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Where We Get to Just Be: Houston’s Catastrophic Theatre Presents Queer Playwright Maria Irene Fornes’s ‘Fefu and Her Friends’

Posted on February 27, 2020
A photo of Fefu and Her Friends at Catastrophic Theatre in Houston.

By Addie Tsai The conversation around gender and sexuality has considerably shifted since the 1970s, when queer Cuban playwright Maria Irene Fornes wrote her avant-garde feminist play Fefu and Her Friends, set in 1930s New England. America would see the legalization of marriage equality just three years before Fornes’s passing, and Merriam-Webster would name the gender-neutral pronoun “they” as the word of the year in 2019. The #metoo movement would bring about a national conversation regarding consent, sexual assault, and…

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A Quick and Queer Guide to the Democratic Presidential Primary

Posted on February 25, 2020
A photo of voting in the Democratic presidential primary.

Texans (and American voters everywhere), the presidential primary election draws near! Although we are no longer contending with a whole circus of Democratic candidates, there are still a lot of people running in hopes of beating Donald Trump. It can be difficult to sift through the endless articles, advertisements, and heated debates to get to the true heart of these candidate’s issues. That’s why I have created this quick and easy guide to understanding each of the candidates’ stance on…

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The Spirits of New Orleans: On Voodoo and Black Queerness

Posted on February 21, 2020
A photo of queer Voodoo.

Turn to any Hollywood film or television portrayal of Voodoo and you’re most often faced with the same, sensationalized representation—an evil, devil-worshipping religion practiced amongst impoverished Black communities in Louisiana. While the religion may be romanticized in some cases, it is still largely seen as violent, graphic, and wicked. These misconceptions directly stem from the very real racism and misogynoir that exists in Hollywood and society at large.…

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Out of the Dream House: On Carmen Maria Machado, Domestic Abuse, and Queer Healing

Posted on February 19, 2020
A photo of author Carmen Maria Machado.

In late January, InPrint Houston, an Houston-based, non-profit organization that supports writers and readers of fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction, hosted a dual memoir event with Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House, and Carolyn Forché, author of What You Have Heard is True. The event was moderated by Daniel Pena, a faculty member at the University of Houston Downtown, as a part of InPrint’s Root Brown Reading Series. Machado and Forché discussed creating memoirs through traumatic events—Machado…

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Let’s Stop HIV Together: Reflections on National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day

Posted on February 7, 2020
A photo of fighting HIV.

I’ve had the great fortune of spending most of my life doing work in community. But my passion didn’t originally stem from wanting to change the world; it came from the desire to save myself. At age 20, I was introduced to the idea of sex work, a line of work I would ultimately participate in for years to come. When I entered the industry, and therefore began having numerous sexual partners, my mentors and friends stressed to me the…

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Tarot and Astrology: Tools for Self-Reflection and Personal Growth

Posted on February 5, 2020

There are very few queers I know who haven’t dabbled in astrology or Tarot at some point. Beyond apps like Co-Star, The Pattern, or Galaxy Tarot, these divinations create opportunities to re-frame and reorient ourselves in the face of uncertainty. They provide space for us to get still and quiet, and to ask ourselves what we really want, what we really believe, and who we really are. …

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What’s in a Name?: Poet Danez Smith Tackles Race, Queerness, Xenophobia, and Diagnosis

Posted on January 30, 2020
A photo of poet Danez Smith.

Arguably the greatest stanza ever written? Nah, I dare to say screw Shakespeare. There’s a new poet on the block. Enter Danez Smith, a Black, queer, HIV-positive poet whose works, Don’t Call Us Dead and Homie, center the true power in naming, the exploration of racism, the intimacy of queerness, and the reality of xenophobia. Smith is currently touring for the latter work, and stops in at Houston’s Brazos Bookstore on January 31.…

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