Today, I exist as a visibly queer, almost trans femme black gay man and I am popular. I tasted success as a writer first with a children’s book entitled, Large Fears, centering a queer black boy. I recognize that a lot of my success and opportunity could not be possible in any other moment. 1991 was the perfect moment to be born black and gay. Stevie Wonder plays in between Jay-Z’s LGBTQI+ affirming rap bars. Rap superstar, Jay-Z dedicates a song to his lesbian mother and a more inclusive, queer-friendly world is ready to hear it. Why yes, even today’s resistance movements includes black gay men with the rise of DeRay McKesson as one of the public activists at the forefront of mainstream visibility. RuPaul has gone from a campy character only existing for comedic relief into a gay empire fashioned after classic, queer camp and Oprah’s business savvy thanks to RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Lee Daniels owns television with hit shows Star and Empire.

Frank Ocean was nominated and won countless Grammy’s including one for his debut album, Channel Orange. Tarell Alvin McCraney won an Oscar for gay black film, Moonlight. In your mid-twenties, you would’ve seen Black gay and queer men make strides. King and Oprah controversy about the downlow where every woman was afraid their husband was secretly sleeping with men without their knowledge. This means by adulthood, you would’ve just missed the AIDs epidemic and been too young to have to be expected to clean up the J.L.

If there ever were a time to be born a black gay man, he would want to be born in 1991.

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