homo-centric began not too long ago as a once-a-month reading series at the very welcoming
Stories Books & Cafe in Echo Park. We're excited that the series continues to grow & we thank all of you for supporting us and spreading the news like gossip...well, gossip that does good!
We started homo-centric to build a sense of community for LGBTQI writers. We wanted to create a place to congregate, to meet, share, listen and network. homo-centric firmly believes that everybody has a story to tell. We often quote Queer performance artist
Tim Miller as having said, “If we [LGBTQI people] don't tell our stories, no one else will.” Now maybe Tim didn't say it
exactly like that but it's close enough to have become the truth—our truth.
So, the other day we were wandering around the interweb looking for that LBGTQI glow that comes from unexpected places. We found out about Nathan Manske, a guy who grew up in Driftwood, Texas. These days he lives & works in New York but he started his blog after watching the Gus Van Sant/Dustin Lance Black film
Milk. As Nathan tells it:
“...what inspired me was Milk more so than Milk. An image I recalled wasn’t even in the film. It was a photo of Supervisor Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay elected officials in the U.S., riding on the hood of a car in a San Francisco Gay Pride march, holding a sign that reads, “I’m From Woodmere, N.Y.” The sign was intended to show how far people came to attend the San Francisco rally, but it meant something more to me. It meant that there are gay people in every small town and every big city across America and the world. I was thinking about that photo in between assaults on the snooze button and I responded to Harvey’s sign. I’m from Driftwood.”
Great inspiration, yes? Then Nathan went about starting a blog called
i'm from driftwood so LGBTQI people from all over the country can share their stories. More specifically, Nathan says-and this is what really gets our homo-centric heart going big time:
” To the gay teens struggling to come out and deal with their sexuality, who to this day still attempt suicide 4 times more than straight kids, it says “you are not alone.” Other people have dealt with similar situations, families, communities and churches, and have overcome and are now living happy lives. It can happen for you, too. It gets soooo much better, I promise."
See, it's very cool that once a month a group of big-city homo-centrics can openly congregate at an indie bookstore with our friends, partners, lovers and peers, listen to one another read our stories both real and made-up while we hold hands or sit arms around one another and nobody notices because well, we're in the big city. It's another thing altogether to create a blog to help people who can't do that realize there's a place for them and reach out to them to let them know they “are not alone.”
We think you just can't be more homo-centric than Nathan Manske and his group of pals with the work they are doing. It's an excellent example of what homo-centric's been telling people. We have stories to tell & if we don't tell them, nobody else will. So go. Read. Share. And tell a friend about
i'm from driftwood.
