June 24, 2025 • 23 mins
George is joined live in person at the DC Public Library by their close friend, producer and performer Twiggy Pucci Garcon. They talk about George's history of Black Queer icons from the Harlem Renaissance, Flamboyants, and then make their way for a special viewing at the National Portrait Gallery. You can watch George and Twiggy's full discussion on the DC Public Library's Youtube page.
Special thanks to Ellen Rolfes for her support recording the episode.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Pride is a riot, and so for us to show
up in Spider Who's sitting at sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue,
means that we're still fighting, right. We could have been scared,
but it's like, Noah, We've been doing this since nineteen seventy.
We're not gonna stop doing it no matter who's in office.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Like you just have to deal with it.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Recently, I was in DC for Black Pride to give
a talk about my.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Latest book, Flamboyant.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Flamboyant is about the untold stories of twelve black and
quer icons of the Harlem Renaissance. The book came out
in twenty twenty four. So today's episode of Fighting Words
is going to be a little different. You're going to
hear a short part of my talk at the DC
Public Library, and then you'll follow me to the National Portrait.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Gallery to see a very special portrait.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Hope you enjoy.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
Its singing in the heavy handy.
Speaker 5 (00:56):
If the world take a.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
Sup of brandy. You spoken guy, You knows what to
plan is ocam and Latinino. One does understand me.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
My name is George M.
Speaker 5 (01:05):
Johnson.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
I am the New York Times bestselling author of the
book All Boys Aren't Blue, which.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Is the number one most challenged book in the United States.
This is Fighting Words, a.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Show where we take you to the front lines of
the culture wars with the people who are using their
words to make change and who refuse to be silenced.
Here's a clip for my discussion where I explain how
I came up with the idea for the book. You
can listen to the whole discussion on the DC Public
Library YouTube page. So when it came to Flamboyant, Twiggy
(01:42):
and I, we own a production company called Altinoche Productions,
of course and so right, so we have been talking
about like this Liberation series and like this project called
Liberation where it was like, we want to do like
eras of like queerness, and we were pitching it. We
(02:03):
were having in general meetings, but at some point like
it's just hard TV and film is hard, Like you
could have great ideas, but sometime it doesn't push through.
I was finding more of an avenue through publishing. So
it's like All Boys on Blue was optioned by Gabrielle
Union for a television deal. We were able to pitch
(02:24):
it didn't work out. That's cool, stay tuned because the
movie's coming, but like, so stay tuned because like we're
really working on it actively. But I was realizing, like,
you know what, maybe if I write about these certain
topics through book world and we can get them optioned
into TV and film, this will make our pathway much
easier to make the things that we actually want because
(02:46):
it does seem like there's a pipeline from book to book,
adaptation to television and film. So I was like, you
know what, I'm going to do this book on the
Haller Renaissance, and like this way.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
One, it'll help young adults who need.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
To understand that we had queer legacy, queer history and
ancestry that came before what they kept telling us. And two,
when we want to adapt this into something now, we
have the intellectual property that we own to be able
to adapt it. Because that's also what it's about at
that point, right, like who owns the IP? And it's
like if we own the IP at any time, we
(03:22):
could make this happen. And so that became the catalyst.
I think the third point is I grew up without
having heroes. I grew up I had heroes, but they
were Martin Luther King or Sojin the truth or people
who didn't experience my queerness, and so I felt like,
as a young queer person, I had to pull pieces
(03:43):
of people together to make a hero. So it's like, well,
this person doesn't have my full experience, but they have.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Two pieces of my experience.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
So I'm a pull from this person and this person
has one piece of my experience. I'm a pull from them,
put from them, pull from them, pull from them. And
I had that going on while at the same time
people telling me you're my hero, You're my hero, you're
my first, You're my this, you're my that, And I'm like, well, damn,
that's crazy to me because it's like, I'm the hero
of so many as a person who didn't have a
(04:13):
hero for self or didn't get to learn about who
my heroes were until I was old enough to read
the books that thankfully my parents and my aunts would
provide for me that the school systems wouldn't, and so
I got to them be the hero of.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
So many people.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
But I was like, it's important that I actually do
the research on my own heroes because I actually don't
know their full stories. I know them as what they
taught us, taught them to us, but they taught them
to us through their accolades, not their life. And my
whole goal with writing Flamboyance was to humanize them so
(04:49):
that we knew that they also lived a life. They
weren't just the first Emmy winner, the first this winner,
the first that person. They actually lived a life, a
life that was hard, a life that didn't have as
many rights as we have today. And it's important that
we understand like these people stood bold, courageous, and flamboyant
(05:11):
in spite of what the circumstances were for them.
Speaker 6 (05:15):
Let's talk a bit technically about about the book. In
your process. So Charlie Palmer is the illustrator of the
cover and throughout the book. Why Charlie, what was that process?
How did you land on this cover?
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Okay, great question, because Charlie, Yes, So.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
I tried. I feel like I have.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Tried to like make sure like anything I do has
like a lot of like queer folks involved, like you know,
but Charlie's not queer. Charlie is a heterosexual black man
whose wife, doctor Carita, is one of my favorite people
in the world, who's also a holler runner sounds historian.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
And it's like sometimes.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
You meet people who are just your person, and like
we would go out and doctor career. This is before
we even discussed flamboyance. This was Charlie did the book
cover for All Boys Are Blue, and he was like,
I read the book and I just felt connected to you.
I don't even know how to explain it, Like he
just he was. Charlie always says like I just felt
(06:26):
we were meant to like be together, like in whatever
the creative space is. And sometimes that's just how it
works out. Like I write the words and he's able
to read the words and literally pull out of my
brain the images that I see.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
And so when he's when he and mind you.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
It was a little bit of a fight to even
get Charlie on Flamboyance, like because the industry is the industry,
and they're like, well maybe this person or this person's better,
this person's better, this person better. So it's like, okay,
so we went with the first person.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
First.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
She was not interpreting my words and putting it images
out that I needed, and I was like it's not
gonna work, Like this is not gonna work. And then
I fought again. It was like Charlie is the only
person who's gonna read my words and know exactly what
these images need to look like read the book. Sent
those first set of sketches in and everybody the public
House publishing house gagged and was like WHOA, Like we
(07:19):
are blown away, and I was like, but this is
and they were like, now we get why you kept saying, Charlie,
because when you get that type of relationship, and I
think that's a beautiful I think that's what's beautiful about
blackness and queerness, right. I always say there is no
blackness without queerness. There's no querness without blackness. And so
it's like, Charlie doesn't have to be a black queer
identified person to understand queerness because his art is queer.
(07:44):
His art is queer to what is acceptable to the world.
His art has always been He's done time magazine covers
and things that have been challenged, things publicly that people
don't accept and to be queer to be not accepted.
And so because he is a person who understands I've
been accepted, he understands the queerness that is in my
brain when I'm writing these certain things and how to
(08:05):
make it an image versus like what I've written on
the page, and so in the choice of the book cover,
he gagged because I chose this as the book cover,
but if you open the book up, this was this
(08:30):
is so this is the original book cover, and so
we still put it in there, but this was the
original book cover he came up with, which was fab
But I just felt so inspired by that Josephine Baker
image he did, which ended up becoming a book cover,
this one that I was like, this has to be
the book cover. And he didn't know that though, so
(08:54):
he thought that the publisher rejected his book cover, and
so then when we got together for the tour, he
was like, yeah. He was like, I felt away because
like they didn't like my cover and I was like,
what you mean, He was like, the one that they
put on it. I was like, no, I loved it,
I said, but that Josephine Baker image was so stunning,
and I was like, this is this has to be
the cover.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
So I was like, I changed it. They didn't. They
wanted the other one, and so.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
He just laughed at it because he was like, I
should have known it was you that saw the images
that I did for the whole book and changed it.
But that's really what art is about, right, It's like
our imitates life. They always say a picture is worth
a thousand words. I felt like this picture had the
most words that could be attached to it, and so
I was like, she has to be on the cover.
Speaker 6 (09:38):
Yeah, I remember when you went back and forth about it.
Continuing on the subject of process, how did you go
about selecting these particular twelve pioneering icons.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
You know, it was tough because one, it's like we
only we only have the history that's written down, that
we have that's for and down, and so when you
really think about just us as like black, grated people,
all these things, it's like, I'm grateful that Robert Jones
(10:12):
wrote the Prophets, right, the profits is a queer story
during slavery. But unfortunately, when you go through the slave
journals and when you go through like all of the research,
there's not a lot about written about queerness during slavery.
So the Harlem Renaissance actually was like the first period
where it was chronic our queerness was chronicled where you
(10:35):
actually have written down things about it, where you have
Langston Hughes who wrote Spectacles in Color, which is an
essay so Leangthton Hughes writes this essay called Spectacles in
Color about an event that he attends, where he says,
the men were dressed like women, the women were dressed
like men. We all paid for a ticket to go inside,
(10:56):
and they were competing, and they were battling against each other.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
He was writing about ballroom.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
So this is literally one of the first ever written
pieces of information about ballroom community before we called it
like a thing like He's lengthy. Hughes is one of
the first people to actually write what a ball looked
like as everybody bought tickets, sat around the outside, and
watched them all perform against each other in the middle.
And I believe I don't think it was at Madison
(11:22):
Square Garden, but it was like at.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
A very large venue in Harlem. And so it's like
to choose these people.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
It was hard because we didn't have as much information,
and so several of them I had to like research
like what others said. It was like what did their
children say about them, what did their grandchildren say about them?
Speaker 2 (11:47):
What did their best friends say about them?
Speaker 1 (11:49):
So it's like I'm looking and scouring like source material
at the source material to actually get the full story.
Then there was also this fear of am I out them.
(12:37):
We're walking over to the Portrait Museum to see an
exhibition where we will see an image of Tweety Pucci
gar Song.
Speaker 6 (12:47):
We're about to go to see my picture.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
This is the National Portrait Calorie.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
That's Tweiggy Puochi gar Song.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Tweiggy is one of my best friends as well as
my work partner with a production company we own call
All Tea No Shade Productions. She's a director, producer, activists,
and the international mother of the legendary Barroomhouse of Combe
de Garson, which I also happened to be a part of.
Twiggy was a little surprised when she heard that her
picture was in the National Portrait Gallery.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
They did not tell me themselves.
Speaker 6 (13:17):
A friend of mine who was visiting DC randomly was like, hey,
you know your pictures in this museum and sent me
a picture and I was like, oh, okay, so ya.
That's how I found out.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Twiggy's portrait was taken by legendary photographer Timothy Greenfield Sanders,
who has photographed countless cultural icons like Tony Morrison, Samuel Jackson,
Serena Williams, Angela Davis, Nicole Kidman, Alfred Hitchcock, and many
many more. As you entered the gallery, Twiggy's portrait is
next to a portrait of Drag Queen, Lady Bunny and
a painting of Tony Morrison. A small group of us
(13:50):
stood in front of the portrait, and a former employee
of the museum, Ashley, led a short and formal Q
and A with Twiggy and heads up. There is some
noise in the background coming from an our installation in
the space.
Speaker 7 (14:01):
So we're standing here right now looking at this magnlive
of some portrait. I want you to think of two things. One,
twenty five years ago, this may not have been here.
You also have to acknowledge the ways in which white
supremacy right thinking about whose story matters shifts from generation
to generation. But I also want us to like really
(14:23):
be grounded in the fact that, like in this moment,
us standing here looking at this portrait is extremely important
to Twiggy. This is from twenty thirteen, which feels like
centuries ago at this point. What is this person in
this portrait? What are they thinking and feeling and experiencing
(14:47):
when this is happening?
Speaker 6 (14:50):
This was five years after I moved to New York City.
I had dropped out of college. I had been experiencing
housing instability and homelessness off and on. Always say that
ballroom saved my life in so many different ways. That
we'll be here for another.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Hour, and we don't have that kind of time.
Speaker 6 (15:06):
So I gets to the point I was crashing with
Chosen Family at the time, and when Timothy reached out
about doing the shoot when it was just shocking because
his work The Blacklist, the Latino List, etc. And I
didn't have a haircut, I didn't know what I was
gonna wear.
Speaker 5 (15:24):
It was just a challenging day.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
It was a very challenging day.
Speaker 6 (15:27):
And one of my Chosen Family siblings, RJ, who owns
the line Native New York, so like, come and get
this stuff, wear for the shot, get it back whenever.
And yes, it was a day of running around getting
everything together, showing up there almost late, and then just
tapping in like we do while we're in the scene,
especially when we're competing, but to when we get on
(15:48):
the ballroom floor, nothing else exists in that moment, and
I think coming on to set that day, everything else
sort of went away.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
And it was just in that moment.
Speaker 7 (15:57):
I'd like to talk a bit about this necklace that's
around you. Could you read what the necklace says to everyone?
Speaker 3 (16:04):
It says the world is yours? Yes, why did you
choose that? Part of it was the styling of my brother.
Speaker 6 (16:12):
The other is the definition of opulence from the film
Paris Is Burning, which is a story from about the
borrom scene and also a token of manifestation. I've always
been the type of person where, no matter what I
was going through in a particular moment, always believe that
I could do anything.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Standing in the museum looking at the portrait, it was
a surreal moment for both Twiggy and I. I know
everything that Twiggy has been through in her life and
in her career, and to look at this portrait of
her from over a decade ago, it also reminded me
of how far we both have come, how full circle
this moment was for both of us, how many times
(16:57):
we had seen so many people in our community struggle,
and for us to be the ones who were there
also struggling at the time, working at community nonprofit organizations,
making just enough to survive, but making sure that our
community survival came first. For me, it was doing HIV work,
doing HIV testing in bath houses, in the basements of
(17:18):
house parties. For Twiggy, it was being the mother to
so many people in community throughout ballroom, but also working
in nonprofits doing HIV work and doing even more important
housing work to make sure that people had shelter over
their heads. As she has told people many times, she
was homeless herself at one point. A lot has happened
(17:39):
since then, but both of us still care a lot
about our community. But this moment was very special for us.
It was a reminder of our origins, a reminder of
how far we have come, and a reminder of how far.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
We still have to go.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
We also got to hear from a person who attended
the event and who told us what it meant for her.
Speaker 5 (18:24):
My name is a non Sea Story weaver.
Speaker 8 (18:27):
I am a disabled Black TRANSFERM I do a lot
of community organizing on and off in DC. I was
actually just looking through the Pride events like nearly a
month ago. So many of the Pride events that get done,
especially with World Pride, are now paid events, and queers
(18:51):
are not a group known for having a lot of money.
Trans people of color in particular make less than ten
k in a year, and most of that is to
work or other like gray economy jobs. The event itself went.
Speaker 5 (19:05):
Really, really well.
Speaker 8 (19:06):
I feel being able to make it to an event.
Speaker 5 (19:11):
That has people who are.
Speaker 8 (19:15):
If they listen to it and hear this, they'll probably
kill me for it. But elder queers, especially because like
what is elder for black trans folks, black non binary
folks is so dramatically lower than for other queer groups.
So getting to hear a lot of these stories and
(19:39):
being able to hear a lot of the similarities in
black queer experience a lot of Oh this resonates with
me from someone who is from a slightly different.
Speaker 5 (19:53):
Generation than I am, because I'm twenty eight.
Speaker 8 (19:55):
We are our own ancestors. We we are going to
keep things going, and that is the effect that we
have on the people around us. Even when we're alive,
we are a memory that they are going to keep
with them or pretty much the rest of their lives.
(20:16):
And in that way, even if they never see us again,
especially if they never see us again, we end up
being their queer ancestor while we are still here.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
I think this episode is a reminder that pride was
here before we knew what pride was.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
That queer ancestors were here before.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
We had terms like lesbian, before we had terms like transgender,
before we had terms like non binary, before we had
terms like saying gender loving. Just because we didn't have
the terminology back then doesn't mean that we didn't exist
back then.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
We have always existed.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Whether it was during the Harlem Renaissance, whether it was
during Jim Crow, or whether it was during us in
slavery on the slave field in the South and in
the North, whether it was us back in Africa. We
have history, we have legacy, and we have always, most
importantly had pride. We're just grateful to be here today
(21:21):
to be able to put a name to it. But
pride must continue despite the constant attacks against us daily.
We must remember the revolutionaries who have come before us
time and time and time again to continue to fight
for us, to even be able to have the space
today where I'm able to have a podcast that I
can speak my voice and tell my truth and tell
(21:41):
the truth of so many others. I said it before
earlier in this program, and I'm going to always say it,
Pride was not a peaceful protest at the Stonewall Inn.
Pride was a riot, and a riot in many times
is the voice for so many people who for too
(22:02):
long have felt unheard. And now it's only right that
we let my sister Twiggy close us out.
Speaker 6 (22:12):
I think in order for us to continue to be able,
to have the ability to have fraud, we have to
root ourselves in that radical idea that when push comes
to south, we do we have to do to protect
ourselves and to protect our rights. And it's becoming more
and more challenging under this current administration to protect those rights.
And so we have to be okay with putting pedal
(22:35):
to the metal and if it needs to be a
riot again, then so be it.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Fighting Words is a production of iHeart Podcast in partnership
with Bett's Case Studios. I'm Georgian Johnson. This episode was
produced by Charlotte Morley. Executive producers are myself and Twiggy
Puchi Guar Song with Adam Pinkss and Brig Cats for
Best Case Studios. The theme song was written and composed
by kole Vas Banbianna and myself.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Original music by cole Vas.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
This episode was edited and scored by Max Michael miller
our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Carl Ketel following
rape Fighting Words Wherever you get your podcast
Pride is a riot, and so for us to show
up in Spider Who's sitting at sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue,
means that we're still fighting, right. We could have been scared,
but it's like, Noah, We've been doing this since nineteen seventy.
We're not gonna stop doing it no matter who's in office.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Like you just have to deal with it.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Recently, I was in DC for Black Pride to give
a talk about my.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Latest book, Flamboyant.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Flamboyant is about the untold stories of twelve black and
quer icons of the Harlem Renaissance. The book came out
in twenty twenty four. So today's episode of Fighting Words
is going to be a little different. You're going to
hear a short part of my talk at the DC
Public Library, and then you'll follow me to the National Portrait.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Gallery to see a very special portrait.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Hope you enjoy.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
Its singing in the heavy handy.
Speaker 5 (00:56):
If the world take a.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
Sup of brandy. You spoken guy, You knows what to
plan is ocam and Latinino. One does understand me.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
My name is George M.
Speaker 5 (01:05):
Johnson.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
I am the New York Times bestselling author of the
book All Boys Aren't Blue, which.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Is the number one most challenged book in the United States.
This is Fighting Words, a.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Show where we take you to the front lines of
the culture wars with the people who are using their
words to make change and who refuse to be silenced.
Here's a clip for my discussion where I explain how
I came up with the idea for the book. You
can listen to the whole discussion on the DC Public
Library YouTube page. So when it came to Flamboyant, Twiggy
(01:42):
and I, we own a production company called Altinoche Productions,
of course and so right, so we have been talking
about like this Liberation series and like this project called
Liberation where it was like, we want to do like
eras of like queerness, and we were pitching it. We
(02:03):
were having in general meetings, but at some point like
it's just hard TV and film is hard, Like you
could have great ideas, but sometime it doesn't push through.
I was finding more of an avenue through publishing. So
it's like All Boys on Blue was optioned by Gabrielle
Union for a television deal. We were able to pitch
(02:24):
it didn't work out. That's cool, stay tuned because the
movie's coming, but like, so stay tuned because like we're
really working on it actively. But I was realizing, like,
you know what, maybe if I write about these certain
topics through book world and we can get them optioned
into TV and film, this will make our pathway much
easier to make the things that we actually want because
(02:46):
it does seem like there's a pipeline from book to book,
adaptation to television and film. So I was like, you
know what, I'm going to do this book on the
Haller Renaissance, and like this way.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
One, it'll help young adults who need.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
To understand that we had queer legacy, queer history and
ancestry that came before what they kept telling us. And two,
when we want to adapt this into something now, we
have the intellectual property that we own to be able
to adapt it. Because that's also what it's about at
that point, right, like who owns the IP? And it's
like if we own the IP at any time, we
(03:22):
could make this happen. And so that became the catalyst.
I think the third point is I grew up without
having heroes. I grew up I had heroes, but they
were Martin Luther King or Sojin the truth or people
who didn't experience my queerness, and so I felt like,
as a young queer person, I had to pull pieces
(03:43):
of people together to make a hero. So it's like, well,
this person doesn't have my full experience, but they have.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Two pieces of my experience.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
So I'm a pull from this person and this person
has one piece of my experience. I'm a pull from them,
put from them, pull from them, pull from them. And
I had that going on while at the same time
people telling me you're my hero, You're my hero, you're
my first, You're my this, you're my that, And I'm like, well, damn,
that's crazy to me because it's like, I'm the hero
of so many as a person who didn't have a
(04:13):
hero for self or didn't get to learn about who
my heroes were until I was old enough to read
the books that thankfully my parents and my aunts would
provide for me that the school systems wouldn't, and so
I got to them be the hero of.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
So many people.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
But I was like, it's important that I actually do
the research on my own heroes because I actually don't
know their full stories. I know them as what they
taught us, taught them to us, but they taught them
to us through their accolades, not their life. And my
whole goal with writing Flamboyance was to humanize them so
(04:49):
that we knew that they also lived a life. They
weren't just the first Emmy winner, the first this winner,
the first that person. They actually lived a life, a
life that was hard, a life that didn't have as
many rights as we have today. And it's important that
we understand like these people stood bold, courageous, and flamboyant
(05:11):
in spite of what the circumstances were for them.
Speaker 6 (05:15):
Let's talk a bit technically about about the book. In
your process. So Charlie Palmer is the illustrator of the
cover and throughout the book. Why Charlie, what was that process?
How did you land on this cover?
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Okay, great question, because Charlie, Yes, So.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
I tried. I feel like I have.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Tried to like make sure like anything I do has
like a lot of like queer folks involved, like you know,
but Charlie's not queer. Charlie is a heterosexual black man
whose wife, doctor Carita, is one of my favorite people
in the world, who's also a holler runner sounds historian.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
And it's like sometimes.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
You meet people who are just your person, and like
we would go out and doctor career. This is before
we even discussed flamboyance. This was Charlie did the book
cover for All Boys Are Blue, and he was like,
I read the book and I just felt connected to you.
I don't even know how to explain it, Like he
just he was. Charlie always says like I just felt
(06:26):
we were meant to like be together, like in whatever
the creative space is. And sometimes that's just how it
works out. Like I write the words and he's able
to read the words and literally pull out of my
brain the images that I see.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
And so when he's when he and mind you.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
It was a little bit of a fight to even
get Charlie on Flamboyance, like because the industry is the industry,
and they're like, well maybe this person or this person's better,
this person's better, this person better. So it's like, okay,
so we went with the first person.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
First.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
She was not interpreting my words and putting it images
out that I needed, and I was like it's not
gonna work, Like this is not gonna work. And then
I fought again. It was like Charlie is the only
person who's gonna read my words and know exactly what
these images need to look like read the book. Sent
those first set of sketches in and everybody the public
House publishing house gagged and was like WHOA, Like we
(07:19):
are blown away, and I was like, but this is
and they were like, now we get why you kept saying, Charlie,
because when you get that type of relationship, and I
think that's a beautiful I think that's what's beautiful about
blackness and queerness, right. I always say there is no
blackness without queerness. There's no querness without blackness. And so
it's like, Charlie doesn't have to be a black queer
identified person to understand queerness because his art is queer.
(07:44):
His art is queer to what is acceptable to the world.
His art has always been He's done time magazine covers
and things that have been challenged, things publicly that people
don't accept and to be queer to be not accepted.
And so because he is a person who understands I've
been accepted, he understands the queerness that is in my
brain when I'm writing these certain things and how to
(08:05):
make it an image versus like what I've written on
the page, and so in the choice of the book cover,
he gagged because I chose this as the book cover,
but if you open the book up, this was this
(08:30):
is so this is the original book cover, and so
we still put it in there, but this was the
original book cover he came up with, which was fab
But I just felt so inspired by that Josephine Baker
image he did, which ended up becoming a book cover,
this one that I was like, this has to be
the book cover. And he didn't know that though, so
(08:54):
he thought that the publisher rejected his book cover, and
so then when we got together for the tour, he
was like, yeah. He was like, I felt away because
like they didn't like my cover and I was like,
what you mean, He was like, the one that they
put on it. I was like, no, I loved it,
I said, but that Josephine Baker image was so stunning,
and I was like, this is this has to be
the cover.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
So I was like, I changed it. They didn't. They
wanted the other one, and so.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
He just laughed at it because he was like, I
should have known it was you that saw the images
that I did for the whole book and changed it.
But that's really what art is about, right, It's like
our imitates life. They always say a picture is worth
a thousand words. I felt like this picture had the
most words that could be attached to it, and so
I was like, she has to be on the cover.
Speaker 6 (09:38):
Yeah, I remember when you went back and forth about it.
Continuing on the subject of process, how did you go
about selecting these particular twelve pioneering icons.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
You know, it was tough because one, it's like we
only we only have the history that's written down, that
we have that's for and down, and so when you
really think about just us as like black, grated people,
all these things, it's like, I'm grateful that Robert Jones
(10:12):
wrote the Prophets, right, the profits is a queer story
during slavery. But unfortunately, when you go through the slave
journals and when you go through like all of the research,
there's not a lot about written about queerness during slavery.
So the Harlem Renaissance actually was like the first period
where it was chronic our queerness was chronicled where you
(10:35):
actually have written down things about it, where you have
Langston Hughes who wrote Spectacles in Color, which is an
essay so Leangthton Hughes writes this essay called Spectacles in
Color about an event that he attends, where he says,
the men were dressed like women, the women were dressed
like men. We all paid for a ticket to go inside,
(10:56):
and they were competing, and they were battling against each other.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
He was writing about ballroom.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
So this is literally one of the first ever written
pieces of information about ballroom community before we called it
like a thing like He's lengthy. Hughes is one of
the first people to actually write what a ball looked
like as everybody bought tickets, sat around the outside, and
watched them all perform against each other in the middle.
And I believe I don't think it was at Madison
(11:22):
Square Garden, but it was like at.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
A very large venue in Harlem. And so it's like
to choose these people.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
It was hard because we didn't have as much information,
and so several of them I had to like research
like what others said. It was like what did their
children say about them, what did their grandchildren say about them?
Speaker 2 (11:47):
What did their best friends say about them?
Speaker 1 (11:49):
So it's like I'm looking and scouring like source material
at the source material to actually get the full story.
Then there was also this fear of am I out them.
(12:37):
We're walking over to the Portrait Museum to see an
exhibition where we will see an image of Tweety Pucci
gar Song.
Speaker 6 (12:47):
We're about to go to see my picture.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
This is the National Portrait Calorie.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
That's Tweiggy Puochi gar Song.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Tweiggy is one of my best friends as well as
my work partner with a production company we own call
All Tea No Shade Productions. She's a director, producer, activists,
and the international mother of the legendary Barroomhouse of Combe
de Garson, which I also happened to be a part of.
Twiggy was a little surprised when she heard that her
picture was in the National Portrait Gallery.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
They did not tell me themselves.
Speaker 6 (13:17):
A friend of mine who was visiting DC randomly was like, hey,
you know your pictures in this museum and sent me
a picture and I was like, oh, okay, so ya.
That's how I found out.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Twiggy's portrait was taken by legendary photographer Timothy Greenfield Sanders,
who has photographed countless cultural icons like Tony Morrison, Samuel Jackson,
Serena Williams, Angela Davis, Nicole Kidman, Alfred Hitchcock, and many
many more. As you entered the gallery, Twiggy's portrait is
next to a portrait of Drag Queen, Lady Bunny and
a painting of Tony Morrison. A small group of us
(13:50):
stood in front of the portrait, and a former employee
of the museum, Ashley, led a short and formal Q
and A with Twiggy and heads up. There is some
noise in the background coming from an our installation in
the space.
Speaker 7 (14:01):
So we're standing here right now looking at this magnlive
of some portrait. I want you to think of two things. One,
twenty five years ago, this may not have been here.
You also have to acknowledge the ways in which white
supremacy right thinking about whose story matters shifts from generation
to generation. But I also want us to like really
(14:23):
be grounded in the fact that, like in this moment,
us standing here looking at this portrait is extremely important
to Twiggy. This is from twenty thirteen, which feels like
centuries ago at this point. What is this person in
this portrait? What are they thinking and feeling and experiencing
(14:47):
when this is happening?
Speaker 6 (14:50):
This was five years after I moved to New York City.
I had dropped out of college. I had been experiencing
housing instability and homelessness off and on. Always say that
ballroom saved my life in so many different ways. That
we'll be here for another.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Hour, and we don't have that kind of time.
Speaker 6 (15:06):
So I gets to the point I was crashing with
Chosen Family at the time, and when Timothy reached out
about doing the shoot when it was just shocking because
his work The Blacklist, the Latino List, etc. And I
didn't have a haircut, I didn't know what I was
gonna wear.
Speaker 5 (15:24):
It was just a challenging day.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
It was a very challenging day.
Speaker 6 (15:27):
And one of my Chosen Family siblings, RJ, who owns
the line Native New York, so like, come and get
this stuff, wear for the shot, get it back whenever.
And yes, it was a day of running around getting
everything together, showing up there almost late, and then just
tapping in like we do while we're in the scene,
especially when we're competing, but to when we get on
(15:48):
the ballroom floor, nothing else exists in that moment, and
I think coming on to set that day, everything else
sort of went away.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
And it was just in that moment.
Speaker 7 (15:57):
I'd like to talk a bit about this necklace that's
around you. Could you read what the necklace says to everyone?
Speaker 3 (16:04):
It says the world is yours? Yes, why did you
choose that? Part of it was the styling of my brother.
Speaker 6 (16:12):
The other is the definition of opulence from the film
Paris Is Burning, which is a story from about the
borrom scene and also a token of manifestation. I've always
been the type of person where, no matter what I
was going through in a particular moment, always believe that
I could do anything.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Standing in the museum looking at the portrait, it was
a surreal moment for both Twiggy and I. I know
everything that Twiggy has been through in her life and
in her career, and to look at this portrait of
her from over a decade ago, it also reminded me
of how far we both have come, how full circle
this moment was for both of us, how many times
(16:57):
we had seen so many people in our community struggle,
and for us to be the ones who were there
also struggling at the time, working at community nonprofit organizations,
making just enough to survive, but making sure that our
community survival came first. For me, it was doing HIV work,
doing HIV testing in bath houses, in the basements of
(17:18):
house parties. For Twiggy, it was being the mother to
so many people in community throughout ballroom, but also working
in nonprofits doing HIV work and doing even more important
housing work to make sure that people had shelter over
their heads. As she has told people many times, she
was homeless herself at one point. A lot has happened
(17:39):
since then, but both of us still care a lot
about our community. But this moment was very special for us.
It was a reminder of our origins, a reminder of
how far we have come, and a reminder of how far.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
We still have to go.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
We also got to hear from a person who attended
the event and who told us what it meant for her.
Speaker 5 (18:24):
My name is a non Sea Story weaver.
Speaker 8 (18:27):
I am a disabled Black TRANSFERM I do a lot
of community organizing on and off in DC. I was
actually just looking through the Pride events like nearly a
month ago. So many of the Pride events that get done,
especially with World Pride, are now paid events, and queers
(18:51):
are not a group known for having a lot of money.
Trans people of color in particular make less than ten
k in a year, and most of that is to
work or other like gray economy jobs. The event itself went.
Speaker 5 (19:05):
Really, really well.
Speaker 8 (19:06):
I feel being able to make it to an event.
Speaker 5 (19:11):
That has people who are.
Speaker 8 (19:15):
If they listen to it and hear this, they'll probably
kill me for it. But elder queers, especially because like
what is elder for black trans folks, black non binary
folks is so dramatically lower than for other queer groups.
So getting to hear a lot of these stories and
(19:39):
being able to hear a lot of the similarities in
black queer experience a lot of Oh this resonates with
me from someone who is from a slightly different.
Speaker 5 (19:53):
Generation than I am, because I'm twenty eight.
Speaker 8 (19:55):
We are our own ancestors. We we are going to
keep things going, and that is the effect that we
have on the people around us. Even when we're alive,
we are a memory that they are going to keep
with them or pretty much the rest of their lives.
(20:16):
And in that way, even if they never see us again,
especially if they never see us again, we end up
being their queer ancestor while we are still here.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
I think this episode is a reminder that pride was
here before we knew what pride was.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
That queer ancestors were here before.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
We had terms like lesbian, before we had terms like transgender,
before we had terms like non binary, before we had
terms like saying gender loving. Just because we didn't have
the terminology back then doesn't mean that we didn't exist
back then.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
We have always existed.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Whether it was during the Harlem Renaissance, whether it was
during Jim Crow, or whether it was during us in
slavery on the slave field in the South and in
the North, whether it was us back in Africa. We
have history, we have legacy, and we have always, most
importantly had pride. We're just grateful to be here today
(21:21):
to be able to put a name to it. But
pride must continue despite the constant attacks against us daily.
We must remember the revolutionaries who have come before us
time and time and time again to continue to fight
for us, to even be able to have the space
today where I'm able to have a podcast that I
can speak my voice and tell my truth and tell
(21:41):
the truth of so many others. I said it before
earlier in this program, and I'm going to always say it,
Pride was not a peaceful protest at the Stonewall Inn.
Pride was a riot, and a riot in many times
is the voice for so many people who for too
(22:02):
long have felt unheard. And now it's only right that
we let my sister Twiggy close us out.
Speaker 6 (22:12):
I think in order for us to continue to be able,
to have the ability to have fraud, we have to
root ourselves in that radical idea that when push comes
to south, we do we have to do to protect
ourselves and to protect our rights. And it's becoming more
and more challenging under this current administration to protect those rights.
And so we have to be okay with putting pedal
(22:35):
to the metal and if it needs to be a
riot again, then so be it.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Fighting Words is a production of iHeart Podcast in partnership
with Bett's Case Studios. I'm Georgian Johnson. This episode was
produced by Charlotte Morley. Executive producers are myself and Twiggy
Puchi Guar Song with Adam Pinkss and Brig Cats for
Best Case Studios. The theme song was written and composed
by kole Vas Banbianna and myself.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
Original music by cole Vas.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
This episode was edited and scored by Max Michael miller
our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Carl Ketel following
rape Fighting Words Wherever you get your podcast
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