Stories about: race
To celebrate my resignation from my first full-time job after college, I booked a flight from the Philippines to Singapore for a break. I brought one bag with me for a month-long stay. When I landed I realised how reckless my decision was. I had no idea what I was going to do there. I …
Dashaun Wesley, the King of Vogue, sat down with Archer Magazine recently to chat all things ball culture and voguing.
Faluda Islam is a Muslim bearded drag queen turned revolutionary from the middle of the 21st century, most likely from this world but perhaps even another.
Now in his 50s, Peter Waples-Crowe is a powerhouse community figure in the Aboriginal LGBT community, managing a career in public health alongside a significant body of visual art that reflects his unique intersections. After catching up over cigarettes outside the State Library of Victoria, and reflecting on the sombre irony of smoking tobacco products …
A good friend of mine recently asked me to write a piece on the way that depression has impacted my life for a friend’s blog. Thinking about it, I came to realize that the psychological illnesses I have incurred over the years are situated within the history of postcolonial trauma. My ancestral heritage goes back …
At the moment, my partner and I are in the room not going out. We always live in fear. I studied engineering at university. I worked as an elevator technician until I left Iran. I really liked that job. I would like to start my own small business, that is my goal. When I was …
Mama Alto is a gender transcendent diva, cabaret artiste, and community activist. She is a non-binary trans femme person of colour who works with the radical potential of storytelling, strength in softness & power in vulnerability. Bobuq Sayed sat down with them at Hares and Hyenas to talk queerness in the arts and the challenges …
The black family is a contested and colonised concept; my own family has never been a fixed and permanent entity. We have always been ephemeral. Some people are added and some are cut out. I have one mum, but heaps of other mothers. Sometimes, my mum feels like a sister. I have two sisters, but many …
It started early, and had little to do with sexuality. Maybe it was the fact that I hung around with more boys than girls, or that frocks never caught my fancy. But I fought to choose my own clothes, and my family eventually got tired of resisting resistance. My earliest memory was after a bath …
Allan Clarke is a Muruwuri man and an investigative journalist with the ABC. He has previously reported for BuzzFeed, NITV and SBS. The Mardi Gras magazine recently published his article about the First Nations history of Mardi Gras, commemorating 40 years of black queer protest and celebration. How important is the Sydney Mardi Gras …
Hair is one of the first markers of culture and queerness visible to the naked eye. For queer women of colour, reconciling these aesthetics can be hard.
My very first images of masculinity and femininity came from the pictures that hung in my family’s prayer area, inside a small hallway closet with doors that opened like an accordion. Inside I saw gods and goddesses, either balanced on one leg in a dance pose, or standing with their palms together in prayer. At six …
I’ve found myself in this middle ground through no fault of my own, so I may as well carve my own space within it, one day at a time.
What’s missing from the entire analysis of these protests is the queer community, and how international voices from either side of the political spectrum undermine and erase Venezuela’s queer, indigenous history.
Serena Williams’ Vanity Fair shoot uncovers much to be said about the politicisation of the black woman’s body, writes Hina Ahmed. It goes without saying that Serena Williams is certainly a force to be reckoned with. As a woman, and more specifically as a black woman, Serena has earned many accolades, with over twenty-three …
Angela Serrano speaks to performer and artist-activist Candy Bowers about her latest production, One The Bear.
The whiteness of ‘coming out’: culture and identity in the disclosure narrative
It’s been eight years since I first kissed a boy, and two since gender loosened its grip on me, yet I never came out to my father. I’ve made my peace with never coming out to him, or the rest of my extended family, for that matter. For someone straddling two cultures, this is a …
Exactly one week after the Pulse nightclub shooting, my cousin Tariq and I drive into downtown Orlando for a drink. I’ve just flown into Florida for a writing workshop, and my Dad reached out to his old friend Tariq to show me around in the meantime. In Afghan culture, we refer to people like Tariq …
I had my first depressive episode when I was 17. Every day, I would walk through a busy intersection frequented by cars, buses and beast-like trucks on my way to school. For three months, I could not shake the thought of walking right in front of them. As a queer person of colour, disentangling the …
Archer Asks: Justin Shoulder and Bhenji Ra, performance artists and community organisers
Justin Shoulder and Bhenji Ra are two irreplaceable icons of Sydney’s queer scene. They collaborate on projects such as Ex-Nilalang, a genderfluid folklore-inspired video series, and Club Ate, a QTPOC performance arts club space. Sharing a Filipinx-Australian identity, they are performing new work at Asia-Pacific Triennial Performing Arts (Asia TOPA 2017) in Melbourne. Angela Serrano talks …
“Will I ever not be Haram?”: Masculinity, queerness and visibility in Palestinian culture
Growing up, I was called mukhanath, or hermaphrodite, not because my class mates were certain that I had both a penis and a vagina, but because I was colored outside of the masculinity circle. They chose to assign me both organs because I didn’t have a rough voice, I wasn’t loud or violent, I liked …
Member of poetry duo Darkmatter, Alok Vaid-Menon, chats to us about performance, faggotry and being freakishly queer. This is an excerpt from Archer Magazine #7, the THEY/THEIRS issue. Q: How has your trip to Australia been so far? Politically and racially, everyone has a different idea of what’s going on here. US frameworks around race, …