Immediately upon its release last January, I read Robert Jones, Jr.’s debut novel, The Prophets, an evocative love story about two enslaved young men on a Deep South plantation.
Within a few pages, the characters felt familiar; and for the first time in my life, I witnessed queerness in an antebellum slave narrative. Reeling from having sped through the 378 pages, I’m still eager to read it again and engage with folks about it.
Fast forward to July when Robert Jones, Jr. accepted my invitation to be in discussion about The Prophets at Mighty Real 2021: I screamed. I danced. I cackled. What an honor to be in conversation with Robert, discussing his literary masterpiece. And what a cosmic return of Mighty Real, after a yearlong hiatus.
To my disappointment, there was no Mighty Real last year. I resisted hosting virtual ItsQwere events because in 2020, we were inundated with virtual event requests. And as lovely as those were, and still are (obvs), ItsQwere just needed time to figure itself out in a socially-distant world.
The magic of ItsQwere spaces is in-person connections, so going virtual means losing some IRL spark, but by now we’ve grown to love-hate Zoom enough that it feels comfortable moving forward in this virtual way, for now.
Back when ItsQwere was known as Hear + Qwere, we hosted Mighty Real: A Live Musiq Event at The Peppermint Club in West Hollywood to celebrate the first year of conversation salons and community partnerships. With that fabulous launch in November 2018, an annual event was born.
In 2019, we hosted Mighty Real: A Queer Comedy Night, benefitting Compton’s Transgender Cultural District in San Francisco, and ticket sales raised nearly $1000 for the Transgender District. A bar was set for our baby organization that evening.
This year, our Mighty Real lineup is majestic and not to be missed. Futurist, dyke, hip-hop feminist, womanist Porsha Olayiwola will grace us with a show-stopping poetry set. Robert Jones, Jr. will be in discussion about The Prophets. Authors Morgan Rogers (Honey Girl), Brontez Purnell (100 Boyfriends), Randy James (Shifters) and Junauda Petrus (The Stars And The Blackness Between Them) will join to share their work and discuss nuances of being a contemporary Black creative.
Comedian and friend-in-my-head Sampson McCormick hosts ItsQwere’s Mighty Real: Black Voices In Conversation on Sunday, November 7 at 12 p.m. PST / 3 p.m. EST. Ticket sales support the Oakland LGBTQ Center, a uniquely all-inclusive community center led and founded by African Americans; and our incredible group of Black talent.
Go grab those tickets, babes. And consider signing up for our ItsQwere newsletter for irregular updates.
All my love.
