Sam Correia
Collective Futures
Sam Correia is the Community Engagement Librarian at the Duxbury Free Library. They are passionate about community care, collective liberation, and radical hope for the future. They are the Project Director of the South Shore LGBTQ Oral History Archive and one of the co-organizers of the Queer Collective of MA/RI.
Trigger warning: This essay contains links to news article about murders of LGBTQIA+ youth; some of these articles are graphic in their descriptions of the murders
By Sam Correia
There’s a group in Rhode Island called The Rhode Island Women’s Association (RIWA) that I’ve been tangentially involved in for a few years now. The group started in the ’70s as a way for lesbian women in New England to meet and be social. Many of the queer elders in my life are from this group. There are affinity groups like these everywhere if you know where to look.
I attended an RIWA-hosted dance recently and immediately recognized people as I walked into the dance hall; Elders who I’ve interviewed through oral history projects and some that I consider family. There’s a DJ and a dance floor and a bar. People sitting at tables around the room, chatting. Some people in this room have been to the March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian Rights in 1979 and testified in the Rhode Island State House for marriage equality in 2013.
I sit with friends, make new ones as the night goes on. I watch the couples, many of whom are in their 60s and 70s, dance and sway to the music. And I think about the future. The future that I have and the history that this dance provides. I think of the amount of joy present in this room
I know I want to write about community in this column. I spend a lot of my time in my job and my personal life thinking about community and what the future of community could look like. What defines a community, and what are the intersecting communities in our own lives? How do we define belonging? How do we feel more connected to others, and most importantly, how do we help each other?
Of course, a community can truly be anything—a book club, a running group, your neighbors, a religion, a cultural identity. Community is a core value for me: Meaningful connections but also on-the-ground direct action. When I am mentoring LGBTQ youth, building oral history projects to interview elders, or creating a social group for queer folks, community tethers me to a place and time and to the people around me. For better or for worse, I only know how to define myself in the context of others.
I thought about what a love letter to my queer community would look like. How do we make our queer community more expansive, liberatory, and vibrant? How do we work towards the collective liberation of not just the cis and white queer people but all queer folks? What does our joy look like?
When I think about the modern-day queer community, my queer community, I think about Sapphic Nights at local Providence bars, the new LGBTQ bookstore that just opened (Lavender Lit in Attleboro, check them out), Cubbyhole, Provincetown, the art that graces the walls of Small Format, a coffee shop on Wickenden. I think about how I can gorge myself on queer media. We are in a time when we aren’t lacking for shows and movies and books.
But I also think about Transgender Day of Remembrance, about Rita Hester, and speaking aloud the names of the trans women of color who are killed each year. Rita Hester was a trans woman who was killed in her apartment in Allston in 1998. Her murder is still unsolved. This day was started by trans activist Gwendolyn Ann Smith to celebrate Rita’s life. And in Allston, MA where Rita lived, the artist Rixy created a stunning mural of Rita.
I think about Nex Benedict, a Choctaw teen from Oklahoma who died on February 8th of this year. Nex was bullied relentlessly at their school, and died the day after being beaten by three older girls in a school bathroom. Their death is getting national attention; communities everywhere held vigils for Nex, including here in Boston, and at the famous Stonewall Inn in NYC. More than 40 of Nex’s classmates at Owasso High School walked out of school on Monday, February 26th to protest the school’s bullying policies and lack of action. People are coming together to celebrate and remember Nex’s vibrant life. Nex deserved better from adults, from legislators, from their peers. Nex should be alive.
I think about the murder of Brianna Ghey, a 16-year-old British trans girl murdered in February 2023. She was fatally stabbed 28 times in a premeditated attack by two classmates. The Prime Minister of the UK made an anti-trans joke while Brianna’s mother was visiting Parliament. He has refused to apologize.
So often the lives of LGBTQ folks are framed in tragedy. We need to defend our trans students, but we need to protect our Native children, our Two-Spirit children, and all trans children of color. The harm done to trans people of color so rarely makes national headlines.
I think about all of the direct action and mutual aid projects that LGBTQ folks are dedicating their time and energy toward. Have you heard of The Transgender Emergency Fund of Massachusetts? They provide assistance to low-income and unhoused transgender people living in MA. This work in mutual aid started with the AIDS epidemic. Queer folks in the ’80s cared for one another with resources, hospital visits, food deliveries. Community care at a time when now one cared about them.
This past year, I’ve been lucky enough to be the Project Director for the South Shore LGBTQ Oral History Archive. A grant from Mass Humanities in Northampton, MA, funded this project. It’s been meaningful to me to watch LGBTQ folks of different generations have engaging conversations about their identities and communities. Two of the folks we interviewed were volunteers for the AIDS Action Committee, a Boston-based mutual aid group started in the ’80s to help people suffering from HIV/AIDS. The AIDS Action Committee still exists and is part of Fenway Health. We learned about the Buddy Program, an initiative to give folks with HIV/AIDS someone to talk to and connect with. We also discovered the story of a storefront where volunteers would give out vitamins to people for free and offer acupuncture care, because these treatments weren’t available.
When it comes to queer history and activism groups during the AIDS crisis, people might be more familiar with New York’s AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). They created the now-iconic shirts that read “SILENCE = DEATH” with a pink triangle above it (used without permission by Target last year during their Pride Month campaign—rainbow capitalism strikes again).
With this column, I will spotlight current topics and issues map them against queer history. I will talk about the future of our communities, movements, and society. I want to talk about how our present and past get us to this collective future that we dream about. I’d like us to walk together through the lives of the people who make up these archives. Shake their hands, thank them for their work, walk through the halls of the lives they created.
I’d like to ask our elders for support and guidance as we march forward. As our books and our healthcare and our rights continue to be stripped away, we can use their advice about how they fought. I owe a lot to the queer elders in my life. To see how fast things have changed, you’d get whiplash. Forty years ago, this was all an impossibility. I’m lucky to have queer elders in my life at all. Most people don’t get that.
I’d also like to analyze my personal stakes in queer history. Why do I care so much about it? How can we be critical about our engagement with queer history? How do we commit to learning and unlearning, to commit to being anti-racist in our queerness? How do we show solidarity with other marginalized identities within the queer community? How do we use queer history to build a queer future?
At the center of my work, I believe in bringing our whole selves to the front lines, being present and working toward collective liberation. Because we’re nothing without each other. May we make the history we want to see in the world.
Here’s what I’m reading now, read along with me:
“The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison” by Hugh Ryan
“Homebodies” by Tembe Denton-Hurst
