Come and experience Black queer Philadelphia’s literary history through voices of today’s Black queer community. In an evening of live readings and performance, members of Philadelphia’s Black queer community revive rare works by prolific Philadelphia writers Anita Cornwell and Adrian Stanford.

Published in 1983, Anita Cornwell's Black Lesbian in White America was the first essay collection by a Black lesbian to be published in the U.S. Cornwell, who came out as a lesbian in the 1950s, has also been published and anthologized as a journalist, fiction writer, and poet.  

Poet and essayist Adrian Stanford compiled Black and Queer in 1977. It was the first collection of poetry edited by an out Black gay male in America, and it inspired Joe Beam and Essex Hemphill.

Readers include Vanessa Chandler (she/her), Oreoluwa Akinyode (they/them), and Sabrina Pantal (they/them). David Bazemore (he/him) will perform.

Friday, Feb. 10, 2023

6:30 pm

Parkway Central Library Auditorium (ground floor)

This event incorporates work that was featured in Chronicling Resistance: The Exhibition. 

Chronicling Resistance revealed what eight local activists, cultural organizers, and artists unearthed when they dug deeply into the same Philadelphia archives that have historically excluded their voices and perspectives. Through archival items, rare books, oral histories, and original artwork, Chronicling Resistance countered the systemic erasure of Black, Brown, and LGBTQ+ people from the historical record, breaks silences, and uncovers new ways of understanding and enacting resistance.

Chronicling Resistance has been generously supported by the Mellon Foundation and The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, with additional support and collaboration with the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries.