50 min listen
Some Of Her Best Friends Are Straight...
FromStrange Fruit
ratings:
Length:
47 minutes
Released:
Sep 21, 2019
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Lambda Award-winning writer and activist Michelle Tea has always considered herself “radical queer,” – those outside-of-the-mainstream LGBTQ folks who have nothing left to lose and make their own rules about everything.
As she describes it in an essay for Buzzfeed, for Tea and the queer friends she shared a radical subculture with, “that meant prioritizing freedom, glorifying poverty, experimenting with our bodies in every way possible. The possibility of having children was raised only to highlight how absurd that would be….[we] mostly viewed kids as a potential drag on [our] liberties, or simply an impossibility.”
Which is why almost everyone who knew her was shocked when she suddenly decided to get pregnant and become a parent at 40 years old – while single, uninsured, and living in an expensive city and working a somewhat unstable job.
Spoiler alert: It’s now several years later and parenthood has ultimately worked out well for Tea and she’s learned some important lessons and made some unexpected (straight!) friends along the way. She shares her adventures on this episode.
Later in the show, Chicago-based rapper and actor Mykele Deville stop by the studio to discuss his role as Verb in the rousing production of Idris Goodwin’s “Hype Man: A Break Beat Play” at Actors Theatre of Louisville, which runs thru October 13th.
As she describes it in an essay for Buzzfeed, for Tea and the queer friends she shared a radical subculture with, “that meant prioritizing freedom, glorifying poverty, experimenting with our bodies in every way possible. The possibility of having children was raised only to highlight how absurd that would be….[we] mostly viewed kids as a potential drag on [our] liberties, or simply an impossibility.”
Which is why almost everyone who knew her was shocked when she suddenly decided to get pregnant and become a parent at 40 years old – while single, uninsured, and living in an expensive city and working a somewhat unstable job.
Spoiler alert: It’s now several years later and parenthood has ultimately worked out well for Tea and she’s learned some important lessons and made some unexpected (straight!) friends along the way. She shares her adventures on this episode.
Later in the show, Chicago-based rapper and actor Mykele Deville stop by the studio to discuss his role as Verb in the rousing production of Idris Goodwin’s “Hype Man: A Break Beat Play” at Actors Theatre of Louisville, which runs thru October 13th.
Released:
Sep 21, 2019
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Strange Fruit #42: Playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney: Playwright [Tarell Alvin McCraney](http://www.steppenwolf.org/ensemble/members/details.aspx?id=54) has been called the next August Wilson. Maybe that can be partially attributed to the fact that there are so few prominent African American playwrights, but there's still no doubt he is carrying an important mantle. At age 33, he's already had plays debut at the Royal Court London, New York's Vineyard Theatre, the Young Vic, and Steppenwolf Theatre, where he is an artist in residence. In March, he received the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize. We spoke to McCraney this week about his career, and how and why he writes about black gay life. He told us the real-life roots of some of his most famous works, and about working as August Wilson's assistant at Yale (including an unforgettable story about buying Wilson an iPod). In our Juicy Fruit segment this week, we had lots of news to cover: The #[solidarityisforwhitewomen](http://thehai by Strange Fruit