The Queer and Trans People of Color (QTPoC) page is to provide MIT students with the latest resources and programs throughout the year. This page will be updated regularly, so please take a look and browse through many of the QTPoC content.
QTPOC Virtual Programming
QTPoC is for queer and trans people of color to hang out with each other once a month, chat, watch movies, and have support. The first part of QTPoC is chilling online and talking and building community. How have you been? What have you been up to? Got anything you want to share? The second part of QTPoC might be a game, program, event. Feel free to join at any time and bring your friends! QTPoC is a space for LBGTQ+ students of color in the MIT community.
Click Here for the Crossword Puzzle!
QTPoC Spotlight
A Individual or group will be highlighted based on their accomplishments and care for the LBGTQ community.
Check out LBGTQ+ Service's Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook for more QTPOC Spotlights
Name: Rev. Naomi Washington - Leapheart
Pronouns: She, Her, Hers
Biography: Reverend Washington-Leapheart is an adjunct professor at Villanova University in their Theology and Religious Studies department. She served as a Faith Work Director for the National LGBTQ Taskforce. She was also named an LGBTQ Faith Leader to watch in 2019 and as one of The Root 100. Click here to learn more
Name: Alvin Ailey
Pronouns: He, Him, His
Biography: Ailey was a professional dancer, choreographer, and activist for the LBGTQ+ community. He trained under Lester Horton, who was the founder of one of the first integrated dance companies. Ailey founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center (now The Ailey School) and the Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble (now Ailey II). He was also an active member during the Civil Rights Movement. He also choreographed popular dance routines, which included Revelations! Click here to learn more
Monthly Book Recommendations
QTPoC authors will be the highlight in this section. Make sure to learn about them and read their work.
Check out LBGTQ+ Services online library for more QTPoC Books
Title: When Brooklyn was Queer (2019)
Author: Hugh Ryan
Pronouns: He, Him, His
Tags: Brooklyn, History, LBGTQ, People of Color
Author Description: A writer, historian, and curator in New York City. honored by the Brooklyn Historical Society, the Committee on LGBT History of the American Historical Association, and the Brooklyn Borough President for my work on the queer history of BK. (http://www.hughryan.org/about)
Brief Book Description: The never-before-told story of Brooklyn's vibrant and forgotten queer history, from the mid-1850s up to the present day. "A romantic, exquisite history of gay culture." --Kirkus Reviews, starred "A monumental achievement."--Ira Sachs, filmmaker Hugh Ryan's When Brooklyn Was Queer is a groundbreaking exploration of the LGBT history of Brooklyn, from the early days of Walt Whitman in the 1850s up through the queer women who worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II, and beyond. No other book, movie, or exhibition has ever told this sweeping story.
Title: Dirty River: A Queer Femme of Color Dreaming Her Way Home
Author: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Pronouns: She/They
Tags: API, Fiction, Queer Disabilities, Queer South Asian, Queer Women, Women of Color
Author Description: Piepzna-Samarasinha is a queer disabled autistic nonbinary femme writer, educator and disability/transformative justice worker. (https://brownstargirl.org/about/)
Brief Book Description: In 1996, poet Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, carrying only two backpacks, caught a Greyhound bus in America and ran away to Canada. She ended up in Toronto, where she was welcomed by a community of queer punks of colour offering promises of love and revolution, yet she remained haunted by the reasons she left home in the first place. This passionate, riveting memoir is a mixtape of dreams and nightmares, of immigration court lineups and queer South Asian dance nights; it is an intensely personal road map and an intersectional, tragicomic tale that reveals how a disabled queer woman of colour and abuse survivor navigates the dirty river of the not-so-distant past and, as the subtitle suggests, “dreams her way home.”
Title: Another Country
Author: James Baldwin
Pronouns: He, Him, His
Tags: Gay, Black Men, Jazz, African American
Author Description: American essayist, novelist, and playwright whose eloquence and passion on the subject of race in America made him an important voice, particularly in the late 1950s and early 1960s, in the United States and, later, through much of western Europe. (https://www.britannica.com/biography/James-Baldwin)
Brief Book Description: Set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, among other locales, Another Country is a novel of passions—sexual, racial, political, artistic—that is stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, depicting men and women, blacks and whites, stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and hatred at the most elemental and sublime.
Other QTPoC Resources or Programs
External Resources
Please note: All links posted below are external websites and may become outdated or nonfunctional. We will do our best to update them once a semester. If you see any links out of date, please let us know: lbgt@mit.edu
Organization |
Link |
API Equality - LA |
|
Desi LGBTQ+ Helpline for South Asians |
|
Queer Women of Color Media Project |
http://qwocmap.org |
Muslims for Progressive Values |
|
National Center for Black Equity |
|
First Nations Two Spirit Collective |
|
Somos Familia |
|
National Black Justice Coalition |
|
Black Trans Advocacy Coalition |
|
Galaei |
|
TransLatin@ Coalition |
|
Unity Coalition |
|
Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement |
|
NQAPIA (National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance) |
|
The Visibility Project |
|
Coming Home to Islam and to Self |
https://www.hrc.org/resources/coming-home-to-islam-and-to-self |
Immigration Equality |
|
United We Dream |
|
National Queer and Trans Therapists of Color Network |
|
Therapy for QPOC |
|
Rest for Resistance |
|
Human Resource Campaign |
|
Gaysi (The Gay Desi Blog) |
QTPOC, LBGTQ+, and BIPOC Conference Opportunities
Are you an MIT student group seeking funding for an LBGTQ+ centered project, event, or leadership opportunity through LGBTQ+ services? Use this form to apply for funds. The LBGTQ+ Services team will review all applications and then get back to you about funding and possible next steps. If you are a graduate student group and have questions, please email Nina Foushee nfoushee@mit.edu. If you are an undergraduate student group, please email Robert Hines at hinesr@mit.edu.
Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits (BAAITS) exists to restore and recover the role of Two-Spirit people within the American Indian/First Nations community by creating a forum for the spiritual, cultural and artistic expression of Two-Spirit people. This conference has passed but it happens annually with future dates announced in 2022. Learn more about it here: https://www.baaits.org/
Fire Lounge
Sponsored by the MindHandHeart Innovation Fund is designed to support students who identify as Black/Brown, Indigenous, and/or People of Color (BIPOC) by offering an affirming space via weekly yoga sessions with guided meditation to enhance connection, communion and resilience. Fire Lounge is at no cost and includes free yoga supplies for any BIPOC MIT student regardless of shape or size. No prior experience with yoga is needed. Fire Lounge is about enhancing one’s spirit and strength with guided meditation focused upon themes suggested by students in collaboration with Down Under School of Yoga. Fire Lounge will be offered virtually during IAP and Spring Semester. For more info, please email: ContactFireLounge@mit.eduFireside Lounge - Weekly Free Yoga for BIPOC Students
Any Questions?
If there are any questions or if you would like to share any QTPoC resources and have them posted on this page, please email Graduate Assistant Robert Hines at hinesr@mit.edu. Also, sign up for the QTPoC listserv (Lazo@mit.edu) in Stay Connected Tab, so you do not miss out on great opportunities.