Giovanni gay
AS JAMES BALDWIN’S 100th birthday passes, I recall the line from Pablo Neruda’s poem “I Ask for Silence”: “I have lived so much that some day they will possess to forget me forcibly.” Instead of fading from memory as his operate aged, the man Bobby Kennedy called “Martin Luther Queen” has become an unforgettable icon, partly for his writing about the mid-20th-century Black American life, partly for being a visible gay person, and ultimately for his exceptional abilities as a scribe and presenter of significant themes.
Renowned gay Irish author Colm Tóibín has established James Baldwin’s entry into the canon of America’s most important writers with a rich, varied collection of five lengthy essays that were originally delivered as the Mandel Lectures at Brandeis University. His view of Baldwin from this distinctive international angle shows that the weight and value of this unique American voice hold been widely recognized both within and beyond our borders.
The gay community is quite right to claim Baldwin with pride, as we’d be hard-pressed to find a better symbol for our own stubborn unwillingness to be forgotten. Still, his laser center on racial justice in his principal work
The LGBTQ ‘information revolution’
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When Giovanni’s Room opened in 1973, it was only the second LGBTQ bookstore in the state. It came right after New York’s Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop, which suffered a drop in sales and closed in 2009.
That left Philly’s queer literature outpost as the oldest in the nation — and it played a pivotal role in the lives of many.
The first period Kelly Rial visited the bookstore at 12th and Pine streets, she looked both ways before stepping inside. At the time, Rial hadn’t yet reach out as transitioned. She wanted to explore her individuality, but she didn’t want to obtain caught.
“I think a lot of people who come in for the first time have the same kind of reaction,” said Rial, now a 70-year-old South Philly resident. “You look around and make sure that nobody sees you walk in.”
For Rial, the bookstore was a haven. At home, her parents sent her to a psychiatrist when they suspected her trans culture. But at Giovanni’s Room, there were gay memoirs and lesbian nonfiction works. There
The Loneliness of Black Genius
Giovanni nods to this in the middle of one of her poetry readings, several of which the film captures. This one takes place at the Free Library of Philadelphia to a packed crowd that includes Sonia Sanchez down front:
“Because anybody that has any talent in this room is lonely. Whether you can vocalize, whether you can fire a basketball, whether you can play football, I don’t care what it is […] if you got a talent, you’re lonely. And so what you want to perform is go on with your life. Because at some point you’re gonna find somebody who is as lonely as you are and then you will build your community.”
In Little Richard: I Am Everything, directed by Lisa Cortés, which also premiered at Sundance this year, a god-fearing Little Richard expresses something similar: “I don’t have nobody but me and the fantastic God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
Both documentaries are probing character studies. Going to Mars leans into Giovanni’s personal obsession with space travel, creating a documentary that itself looks and feels like a cosmic tour of the planet that is Giovanni’s mind and oeuvre, while Little Richard endeavors to be a rousing reclamation of the r
Giovanni Melton
My son Giovanni D. Melton was murdered by his control father on November 2, 2017, at 12:00 pm. His father was homophobic, and my son came out to him. He shot and killed him for being gay.
Giovanni was only 14 years aged. My ex-husband had a domestic battery conviction because of his abuse against me back in 2000. We divorced later, and he was not allowed to own a gun anymore. The police discovered that he had purchased six new illegal guns.
I pause for a moment because I want that to sink in.
My son had just graduated from middle school. He only attended high school for three months and three days. His whole animation was ahead of him, and his life was stolen due to homophobia.
My ex has been on house arrest for murder. His murder trial has been continued again and again.
I suffer and neglect my son everyday. A grief that broke my heart and divided a family forever.
We now own the Giovanni Melton Foundation, which fights for anti-violence, anti-bullying, anti-gun violence and anti-racism.