Upcoming celebration highlights local Black LGBTQ+ artists

UNC’s Department of Communication’s “A Celebration of Queer Life and Love” event will be held on Valentine’s Day in Swain Hall and will feature performances by local poets Destiny Hemphill and CJ Suitt. 

“It's just a general celebration of love and life," Event Organizer Kayla Corbin said. "Especially in the midst of so many not affirming actions being taken by the government, by universities around the country. I think that this is an important moment to just celebrate.” 

The celebration is a lead-up event to the 25th anniversary of the Black Queer Studies Conference which Corbin, a doctoral candidate, is the graduate coordinator for. 

Corbin said that the intersection of Black and queer identities creates a unique art form. 

“To be Black and to be queer produces particular experiences of oppression, but also particular experiences of living and ways of knowing,” she said. “And so, it's not just about particular experiences of oppression. It's also particular experiences of expression.”

Corbin said she tapped into the local art scene to find performers who were “actively celebrating Blackness and queerness.” She selected Stormie Daie, a drag queen to host the show and local DJ Femi the Femme to mix the music. She contacted Hemphill and Suitt to perform pieces of their poetry. 

Hemphill said she felt invigorated by the chance to be a part of the celebration because she also felt it necessary given the political moment. She said that the intersection of Blackness and queerness expands the imagination of what liberation can look like. 

“I am always so grateful to have opportunities like these because of the sort of connection-making possibilities that they present, not only interpersonally, which is incredibly important, but also in terms of co-imagination of political possibilities too,” she said. 

Hemphill is a poet based in Durham who has written about these themes for over a decade and is a recipient of various fellowships and awards. 

Hemphill authored “Motherworld: A Devotional for the Alter-Life” which she said she started writing after the first wave of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2013.

“'Motherworld' is interested in a future where the collapse of colonial structures, the collapse of anti-Blackness, the collapse of an ecocidal orientation to the Earth, where those collapses would then usher in opportunities to practice rituals of care that sustained life, and particularly sustained Black life,” she said. 

She said her goal with "Motherworld" was to help those losing hope in a better future maintain that faith. She said she plans to share some excerpts from it at the celebration event. 

Suitt, the other poet who will perform, is known professionally as Suittsyouwrite. They have also been in the poetry field for over a decade. They were born and raised in Chapel Hill and became the Town’s first Poet Laureate in 2019.

“In a world where fear is a heavily motivating factor right now, it feels so important in every context to be lifting up love — to be lifting up the love we have for each other, and particularly in the communities of Black queer folks who are so often under-loved,” Suitt said. 

Suitt said that events like this celebration cultivate places that give people the opportunity to love the Black queer community and allow people who do not know LGBTQ+ people personally a chance to gain understanding. 

Suitt’s reckoning with the homophobic depiction of God they learned when they were young while embracing spirituality as an adult is a theme in many of their works. One work they have planned to perform is “My World: A Goddess/God/Universe Poem” which touches on the topics of religion, homophobia and racism. 

Suitt said people should not shy away from difficult discussions because they argued that the tension and friction of dialogue is necessary for creating a better world. 

Corbin said the event will be open to all. One of her main goals for the event is to normalize queer identities and show there is nothing out of the ordinary about the artists. 

“It's not a lifestyle for them, it's their lives,” Corbin said.  

Suitt said while this is true, they added that it is extraordinary to live out personal truth. 

“I think it's powerful,” they said. “I think it's a hard thing to do and it is a hard thing to say, ‘Yes, this is who I am and I'm going to be unapologetic about it, and I'm going to go out into the world and do it.’” 

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