Storytelling Workshop: Making Home as an LGBTQ Person in Harlem

A community conversation and storytelling workshop on the meanings of home for LGBTQ people in Harlem, facilitated by Ola Ronke Akinmowo, performer and storyteller of the Free Black Women's Library. 

The idea of home carries many different meanings, but it is a particularly complex concept for members of the LGBTQ community.  In the 50 years since Stonewall, the struggle to make a home, feel safe at home, and build a sense of belonging at home has been ongoing. Not to mention the significant cultural and physical changes that have taken place in Harlem—once the hub of a social, intellectual and artistic innovation for Black Americans in the 1920s and 30s—over the last century. From large scale development and gentrification to loss of affordable housing, small businesses and a widespread thriving artistic scene, Harlem has changed dramatically. Focusing on the LGBTQ experience, Ola Ronke Akinmowo, founder of the Free Black Women’s Library, will lead community members in an exploration of  what it means to make home in Harlem.  

The facilitator Ola Ronke Akinmowo is a Bed-Stuy born visual artist, cultural scholar, yoga teacher, set decorator, and mom. She creates interactive installations, performances, altars, paper works, and collages that center and celebrate Black womanhood. Her art practice is based in an inquiry and an exploration of the deep and beautiful connections between race, culture, and gender.  In 2015 she started The Free Black Women’s Library, an interactive roving biblio-installation that holds a collection of 900 books written by Black women. This mobile library travels throughout New York City and pops up monthly in a wide range of public locations and cultural institutions. This social art project also features performances, workshops, readings, film screenings, and critical conversations. Olaronke is working on expanding the library to create a digital app and is also raising money to purchase or build a tiny home or bus that will serve as a physical container/bookmobile for the mobile library which she can then take across the country. Find out more about the library through your favorite social media platform, IG, Tumblr, Facebook or Twitter.

To see the full list of Stonewall 50 programs taking place in branches, visit nypl.org/stonewall50

Major support of the Love & Resistance: Stonewall 50 exhibition and related programming is provided by The New York Community Trust, Hermes Mallea and Carey Maloney, and the TD Charitable Foundation and TD Bank. Additional support is provided by Time Warner and the Magnus Hirschfeld Endowment Fund.

Support for The New York Public Library’s Exhibitions Program has been provided by Celeste Bartos, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III, Mahnaz Ispahani Bartos and Adam Bartos Exhibitions Fund, Jonathan Altman, and Miriam and Ira D. Wallach.

ASL interpretation and real-time (CART) captioning available upon request. Please submit your request at least two weeks in advance by emailing accessibility@nypl.org.