Remembering Colin Robinson, Black Gay Caribbean Titan
Local leader helped launch GMAD, Audre Lorde Proejct, and more
BY NICHOLAS BOSTON
Friends and family of Colin
Robinson, an activist,
organizer and writer
who passed on March
4 in Washington, DC, at age 58
from cancer, gathered virtually on
March 28 to celebrate his life and
honor his contributions.
Entitled, “Life Portrait and Libations,”
the two-hour memorial
convened Colin’s loved ones across
multiple locations — the Caribbean,
Canada, the United Kingdom,
the United States, and beyond.
Colin was originally from Trinidad
& Tobago. He lived in New
York City from 1980 to 2007, and
throughout that period stood at
the forefront of LGBTQ+ organizing.
He was a co-founder and/or
executive director of GMAD (Gay
Men of African Descent), the Audre
Lorde Project, the New York Black
Gay Network, and Caribbean
Pride. He held executive positions
and board memberships at pillar
organizations such as Gay Men’s
Health Crisis (GMHC) and Center
for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS). Colin’s
organizing always prioritized
coalition-building politics and solidarity,
and he worked across identities
and struggles.
In 2007, Colin decided to move
back to Trinidad, where he continued
his LGBTQ+ human-rights
work, in 2009 co-founding the Coalition
Advocating for the Inclusion
of Sexual Orientation (CAISO) (renamed
“CAISO: Sex and Gender
Justice” in 2016), and serving as its
executive director until his passing.
It was in large part through
CAISO’s tireless advocacy that the
government of Trinidad & Tobago
decriminalized homosexuality in
2018. Colin resolutely rejected “any
fetishizing of the Caribbean region
as some homophobic, backward
place it is not,” he told me by text
in 2015.
In 2016, Colin published a collection
of poetry, “You Have You
Father Hard Head” (Peepal Tree
Press), an offering of verse he had
been sharing on multiple platforms
— edited volumes, fi lm, spoken
CHARMAINE ROBINSON
The late Colin Robinson in 2017.
Colin Robinson (second from left), holding up a fl ag at the Stonewall 25 Pride parade, 1994.
word — for decades.
Colin belonged to that generation
of Black gay men besieged by
AIDS in the 1980s and ‘90s that
produced a fl owering of poetry and
prose, fi lm, community spaces
and organizations to bring Black
gay identities out of invisibility.
He was amongst the subgroup of
these men whose activism and creative
labor coalesced around the
work of Marlon Riggs, and it was
through those productions that I
fi rst became acquainted with Colin
before I even met him. In Riggs’
short fi lms, “Affi rmations”(1990)
and “Anthem” (1991), I saw Colin’s
mouth and heard his voice.
In “Affi rmations,” Colin’s voice
NICHOLAS BOSTON
is part of a symphony of Black gay
men vocalizing the things they
wish to have and be. “First openly
gay, Black talk show host with a…
openly gay talk show,” Colin says
in a sultry tone.
In “Anthem,” Colin’s lipsticked
mouth is the star, and his poetry
showcased. Riggs’ camera zeroed
in on Colin’s lips and tongue as
they form the words of the poem,
“Unfi nished Work.” The footage is
cut up and the lines of the poem
shuffl ed and remixed:
Pervert the language
Parade it proudly
Flaunt it like a man
I am afraid of forgetting our language
REMEMBRANCE
No immunity in this procession of
dying
Griots shaping language into
power, food, and substitute for sex
into tools like weapons of
survival, rage and passion with
the clarity of spit.
When I fi rst moved to New York
in 1994, I met the man attached to
that mouth. I don’t remember exactly
when and where. In my memory,
he was always there, always
offering mentorship in his understated,
it’s-up-to-you way.
But, I quickly learned, don’t ask
Colin for advice unless you are fully
prepared to swallow the undiluted
truth. Aware of his grantsmanship,
I once asked him to look over a
statement I’d written for a grant application
I was submitting. He took
the paper from me and I watched
his eyes scanning the saccharine
narrative I’d composed, his brow
furrowing and that full mouth of
his twisting. He looked up at me
and said, “Is this for real?” I was
speechless. Colin didn’t wait for an
answer. He attacked the page with
his pen, crossing out line after line
and jotting down instructions on
how I was to restate my intentions
in language addressing a funder,
not a friend.
That fall, I found myself temporarily
between apartments. Colin
and his housemates, with whom I
had also become friends (I respect
folks’ right to celebrate, mourn
and refl ect privately, so I mention
no names, but you know who you
are), invited me to stay a few days
at their townhouse in Fort Greene,
Brooklyn. They had an unwritten
policy that their home be a space of
welcome for Black LGBTQs. My few
days turned into a few weeks. The
housemates, professional advocates,
travelled a fair bit for work,
and they kindly let me stay in their
rooms while they were away.
When the house fi lled up again,
Colin said I should just sleep in his
bed. He had a king-sized bed with
lots of space for two people, and the
bedroom itself was spacious, with
large windows facing the quiet,
➤ ROBINSON, continued on p.15
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