Stepping into history

As editor of INtown, I get to pick and choose what I want to write about, which often means meeting interesting people and getting do cool stuff. For the September issue, I got a private tour of Georgia State University’s Special Collections and Archives. Okay, okay… some might find that geeky rather than cool, but I’m an unabashed history buff. Viewing the collection also made me realize just how much history I’ve witnessed during my 48 years. It was a humbling jaunt down memory lane, especially since not all the memories are good ones.

As archivist Morna Gerrard told me as we began the tour, the material being collected by GSU is thorny and difficult – although it shouldn’t be: Women, gender, LGBTQ.

Upon entering the main archive, the first thing I saw was a stack of homemade signs from the recent Women’s Marches. On another table were stacks of gay periodicals dating back to the 1980s, the headlines sounding the alarm about the growing AIDS crisis. And there were shelves full of grey file boxes marked ACT UP, Planned Parenthood, Radical Faeries – the stuff, as Gerrard said, nobody else would touch. This controversial history is part of the fabric of Atlanta and it has been, sadly, under-documented. Gerrard and her team at GSU are working quickly to change that.

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I’m happy to say that I will also become part of this history. The original manuscripts from my novels, early poem drafts, notes, correspondence, and collection of LGBTQ and Atlanta-related materials and periodicals will all eventually make its way to the archive. It’s comforting to know that my little collection will join the file boxes that already bear the names of friends and colleagues like Franklin Abbott, Maria Helena Dolan, Lorraine Fontana and Jim Elledge.

Perhaps this issue of INtown will also be part of the collection. If you happen to be reading this in the 22nd century – hello, future history geek.

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