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Neighborhood Voices: Sonny Wainwright Interview (Tape 5)
Sonny Wainwright provides discourse about the privilege of marriage as it pertains to illness and becoming a parent. She explains her choice to "live straight" for several years so that she could have a child. It was not until she met Audre Lorde that she realized she had "choices", whom she called her teacher. Wainwright also discusses the need for lesbian illness support groups due to unjust experiences brought on by the illegality of same-sex marriage. -
Neighborhood Voices: Audre Lorde Interview (Tape 3)
In the third part of the interview, Audre Lorde discusses the lure of the Village for gay people, black people, and others who wished for an egalitarian environment, and how sometimes they would ignore the homophobia and racism they faced in the neighborhood to hold onto this dream. Also, she discussed in more depth what she thought about the Stonewall riot, and how it felt tied to the black revolutionary movement of the time. Furthermore, she discusses at length the different gay bars she would frequent, their ties to the mafia, and the different women that would frequent them. -
Neighborhood Voices: Audre Lorde Interview (Tape 2)
In the second part of the Old Neighborhood Voices interview with Audre Lorde, she talks about living around the Village in the 1950s - from the migrators who came into the gay bars just for the weekend, to the imagined mythos of the Village as a place for anyone outside of white, middle-class America, and to the conflicts between the older residents and the newcomers to the area. Lorde touches on what her apartments were like and the rent situation of the area, as well as scrouging together food to share with her communities as a poor person. Then, Lorde discusses the multiple lives lesbians of the time had to live and the incredible gift that integrating every aspect of herself was as she got older. She touches on the Stonewall Riot, as well as the way she had to stop arbitrarily dividing aspects of herself to make others more comfortable. -
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Arcus Flynn, November 1, 1987
Arcus Flynn discusses her early life and her struggle with isolation and depression, her eventual discovery of the Daughters of Bilitis meetings and the community and friendships she found there. Arcus talks about the early importance of roles assumed by lesbians in the community (butch/femme), her involvement with the Women’s Rights movement, her evolution from Catholicism to born-again pagan spirituality (the Irish triad: truth, knowledge, and nature), and her discovery of herbology and natural healing. -
Martha Shelley, Tape 1 of 1, June 24, 1989
Martha Shelley is interviewed in New York in 1989. She talks about being a lesbian in New York from the 1960s, the negative views of lesbians portrayed by psychologists, the bar scene, roles and her use of a pseudonym. She talks about finding DOB, the meetings and discussions that took place, and her contributions to the Ladder. She talks about Jean Powers and other members of DOB and describes the members as mixed race, working class, couples and singles. She also talks about her political activism in terms of DOB, peace, civil rights and the Stonewall Riots, including the marches she was involved in and the speeches she made.