Memoir
One evening in March 2024, I attended a cabaret fundraiser presented by the Common Woman Chorus, a Durham, North Carolina LBGTQ+ choir, and hosted by local drag queen Stormie Daie. Dressed in fancy sequined gowns or T-shirts and jeans, members of the choir sang everything from the Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody” to Saturday Night Live’s “Tampon Farm,” »
Interview
“I realized that what fascinated me went beyond the historic record to the lifelines—indeed, the life stories of those who made and continue to make queer Atlanta.” I moved to Atlanta from Mississippi in July of 2011 to attend graduate school. In the fall of 2018, I began to teach at nearby Oxford College. My »
Essay
“She saw seven men in suits and her roommate, who mouthed, “It’s the F-B-I.” In 1973, Vicki Gabriner lived in an Atlanta lesbian collective house at the corner of Euclid Terrace and Euclid Avenue. The house in Little Five Points had an ornate glass window on the front door and was one of a handful of neighborhood »
Art
Jimmy Wright’s many collectors and enthusiasts quite reasonably think of him as a New York painter. Wright (b. 1944) has lived and worked in New York City since 1974, and since the early ’90s he has been celebrated for his incisive self-portraits and his luscious paintings and pastels of sunflowers. The New York Times described Wright’s sunflowers »
Essay
“I’ve decided to tell you all the bad side of my life first. And then after I tell you all my bad side, I’ll tell what I remember of the good. Because, with everybody’s life, there’s a little good. Even mine.” Rookie porn star Rodd Donovan stood in possession of God’s gift, what the narrator »
Essay
“Chablis opens opportunities for investigating the complex and often ambiguous nature of gender variability in the South, particularly during periods before the widespread usage of stable identity classifiers like ‘transgender.’” The Lady Chablis (1957–2016) was a Black trans southerner whose style made her legend. Born in Quincy, Florida, Chablis worked as a drag performer across »
Essay
On a spring night in 1960, Miami detectives visited a popular nightspot, the Clover Club, where they gaped at a provocative striptease performed by Zorita, who writhed onstage accompanied by a live boa constrictor. They charged Zorita, as well as the manager of the club, with indecency. A city court judge eventually dismissed the charge. The »
Art
Folklorist Michelle Lanier spoke with artist Allison Janae Hamilton about her new body of work Celestine, recently on view at Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York, and connections to home and the Black South. This conversation has been edited and condensed for publication. Michelle Lanier: I’m thinking about this concept of newness. And I was »
Essay
“We were accused of killing both the cotton and textile industries based on our campaigns to raise critical issues of worker health, union representation, environmental protection, and civil rights.” It may have been us who killed the textile industry, at least according to a number of the cotton mill owners who operated across the South »
Snapshot
For a century, North Carolina was a hub of the US textile industry. Since the 1980s, much of that industry has been lost to offshoring, and our state is dotted with massive, hollowed-out brick mills and the hollowed-out hamlets once supported by them. But our region still offers an abundance of textile resources. Our moderate »
Snapshot
I’ve long been fascinated by the creation and craftsmanship of the materials that fashion relies on, as well as the meaning and beauty in how we choose to adorn ourselves and our spaces. To me, fiber is more than a commodity or resource, it is a canvas for expressing our values, histories, and hopes. All »
Snapshot
The textile industry was swept along by the Industrial Revolution during the late 1700s and early 1800s, changing from a cottage industry to one where inventions like the spinning jenny, cotton gin, and power looms created more efficient production and more jobs. During the twentieth century, jobs and production shifted from the developed world, like »