The Thursday Writing Collective began in 2008. When asked about its philosophy in an interview, its founder, Elee Kraljii Gardiner, a local writer, replied, “We firmly believe that everybody has a right to be heard, and we work together to make sure that we do that in an equitable, safe and exciting manner.” (Bender, 2015) It is a weekly free writing class that anyone can attend consistently or drop into. It takes place at the Carnegie Centre, in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, which it defines on its website as “an area challenged by poverty-related issues.” (Bender, 2015)
Anyone who’s spent time there, or anywhere that could potentially be define that way, likely understands the variegated way that “poverty-related issues” present themselves, the multitude of other issues they connect to, exacerbate, or in some cases, stand in for. Which is to say, understands that one type of obstacle cannot be, and should not be separated from others. In the case of the Downtown Eastside, “poverty-related issues” can be understood complexly to mean, among other things: addiction, systemic racism, cissexism, misogyny, transphobia, queerphobia, gentrification—all of which contributes to what can be a very material lack of resources of all kinds: medicinal, rehabilitative, economic, housing, to name a few. This is meant to demonstrate that anyone who is facing challenges like the ones I’ve listed, and many I have not, is welcome at the Thursday Writing Collective. This means that the communities this program is intended for are not necessarily QTBIPOC, but given what we know about the struggles faced, especially by QTBIPOC youth, and how frequently they are denied resources, it is not hard to imagine this community being an integral part of this program.
What’s more is that the program is run by local artists and activists, meaning these are individuals who are, in many ways, intimately acquainted with the particular and diverse difficulties facing this community. It is not a program designed for a community from its outside.
While there is no statement on the Collective’s website about their stance towards QTBIPOC individuals there are multiple instances of its organizers emphasizing that the space is meant for everybody or anyone, much like the one cited above. That said, almost all of us have had the experience of entering a space we think will be safe for us only to promptly find out it is not. In the absence of an explicit policy we can look at the collective’s organizers, events and endorsements for clues as to their level of inclusivity. They are frequently publishing excerpt of, blog posts by, or simply praise for, queer writers. One such case is the writer Erold Almelek, who’s poem, “strange, queer, extraordinary, peculiar” appears both in English and in Turkish on the Collective’s website (and in one of their chapbooks.) (admin, 2014) In an interview titled Talking Queer Vancouver Writers, Bisexuality, and Community with Vancouver Author Leigh Matthews, Matthews is asked to name “some of the most amazing queer Vancouver writers,” she names one of the Thursday Writing Collective’s central teachers. (Stepaniuk, 2017) Of course, these observations don’t automatically mean that any queer person, especially an Indigenous or racialized one, would definitely feel comfortable here. However, given what we know about the excitement and consideration expressed towards queer folks and differently marginalized peoples as well, I think it would be safe to assume that this would be the kind of environment in which discomfort can be addressed, and hopefully, resolved.
In ‘Gays Who Cannot Properly be Gay’ Queer Muslims in the Neoliberal European City, Fatima El-Tayeb spends some time discussing the activist group Strange Fruit. They describe the group as having had an intersectional practice “in which identities and discourses were eclectically appropriated, rearranged and transformed without a single model of ethnic, gender, or sexual definitions becoming normative.” (El-Tayeb, 90) They go on to write of the groups successes and the strategies that they think brought them about, one of which being that they combined, “local, peer group focused activism […] with a global perspectives” which El-Tayeb posits resist “divide and conquer politics that […] pit ‘gay’ against ‘migrant.’” (El-Tayeb, 90)
In the case El-Tayeb explores it becomes clear that while it is always important to have spaces and initiatives that are explicitly meant for certain communities, some progress can be made, and can be made well, through collaborations between marginalized communities. I submit that this is what The Thursday Writing Collective provides an opportunity for. In that same interview with its founder, she describes the process of writing as “a type of freedom many of us don’t experience in our daily lives.” (Bender, 2015)
While writing about Ballroom culture in his article Engendering space: Ballroom culture and the spatial practice of possibility in Detroit, Marlon M. Bailey suggests that Ballroom culture can do a lot, but it cannot erase all our differences and the difficulties that spring from them. He writes, “Instead, I argue that members ‘make do’ with what they have in an effort to forge lives that are more livable” (Bailey, 503)
This is what the act of writing together and learning from one another as the potential to do.
Bibliography:
- Bender, D. (2015, October 21st) Finding Joy in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside with Thursday’s Writing Collective. Retrieved from: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/thecollective/the-collective-thursdays-writing-collective-1.3106481
- El-Tayeb, F. (2012). ‘Gays who cannot properly be gay’: Queer muslims in the neoliberal european city. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 19(1), 79-95. doi:10.1177/1350506811426388
- Bailey, M. M. (2014). Engendering space: Ballroom culture and the spatial practice of possibility in detroit. Gender, Place & Culture, 21(4), 489-507. doi:10.1080/0966369X.2013.786688
- Palaniuk, C. (2017, April 12th) Talking Queer Vancouver Writers, Bisexuality, and Community with Vancouver Author Leigh Matthews. Retrieved from: http://www.insidevancouver.ca/2017/04/12/talking-queer-vancouver-writers-bisexuality-and-community-with-vancouver-author-leigh-matthews/