“The Beginning of the End”: After Over a Decade of Difference-Making, Telling Queer History Prepares To Ride Into the Sunset

It may not have looked like much … but it didn’t have to; it wasn’t supposed to. It may have looked like two dozen motley people sitting in a motley half-circle listening to one motley speaker speak because it was two dozen motley people sitting in a motley half-circle listening to one motley speaker speak.

It convened in June 2013 within the nigh-legendary halls known as Madame of the Arts. Twenty-five storytellees attended, ranging in age from sixteen to seventy, a listening troupe whose relative width and breadth astonished and thrilled the gathering’s gatherers. The audience “held a large range of identities across race, gender, sexuality and class,” according to Rebecca Lawrence.

This was the first gathering of Telling Queer History.

The venue identified itself as a “radical queer event space,” but the intention behind TQH was anything but radical. As TQH’s website puts it, “The mission of Telling Queer History is to connect Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer + people across generations and identities through storytelling gatherings, which bring communities together to foster compassion, empathy, and healing.”

Although the group is focused on History — the word is right there in its name — it focuses thusly with one eye on the future. Continues the website, “We envision an intersectional LGBTQ+ community dedicated to authentic conversations that strengthen a sense of belonging, connection, agency, and hope, where all voices are heard, valued, and respected.” 

The group was created to countervail a pervasive sense of unconnected solitude, repeated again and again by folk with few or no authentic social connections. “Queer people often feel isolated because so much of our history is buried by systemic violence,” Telling Queer History further declares online. “Through our events, Telling Queer History works to eliminate isolation so attendees feel empowered to lead in a community they feel connection to.”

So what is it that perpetrates all this simple-but-profound connecting and community-ing and curing the common isolation? Telling Queer History is “a series of storytelling gatherings that connect LGBTQ+ people across generations and identities,” the website elaborates.

The impetus for this approach asserted itself to founder and executive director Rebecca Lawrence (they/them) as they listened to personal anecdotes shared by her own uncle recounting his weathering of the AIDS Crisis of the 1980s. Says Lawrence, “I realized how much history was lost with those lives and how much was shaped by that loss. I brought the idea of sharing stories to other activist friends and they all encouraged me to create the gatherings.”

The AIDS Crisis, Lawrence saw, could be replaced by any number of modern issues that plague modern unicorns … and these issues might be addressed and dealt with in the same way, via the simple acts of physically coming together and vocally vibrating each others’ ear drums. Such contemporary get-togethers have revolved around a uniting theme — recent examples include “LGBTQ+ Spaces in Downtown Minneapolis,” “The Art of Healthier Relationships,” and “LGTQIA+ Midwest History” — and have been substance-free, family-friendly, and ASL-interpreted. Tickets are usually required to attend, but often they’re free or sold on a sliding scale … meaning attendees pay what they can afford.

In recent years, the most serious themes have been reserved for the most serious personal histories. Affirms the group’s website, “LGBTQ people continue to face transphobia, racism, poverty and violence, even in their own communities and relationships.”

Despite this thoroughly current, much-needed communing, Telling Queer History is, much like its told stories, nearing its denouement. Entitled “The Long Minnesota Good-Bye,” TQH’s swan song just began with a “community conversation” in October 2024. An exhibit of stories and organizational archives will mark TQH’s final months. Finally, assuming TQH’s funding holds up, the Long Minnesota Good-Bye will climax with an “end-of-life celebration” to be held June 2025, “an organizational funeral where you can gather with us to say good-bye and share ritual, food, stories, music, laughter, and tears.”

Regardless of how formally they’ll be brought to life, stories dependably endure in ways that may not look like much but will always be Telling … or, as Telling Queer History’s website puts it, “Bearing witness to our current, personal stories and how they relate to past histories gives us a crucial sense of place, pride, belonging, and empathy which allows us to better work together.”

www.tellingqueerhistory.com