A panel discussion presented by the Newark Public Library and the Rutgers University-Newark Departments of History and Africana Studies
with panelists Aaron Frazier, Dominique Rocker, Peter Savastano, and Whitney Strub
and moderated by Tom Ankner
"Queer Newark: Stories of Resistance, Love, and Community" charts a history in which working-class people of color are the central actors and in which violence, poverty, and homophobia could never suppress joy, resistance, love, and desire. Drawing from rare archives that range from oral histories to vice squad reports, this collection’s authors uncover the sites and people of Newark’s queer past in bars, discos, ballrooms, and churches. Exploring the intersections of class, race, gender, and sexuality, they offer fresh perspectives on the HIV/AIDS epidemic, community relations with police, Latinx immigration, and gentrification, while considering how to best tell the rich and complex stories of queer urban life. "Queer Newark" reveals a new side of New Jersey’s largest city while rewriting the history of LGBTQ life in America.