By Megan Smith
Verniss McFarland III is tired of queer Black and Brown stories taking a backseat. For the past year, McFarland has worked to uplift these voices through their work as founder of The Mahogany Project, a Houston-based nonprofit focused on bridging the gap between empowerment and education in Black and Brown LGBTQ communities. McFarland now seeks to bring these narratives to the forefront with the launch of the organization’s new visibility campaign, Dear Somebody: The Voices Once Unheard.
“As a people, we often get pushed aside,” McFarland says. “And when we do get invited to the table, it’s either to be tokenized, or to have our stories used to publicize or bring awareness to other individuals, instead of the focus being on us. So I really wanted to do a project where it captures the voice of Black and Brown individuals. Our stories. Our narratives. Where we come from. How we survive. How we got to where we are now.”
The goal for Dear Somebody is to create a volume of books that share the lived experiences of Black and Brown LGBTQ individuals, “as they revisit memories in their lives that shaped their future and give life to the person they are today.” To do so, The Mahogany Project is asking QPOC community members to submit their own personal short stories, which can be in either narrative or poetry form. “I want to know the story you’re providing, the lesson you learned from it, and how it can be useful to other people,” McFarland explains. “Those are the most important things. The book isn’t supposed to be a ‘How To,’ like ‘How to be Gay.’ It’s to show other individuals that, in your lifetime, you’re not the first person to have encountered the struggle, and more than likely, you won’t be the last. It shows you that someone else has been in your place, and this is how they were able to get out of it.”
“We have LGBTQ individuals [in our community] who are choreographers, lawyers, and dancers, and rarely do they get to hear stories of others who are just like them, who came from places just like them,” McFarland adds. “We need to see more of that.”
McFarland explains that Dear Somebody differs from other visibility campaigns because it focuses specifically on QPOC narratives. “The Mahogany Project is all about inclusivity, but I definitely wanted something [exclusively for] POC individuals because our stories so often get shuffled in the back,” they say. McFarland also notes that the project redefines the notion of “it gets better,” a recurring concept in LGBTQ campaigns over the past decade. “Life is not always a crystal staircase. We take the good with the bad, and for a long time, we have made something out of nothing. So ‘better’ could be today, the lights are on, when yesterday, they were off. That’s better.”
The Mahogany Project is accepting story submissions for Dear Somebody on a rolling basis, with the goal of creating numerous books to be distributed to the community free of charge. “I want there to be volumes,” McFarland says. “One can be focused on women POC voices. One can be trans POC voices, one on male voices. One can be on rape, one on poverty, one on homelessness. These are all things we encounter every day in the community, and we want to give people an outlet where they can express that.”
“There’s no kind of deadline,” McFarland adds. “If it’s three in the morning, you can’t sleep, and you’ve got something you want to submit, send it over! I’ll read it when I wake up,” they laugh.
Dear Somebody is only one piece in McFarland’s vision for The Mahogany Project. On Saturday, August 11, the organization will host its second annual Trans Empowerment and Alliance Party, “a celebration of honor for individuals who are living in their individual uniqueness, while being positive role models in the communities that they serve.” Hosted at The Montrose Center, the event will include awards for Woman of the Year, Man of the Year, and Ally of the Year—a community-nominated organization, person, or agency that is positively impacting the transgender community. “It’s really going to be amazing this year,” McFarland says. “It’s like an awards show meets a family reunion. We come together, we award the individuals, we eat, we dance, we just have a good time.”
Looking to the future, McFarland has a long list of plans to grow The Mahogany Project’s community impact. They hope to bring the Trans Empowerment and Alliance Party to Atlanta by 2020, to obtain a physical space for the organization, to launch a new body positivity photo campaign, and—with the help of new Mahogany Project member Staci Childs—to create an after school program to teach high school juniors and seniors, as well as college freshman, how to become community leaders. “I remember when I was in middle school, I always wanted to be a community leader,” McFarland reflects. “I always wanted to work in the community, like I am now, but there were no kind of guidelines or steps. No one teaching you how to do it. We want to provide them with trans sensitivity trainings, HIV sensitivity trainings, stigmatized language trainings, and get them deputized to register voters. We need [a program like this] in the community to help teach and cultivate the next generation of great leaders, or else, things are just going to die off. I had one person show me the way, and look where I am now. I want to do that for a whole group of people.”
“I never thought The Mahogany Project would grow into this,” McFarland adds. “For me, it was simply to stand up, bring awareness, and use the little bit of privilege that I have to bring awareness to anti-trans violence, discrimination, and what it is to be trans.”
To submit a short story to the Dear Somebody: The Voices Once Unheard campaign, click here. Tickets to the Trans Empowerment and Alliance Party can be purchased here, and nominations for the Ally of the Year award can be submitted here. For more information on The Mahogany Project, visit them on Facebook or at mymahoganyproject.org. Donations to The Mahogany Project can be made via PayPal Giving Fund, Ebay, at mymahoganyproject.org, or on Facebook.
