6:00 - 7:30
United States
This is a hybrid event. Registration is required for Zoom attendance. In-person attendance does not require registration; seats available first come, first served.
Author Robin Lowey moderates a conversation with Crystal Jang, Olga Talamante and Carla Trujillo—three women featured among the 30 “Lesbian game changers” from the book, Game Changers: Lesbians You Should Know About. The conversation includes crucial discussions about feminism, queer culture, intersectionality, the need for intergenerational involvement and how the pandemic has affected the mental and emotional health of the queer community. Co-sponsored by the National Center for Lesbian Rights and Our Family Coalition.
Robin Lowey (she/her) is a speaker, author, filmmaker and queer historian who seeks to elevate the discourse in our country surrounding the role that lesbian history plays in advancing LGBTQ+ civil rights and social equity. Lowey is the author of Game Changers: Lesbians You Should Know About and the Executive Director of Lesbian Game Changers, a nonprofit that provides schools with valuable resources that fill the gap in education about LGBTQ+ history. Now in its second printing, Game Changers won best LGBTQ+ book in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. As a pioneering queer parent and an activist, Lowey's work focuses on LGBTQ+ achievements that have advanced a more inclusive society, while seeking to address the unmet educational needs of a culture that continues to oppress queer people. An award-winning graphic designer and writer, Lowey is also the founder of Epochalips.com and where she has served as Editor-in-Chief since 2010. Her writing has appeared in The Advocate, Lesbian.com and Epochalips.com, among other publications. Lowey was a featured guest at Talks at Google and the Michelle Meow Show on The CW Network, and was honored in Go Magazine’s “100 Women We Love” issue. She is a member of the LGBT Speakers Bureau.
Crystal Jang (she/her/they/ta), a fourth generation Chinese American, is an Asian Pacific Islander (API) queer community auntie and elder activist. She has spent the last six decades dedicating her life to pushing the boundaries of API-Queer visibility. Born and raised in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Jang developed a strong sense of Chinese identity and cultural pride which has led her to create safe spaces for past generations to be celebrated for their contributions and for present generations to celebrate their authentic selves as Asian and Queer. One of the first “out” educators at the San Francisco Unified School District, Jang is also a co-founder of the following organizations: Older Sisters in Solidarity (OASIS), Asian Pacific Islander Queer Women & Trans Community and the Red Envelope Giving Circle. Jang’s current focus is on fostering intergenerational relationships to sustain and strengthen the Queer and Trans API (QTAPI) community. At age 75, Jang finds herself happiest when she is enthusiastically causing “good trouble” each and every day!
Olga Talamante became the first executive director of the Chicana Latina Foundation in January 2003. Prior to this position, she was the Western Region Vice President of INROADS, a career and leadership development organization aimed at Latino, African American and Native American college students pursuing careers in business and engineering. In that position, she supervised the organization’s 12 regional offices located throughout the western United States and in Mexico. Ms. Talamante is well known for her community activism and has worked with several service-providing and public advocacy agencies, including Head Start, the YMCA, the American Friends Service Committee and the Argentine Commission for Human Rights. Currently she serves on the boards of the National Center for Lesbian Rights; El Concilio of San Mateo County, and the Friends of the Commission on the Status of Women. She is also active with GELAAM, a Latino LGBT organization in San Mateo County and with the Latino Forum of the San Francisco LGBT Center.
Carla Trujillo (she/her) is the editor of two anthologies published by Third Woman Press, Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About (1991), and Living Chicana Theory (1998), the former of which won a Lambda Book Award & the Out/Write Vanguard Award. Her 2003 novel What Night Brings won the Marmol Prize focusing on human rights, along with the Paterson Fiction Prize, the Latino Literary Foundation Book Award, a bronze medal from Foreword Magazine, an honorable mention for the Gustavus Meyers Books Award and was a Lambda Book Award finalist. Her latest novel, published in 2015, Faith and Fat Chances, was a finalist for the PEN-Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. Trujillo is currently working on a third novel.
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LGBTQIA+ Interest
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For more resources, the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center is the gateway to the Library’s broader collections documenting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and asexual history and culture, with a special emphasis on the San Francisco Bay Area.
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HERstory is SFPL's celebration of Women's History Month, spotlighting authors, thinkers, visionaries and artists during the month of March. Program offerings are for all ages.
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