Prism: Tales of Your City Netflix

In 2018, a queer woman named “K” traveled to Somalia to visit her father. Shortly after she arrived, she vanished. This week, we head to the city of Minneapolis with the AfroQueer team to hear the story of how K’s chosen family did everything they could to find her and bring her back to safety.

This is a story about an unlikely correspondence between two strangers. Picture it: Atlanta, 1984. Telephone hotlines, payphones, long distance telephone charges, and most importantly, handwritten letters. We partnered with the team at The Queer Public Podcast to tell the story of Diane and the trip to Atlanta that changed everything for her.

Los Angeles has a wide and varied queer community with many different pockets. There are the gays of West Hollywood, the community in Long Beach and, where our story for today starts, the queer scene on the East side. We partnered with James Kim, an LA native and the co-host of the podcast “The Competition.” James and his team explore a different type of beauty competition, one that involves leather. Theme song by Andrew Eapen.

It all started in 1978 with a novel by Armistead Maupin, which was originally serialized in The San Francisco Chronicle. Although it spawned more novels, spinoffs, and a couple of television adaptations - all incarnations of Tales of the City shared one thing: a group of people, finding their way in San Francisco, finding and making new bonds, creating their own version of family.

This week, we’re joined by Lauren Morelli, showrunner of the Netflix limited series Tales of the City and Armistead Maupin, author of the original series, for a cozy conversation in a hotel room in San Francisco as they talk about their experiences with the Tales, San Francisco and each other.

In the past few months, New Orleans has seen the closure of it’s last two backrooms. These spaces are vital for (mostly) gay men to gather socially and explore their sexuality freely. We partnered with Alexander Charles Adams, professed lover of these spaces, as they sought to understand what this loss means to the queer community.

Just as all history is contested, just as memory is contested, Stonewall is contested. In honor of the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, we partner with the team at Making Gay History to bring you Sylvia’s Stonewall. In never-before-heard recordings of iconic LGBTQ activist Sylvia Riveria, we not only see that night through her eyes, but also the explosion of activism that followed.

Mixing, Sound design and Score by Frank Lopez.