Earlier this year, Trini-Canadian professor Andil Gosine was invited to join a group of scholars composing letters to past feminists.
He chose to address former Newsday columnist, sexual justice advocate, poet and self-described feminist Colin Robinson, in tribute to whom Gosine recently curated an exhibition at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in New York.
Robinson, founder of CAISO: Sex & Gender Justice, died of cancer in 2021 at 59.
Dr Gosine was scheduled to read his letter to a New York audience on October 16.
Dear Colin,
Look, I send the man a letter three times, three times, and every letter say the same same thing: “Your Honorable Grace etc etc, we are so very pleased to invite you to The Plural of He, the very first exhibition of art built around a Trinidadian poet, maybe any Trinidadian, at a New York museum.” Is big ting!
In the first letter, the museum ask for a lil change, but they ask in a real nice way: “On July 17, we will spotlight artists that Colin Robinson inspired…in conjunction with the exhibition celebrating his life as poet, critic, and unsung hero of social and sexual liberation movements...The Leslie-Lohman Museum…respectfully requests $900 in financial assistance to go towards honoraria, and roundtrip airfare and accommodations for Colin’s friend the writer Ms Shivanee Ramlochan.”
You lived in New York, so you know how $900 is peanuts here. Is pocket change for the consulate, the way that them is be sponsoring all kinda thing.
But not a word in response.
Next time, I forward the letter myself, with a nice nice note inviting them to the opening party. Nothing. Hundreds of people line up to see this show on opening night, but they can’t even find the energy to decline the invitation.
Then, eh, eh, I get invited as a plus-one to one of the receptions they sponsor. Was a real nice film about calypso (though not one made by a Trinidadian). Before the film even start, I start to realise what happening.
That consulate team was real uncomfortable around me, suddenly. Was like night and day from when they came to my first exhibition in New York, in 2022. You shoulda see all the loving-up from the big one, they take pictures for so. Even the last exhibition I had in New York, I was late to invite His Excellency to the private dinner, but the man himself call to apologise for not being able to make it on short notice. But them two exhibitions wasn’t gay ting and is only then I realise that they only just realise I like man (not that I have one right now, steups).
[caption id="attachment_1115756" align="alignnone" width="689"] One of the pieces from the exhibition The Plural of He, Another Poem by Llanor Alleyne. -[/caption]
Is not that any of them probably have a specific problem with my being gay, I think. I doubt it’s personal. Is more that for them to engage with a gay exhibition in an official way that is the thing. I eh know what the government tell them they can or cannot do, this government that now begging Britain to bring back a colonial anti-sodomy law tha
