Purchase Puto: Plays Here

Please join us Wednesday June 10th from 6 – 7:30 pm  at Philly AIDS Thrift @  Giovanni’s Room for a very special reading from Puto: Plays by Ricardo A. Bracho, UPenn/GSWS outgoing Artist in Residence. The book covers the full range of Bracho’s work for the stage. Developed and produced for the past thirty years these one-acts, full-length plays, 5-10 minute polemics cover the underground house music scene, the conquest of the Americas, race and romance, George Floyd protests, the after-effects of the AIDS pandemic, and what (not) to wear to the afters.

Puto: Plays offers a comprehensive exploration of Ricardo A. Bracho’s groundbreaking contributions to contemporary theatre. Bracho’s work, characterized by its dialectical innovations and radical ideological critique, centers on queer, immigrant, and proletarian Black and Brown characters, challenging societal norms through Marxist critiques of Chicano nationalism, intersectionality, and queer theory. His plays, such as The Sweetest Hangover, El Santo Joto, and Puto, function as staged essays, addressing themes of class conflict, racial antagonism, and global capitalism. The collection includes Ni Madre, a science fiction chamber play reimagining the figure of La Malinche, and Mexican Psychotic, which dramatizes the life of outsider artist Martâin Ramâirez. Appetites I Have Inherited critiques Hollywood’s racial and sexual stereotypes, while Sissy redefines Chicano family narratives through a queer, coming-of-age tale set in a Marxist-Leninist home in Los Angeles. Puto envisions a dystopian Los Angeles grappling with militarized borders and class warfare, and A Black and a Brown captures the intimacy and solidarity of queer love during the Black Lives Matter protests. Puto: Plays makes Bracho’s key works available to a broader public for the first time, with a foreword by Bracho’s teacher and iconic Chicana poet Cherríe Moraga, a critical introduction by Jennifer Ponce de León, Richard T. Rodríguez, and Randall Williams, as well as an afterword by Juana María Rodríguez .

Ricardo A. Bracho is a queer Chicano Marxist playwright from Los Angeles whose theatrical works dramatize the lives of gay Black and Brown partisans of anti-capitalism and decolonization. Characterized by their playful use of theory, Bracho’s plays utilize the stage as a place for characters to debate questions of sexual and political liberation. Though Bracho’s work has been breaking ground within the experimental Latinx theater and arts community since the 1990s, his plays have not been widely accessible beyond their staging. Driven by passion-for politics, for the dancefloor, for dispossessed bodies, communities, and lands-Bracho’s award-winning plays express a polyphony of outlaw voices and contemporary dramas. With a foreword by Bracho’s teacher and iconic Chicana writer Cherríe Moraga, an afterword by Juana Maria Rodriguez, as well as critical notes and an introduction by editors Jennifer Ponce de León, Richard T. Rodriguez, and Randall Williams, Puto makes Bracho’s key works available to a broader public for the first time, bringing Bracho’s frank, transgressive, and revolutionary work to the forefront just when the world needs it most.

Purchase Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique Here

Come join us on the second to last Thursday of every month for Craft and Consciousness Raising!

Every month we will read out loud and discuss an excerpt from a different nonfiction book while we craft in community. Each session will focus on how queerness intersects with different identities and struggles, with an aim of centering collective liberation. The books will be on sale before the event, but if you don’t have a chance to read ahead of time, that is okay too! Bring a project you’re working on, or we have free craft and collage supplies available to use. We look forward to seeing you there!

“In Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique, Sa’ed Atshan provides a brilliant theorization of an excessive mode of political critique that strives for the high ground yet contributes to the calcification of social justice movements. Through a nuanced ethnography that foregrounds the plurality of queer experience in Israel and Palestine and the enormous complexity of the global Palestinian solidarity movement, Atshan demonstrates how an intellectual stance that combines a conviction of the moral superiority of one’s political judgments with deep suspicion concerning others’ complicity in relations of domination and the likely oppressive consequences of prescriptions for social transformation engenders discursive disenfranchisement, loss of key intellectual distinctions, neglect of pragmatic constraints, demoralization of activists, and the truncation of transnational queer solidarity. This deeply insightful book makes vital contributions to Queer Studies, Middle East Studies, Social Movement Studies, and an understanding of the dynamics of social justice praxis.”–Mary Hawkesworth, Rutgers University

From Ramallah to New York, Tel Aviv to Porto Alegre, people around the world celebrate a formidable, transnational Palestinian LGBTQ social movement. Solidarity with Palestinians has become a salient domain of global queer politics. Yet LGBTQ Palestinians, even as they fight patriarchy and imperialism, are themselves subjected to an “empire of critique” from Israeli and Palestinian institutions, Western academics, journalists and filmmakers, and even fellow activists. Such global criticism has limited growth and led to an emphasis within the movement on anti-imperialism over the struggle against homophobia.

With this book, Sa’ed Atshan asks how transnational progressive social movements can balance struggles for liberation along more than one axis. He explores critical junctures in the history of Palestinian LGBTQ activism, revealing the queer Palestinian spirit of agency, defiance, and creativity, in the face of daunting pressures and forces working to constrict it. Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique explores the necessity of connecting the struggles for Palestinian freedom with the struggle against homophobia.

Sa’ed Atshan is Assistant Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Swarthmore College. He is the coauthor of The Moral Triangle: Germans, Israelis, Palestinians (2020).

Purchase THE PRINCE OF BROWN Here

In The Prince of Brown: A Fictional Memoir, Arthur L. Jenkins delivers a raw and deeply human portrait of resilience at the intersections of Blackness, queerness, and survival. Told through the eyes of Denzel Davis, the narrative spans generations of tragedy, family secrets, and rebirth-from the violence that shaped his ancestors to his own struggles with identity, love, and mental illness. As Denzel navigates the worlds of academia, incarceration, the ballroom scene, and self-reinvention, he confronts the dual burden of invisibility and hypervisibility faced by Black queer men.

What begins as a story of trauma evolves into a powerful meditation on healing, artistry, and the dignity of difference. Jenkins weaves grit with grace, illuminating how one man-descended from both suffering and strength-reclaims his story and crowns himself the Prince of Brown: an emblem of endurance, truth, and the beauty that emerges from survival.

Arthur L. Jenkins received his bachelor of arts in psychology from Widener University, his master of science in clinical mental health counseling from Gwynedd Mercy University, and an academic creative writing certificate from Community College of Philadelphia, where he was a winner in the Judith Stark Writing Contest multiple times.

Dalyse Davis is an Army Special Forces veteran whose distinguished service reflects resilience, discipline, and leadership under pressure. She has dedicated her post-military career to helping others as a drug and alcohol counselor and mental health professional, bringing both clinical expertise and lived experience to her work. As a devoted mother of two, she balances compassion with strength, embodying the values she encourages in others.

We are so excited to host Jibz Cameron aka Dynasty Handbag, as she shares her debut memoir, Hell in a Handbag.

Jibz will also be performing at PhilaMOCA on Wednesday, July 8. Tickets are available HERE! You really don’t want to miss either of these events.