BGSQDBureau of General Services—Queer Division
BGSQD
Bettina Aptheker in a rare New York live appearance, will be discussing her fascinating new book about queer people and the Communist Party: Communists in Closets: Queering the History, 1930s-1990s. The book transforms our understanding of the roots of many crucial aspects of queer liberation, tracing their foundations to rejection by the party and analysis and organizing skills learned in the party. Subjects include Harry Hay and the creation of Mattachine, Lorraine Hansberry and the Broadway production of Raisin In The Sun, Alix Dobkin and the creation of lesbian separatism and women’s music, the founding of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, and Angela Davis’s role in and influence by the Communist Party.
Bettina will be interviewed by Sarah Schulman, Kessler Prize awardee by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies.
A limited number of copies of Communists in Closets: Queering the History, 1930s-1990s (Routledge, 2023, paperback) will be available for purchase at the event at the discounted price of $30 (regularly $48.95). To reserve a copy, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming at YouTube.com/@bgsqd
Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register or on Venmo @bgsqd.
Sarah Schulman is the author of more than twenty works of fiction (including The Cosmopolitans, Rat Bohemia, and Maggie Terry), nonfiction (including Stagestruck, Conflict is Not Abuse, The Gentrification of the Mind, Let the Record Show), and theater (Carson McCullers, Manic Flight Reaction, and more), and the producer and screenwriter of several feature films (The Owls, Mommy Is Coming, and United in Anger, among others). Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Slate, and many other outlets. She is a Distinguished Professor of Humanities at College of Staten Island, a Fellow at the New York Institute of Humanities, the recipient of multiple fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and was presented in 2018 with Publishing Triangle’s Bill Whitehead Award. She is also the cofounder of the MIX New York LGBT Experimental Film and Video Festival, and the co-director of the groundbreaking ACT UP Oral History Project. A lifelong New Yorker, she is a longtime activist for queer rights and female empowerment, and serves on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace. (Author photo by Drew Stevens)