our queer elders
celebrating and elevating queer history through storytelling and song
produced by erin mckeown, engineered & mixed by jon evans, mastered by dave chalfant, & featuring armand aromin, catie curtis, mike flanagan, susan goldberg, carla kihlstedt, patty larkin, pamela means, gretchen phillips, char priolo, natalia zukerman, & members of the outer cape chorale.
made possible by grants from the arts foundation of cape cod, the national endowment for the arts, the cordial eye, and club passim.
“wait, she had a girlfriend?”
my jaw dropped when I first read about rachel carson’s decade-long relationship with dorothy freeman. rachel (or ray, to her friends) first saw the ocean while working in woods hole, ma, and I had worked for years within walking distance of a statue in her honor. I knew her as a marine biologist, a conservationist, and a trailblazer, but the history books left out a key component of her identity: her great love. even worse—if there was any mention of dorothy, it was simply as a “good friend.”
our queer elders is designed to elevate and celebrate the stories of the icons who have queered gender and societal norms throughout history.
click on the photos below for more stories and songs.
why queer?
this project celebrates icons who have queered gender and societal norms throughout history, whether that was through their actions or identities. since we don’t know how many of these icons would have identified using today’s lexicon, and it feels antithetical to the project to assign an identity to someone without their consent, the term “queer” is used as an umbrella term.
sarah white norman & mary vincent hammon
frida kahlo
easter ellen cupp
rachel carson
emily dickinson
eleanor roosevelt
margaret wise brown
tracy chapman
sally ride
the three musketeers
elke mackenzie
mary edwards walker
the public universal friend
mary oliver
joe carstairs
p. l. travers
katharine cornell
linda & gloria bailey-davies