Tracy Gilchrist on the Queer Historical Record, Our Ever Changing Cultural Landscape, and Getting Back to Community

We all know Wicked was a cultural phenomenon, there were a thousand memes — “holding space” arguably the most popular, but if you stopped there with Tracy Gilchrist, you’d be missing out. Behind the meme is a journalist, a walking queer archive, and a community-forward cultural documentarian.

Gilchrist revisits her queer historical record with Nay and Vico, taking us back to high school, to a club bumping Erasure (80s hair and all), to the days when lesbian bars weren’t a scarcity. It’s a ride from scissoring to queer censorship to the wisdom that “not everything is so serious, right? But it is big.” You are part of the historical record. We’re part of the historical record. And we can take history a bit further by continuing to protest, by not needing corporate sponsors to host Pride events, and by stepping up if you are a person of privilege because we need to get back to community, y’all

Thank you so much, Tracy! This conversation was rich with stories from your impressive career but also had us going down some juicy tangents. Talking with you was a refueling. Thank you for your wisdom and all that you shared with us.

WATCH the full interview on our Substack!

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