Asian/Asian American/Pacific Islander, Arab/Arab American, and Queer awareness month at Wesleyan is bringing events, lectures and activities to campus on an almost daily basis. Among them is “Love Makes a Family,” a simple and genuine exhibit in the lobby of Olin library showcasing families with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Queer and Transgender members. At Wesleyan until April 14 and accessible during Olin’s hours of operation, the exhibit lends itself to multiple visits and meditation. The first person narratives, accompanied by family portraits, are testimonies to familial love in the face of homophobia and prejudice.
“Love Makes a Family,” though a part of the Awareness month program, was brought to Wesleyan on behalf of the Dean of the College Office as a facet of a yearlong initiative. Aiming to provoke dialogue and communication, the exhibit was organized in part through the efforts of Nicole Chabot, student activities program coordinator.
“Stereotypical images and expectations are difficult to escape and change in queer and other marginalized communities,” she said. “These photos push us to open our minds to new images and unlimited combinations of identities. It makes us think.”
Besides breaking down the basic barrier of homophobia, the exhibit makes a point of including LGBQT persons who are not typically represented. Africans, Latinos, and Native Americans shared their experiences for the project, imbuing the exhibit with a truly boundless definition of family and love. The particular difficulties facing LGBQT persons regarding ethnicity and culture are revelatory – there are layers of prejudice related through the first person accounts that go beyond a topical recount of homophobic experiences and into acutely personal detail.
Consuelo Burning Cloud, a Native American, explains in hir narrative the aspect of Nisqually culture that makes room for two-spirit people. The tradition of two-spirit, Burning Cloud explained, blended the feminine and the masculine, in turn creating a unique gender identity within the Nisqually society. It is an identity that Burning Cloud incorporates into hir narrative, at once educating the reader on a tradition and lending insight into hir own life.
The addition of ethnicity and gender connects the two topics to LGBQT issues; the result is a cross-cultural understanding of the issues that is inclusive and indiscriminate. Family and love become synonymous, while other qualifiers (gay, Latino, feminist, etc,) are only matters of fact. In avoiding a specific representation of the LGBQT families that focuses on that specific identity, the families become less tokenized. The unsentimental, genuine texts contribute to this, and the portraits accomplish this task visually. The photographs are mostly taken in backyards, kitchens, or porches – ordinary and archetypal places associated with family.
“The photos are straightforward, which definitely complements the text,” said Alexa Jay’08. “They don’t attempt to portray the families as anything but families, and I liked that.”
The uncomplicated presentation of the families and their stories are a characteristic of the Family Diversity Projects, the organization that developed “Love Makes a Family” in addition to three other similar traveling exhibits. In all of them, family is used as a model of love, and its members as models of diversity. “Love Makes a Family” is a fundamental celebration of the love that builds and nourishes families, and visiting the exhibit is a personal exercise in appreciation and acceptance.
“I guarantee that everyone who takes the time to read these testimonials will learn something they didn’t know, deconstruct a stereotype they may have been holding onto, or enrich their existing knowledge of what it might mean to identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Transgender person,” Chabot said. “Regardless of how we may each identify, we can always stand to take a few minutes to enhance our understanding of multiple identities.”
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