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The Inescapable Blackness of Jean Toomer (And the Escapable Jewishness of Waldo Frank)
In the fall of 1922, two young American writers, Jean Toomer and Waldo Frank, traveled together to Spartanburg, South Carolina, for...

Shoga Films
Jan 10, 20244 min read


My Coloured Friend
Some of the staff of Hage Geingob High School. Guess which one is the Coloured. First of all, note the British spelling. Second of all,...

Shoga Films
Jan 10, 20244 min read


When We Were Victims: The Blood Libel
When We Were Victims: The Blood Libel It's safe to say, I think, that Jews have never been well regarded, especially in Christian and...

Shoga Films
Dec 7, 20236 min read


I Uncover the Queer and Jewish Undercurrents of a Documentary Classic
The raffish director strikes a casual pose in front of the Queens Film Festival banner Grey Gardens , if you must know. And if you don't...

Shoga Films
Dec 7, 20234 min read


The Grand Alliance Falls Apart
Once upon a time, in an America far, far away lived two pariah peoples in a land that the Anglo-Saxon ruling class considered as theirs...

Shoga Films
Nov 3, 20234 min read


My Zionist Phase
As a mid-century Jewish American child, I was enrolled in the Zionist project without my knowledge or acquiescence. I was born in 1950,...

Shoga Films
Nov 1, 20234 min read


The Forgotten Pansy Craze
October is LGBT History Month, and so we should remember the Pansy Craze of the early 1930s, one of the few bright spots of pre-Stonewall...

Shoga Films
Oct 4, 20233 min read


Fear of a Little Black Dress
When I was coming out in the Stone Age of the 1980s, drag was not well understood (at least by me) or widely accepted, even in the gay...

Shoga Films
Oct 4, 20234 min read


"My Son, the Fegeleh"
One blanket statement we can endorse about American Jewish boys and men is that we are neurotically attached to our mothers. Since our...

Shoga Films
Sep 7, 20233 min read


The Central African Republic: Requiem for a Failed Nation(2014)
HUMAN NATURE OR AFRICAN DEPRAVITY? It’s all depressingly familiar: an artificially cobbled state created under colonialism explodes in...

Shoga Films
Sep 5, 20236 min read


Leviticus 18:22
"Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is an abomination." Well, there it is. Case closed and not much more to say...

Shoga Films
Sep 2, 20233 min read


My Aborted Jazz Career
One of the Victorian legacies of the middle-class homes of the 1950s which bespoke of aspirations to gentility was the piano in the...

Shoga Films
Aug 2, 20234 min read


The Jewish Mystery of the Great American Songbook
Ask an American what areas and sectors of America are controlled by Jews, and you’ll get a variety of responses from “nothing” to...

Shoga Films
Aug 1, 20233 min read


On Aging as a Gay Man
On the right! Look at the guy on the right! That’s me at age 69. The physical specimen with his arm around me is Adam, my personal...

Shoga Films
Jun 6, 20233 min read


The Not-So-Golden Years of the Harlem Renaissance Queers
America hates old people. Aging out of relevance, health, and a community of peers as they die off is no fun even if one has wealth or...

Shoga Films
Jun 1, 20234 min read


The First White Promoter of the Blues
Before there was the record producer John Hammond (not to be confused with the white blues musician John P. Hammond), before there was...

Shoga Films
May 4, 20234 min read


Growing Up Clueless
And when I say "clueless," I'm talking specifically about African American culture. I grew up in Pasadena during the 50s and 60s. There...

Shoga Films
May 3, 20233 min read


My Poet
Of course he wasn't "my poet." He was my friend who was also a poet. I'd had other friends who wrote poetry and who had even published...

Shoga Films
Apr 5, 20235 min read


Poetry and Lynching
Poetry and lynching -- not an obvious coupling. Poetry, of course, has never been only the hearts-and-flowers rhymes we now associate...

Shoga Films
Apr 1, 20233 min read


My Cousin Marion: Unsung Hero of the Guerilla Documentary
At the age of 30, my mother's first cousin, Marion Michelle, met and fell in love with the famous left-wing Dutch documentary filmmaker...

Shoga Films
Mar 1, 20233 min read
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