and values. There was a very real sense of grace in these gatherings. Both shows gave stage to communities who do not generally feature on the dominant cultural platforms of New Zealand, or anywhere else in the world. The productions were professional and proficient, well reviewed, with coverage in the city’s paper of record as well as on more specialist...

The Wizard of Oz is a Lesbian Coming-Out StoryThe Wizard of Oz is a Lesbian Coming-Out Story

The Wizard of Oz is a Lesbian Coming-Out StoryThe Wizard of Oz is a Lesbian Coming-Out Story