Meet Steven G. Fullwood
Author, archivist and speaker Steven G. Fullwood was the featured guest July 16 and 17 at “Children of the Rainbow,” sponsored by the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center. His visit was made possible by a grant from The Gill Foundation.
”I enjoyed myself immensely,” Fullwood told Family & Friends in a telephone interview. “I enjoyed the people who brought me there. I thought it was well attended. The work they are trying to do to make the MGLCC more inclusive is evident by bringing me there.”
Fullwood is an accredited librarian who works at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library in New York City. He also founded the Black Gay and Lesbian Archive Project. As an author, he has contributed to many works, including Think Again (see page 66). He just released his newest book, Funny.
”I wrote Funny because I wanted to make people laugh,” Fullwood said. “Making people laugh is a worthy vocation. There are many books about the Black gay and lesbian experience, including fiction and poetry, and their content deals with homophobia and racism in a serious way. I wanted to get a serious message and put it on a bed of laughter, like putting an arm around (the reader) and saying, ’Hey, let’s think about this together.’”
Fullwood’s essays address such topics as celibacy, size and singleness in this 125-page paperback.
”The book is being received, for the most part, very positively,” Fullwood said. “(Those I’ve talked to) like the frankness of the book and they like how the book is raw and doesn’t pull any punches. The comment I get from most people is, ‘It made me laugh.’ (The book) is very frank and open and revealing and makes you think about your own experiences with homophobia and racism and makes you feel like you are being affirmed.”
Fullwood’s collections assure that the Black gay and lesbian experience is not omitted from black history.
”We’ve collected from North America, London, South Africa. The website (www.stevengfullwood.org) gives people a sense of what we are doing. I want (our archives) to be representative of all - gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer.”
Fullwood solicits donations of magazines, newsletters, journals, newspapers, books, monographs, dramatic works, poetry, pamphlets, novels, non-fiction, biographies and erotica.
Memphis’s Anthony Hardaway has been loyal in being sure the southeastern states are represented in the archives.
”One of the most interesting pieces is the first three and only issues of New York’s Moja Equals Gay and Black, from July 1978,” Fullwood said, explaining one of his prized pieces. “This was the first newspaper created by black gays and lesbians.”
Fullwood is presently working on another book of humor to be released in June 2005, and is co-editing a book about black organizations called Fierce: A Genealogy of Black LGBT Organizations 1970 - Present. Although Funny is about the single Fullwood, his next offering will include humorous antedoctes about his partner and their relationship.
Back to the purpose of his visit to Memphis, Fullwood explained that Memphis is not the only city finding it difficult to get people tocross over the bridge of racism.
”People (of various races) do party together,” Fullwood stated. “In New York, larger organizations try to reach out, but Blacks start their own organizations. This is like this all across the U.S.A. ...There is a divide that still exists and I think it will continue because some people feel more at ease in their own culture. ...Everything else is foreign.
”Be able to look at yourself in the world,” Fullwood offered as advice on how to get people to deal with other cultures. “If you think you are the center of the world (ethnocentrism), you miss out on having authentic conversations. There are problems when people don’t want to try and pronounce other people’s names. It is like denying part of your body, when you deny part of humanity. It takes time and people are developing.
”’I tolerate people.’ Is that the best you can do? Not willing to accept change is a travesty,” Fullwood concluded. “This is a very new thing worldwide. People are understanding human rights issues and abuses. Cultures are having to reconcile the way they are treating people.”
Photos of Fullwood’s visit to the MGLCC, by DeShon Gales, are posted on Fullwood’s website at www.stevengfullwood.org. More information on donating works to his collections, as well as his books, are also available at his website.
(as published in Family & Friends Magazine, August 2004, by Anita Moyt, editor)
