➤ ROBINSON, from p.13
tree-lined street. Several evenings,
as we were lying or sitting up in
bed, we talked about stuff, both
heavy and light, from personal
confessions to folklore to advocacy
work, the subject never too far from
Colin’s consciousness.
One time, we got into a conversation
about scary West Indian
legends, comparing the differences
between how (or if at all) they were
recounted in my Guyanese versus
his Trinidadian folkloric tradition.
We talked about “soucouyant”
(Trinidad)/”Ole-Higue” (Guyana)
— the old woman who sheds her
skin after nightfall and travels as
a ball of light to suck the blood
of sleeping humans. And about
“La Diablesse” (pronounced Zsabless),
a demon in Trinidadian lore
who appears to men as a beautiful,
alluring woman on deserted roadsides
at night, wearing a long white
dress under which is one human
foot and one hoof.
Colin was such a passionate storyteller
that even big-big me, I felt a
chill up my spine. And then, since
he always fell asleep fi rst, there he
was, snoozing peacefully beside
me, as I lay wide awake, clutching
the blanket to my neck, frightened
to hear Diablesse’s hoof coming up
the stairs.
Bookcases lined Colin’s bedroom
walls. During one of our
nighttime chats, he explained that
he arranged his books by category,
not author’s surname. The categories
don’t readily jump to mind
now — this was almost 30 years
ago — but I recall one was “Black
Feminism,” and, educational to me
at the time, “Radical White Woman
Allies” another. The latter was
a very small section — only about
four or fi ve books — and in it was
where I read the name “Mab Segrest”
for the fi rst time. “Memoir of
a Race Traitor: Fighting Racism
in the American South” had been
published earlier that year. Like
his mentorship, Colin’s pedagogy
was omnipresent — it happened
all around you, if you were ready
to receive it.
The list of activists, cultural
producers, scholars and organizers
who passed through that
house in Fort Greene to visit and
consult with Colin is now a Who’s
Who of LGBTQ community-building,
critical inquiry and creative
expression — not just New Yorkbased,
but national and international.
It was there that the fi rst
planning meetings and social
gatherings for what became the
multiracial Caribbean-identifi ed
Lesbian and Gay Alliance (CiLGA)
were held.
CiLGA was the fi rst Caribbean
queer organization to march in
a New York Pride parade, Stonewall
25, in 1994. Colin was front
and center, proudly holding a big
Trinidad & Tobago fl ag up high.
Later that year, CiLGA members
attended the Brooklyn West Indian
American Labor Day Carnival,
possibly another fi rst for
a queer collective, distributing
leafl ets about the organization
and HIV/AIDS awareness and
prevention.
When I became a reporter for
this newspaper in 2003, I often
found myself reporting on Colin
Robinson’s activism and initiatives.
By that time, Colin was serving
as executive director of the New
York State Black Gay Network,
protesting racism in the LGBTQ
community, homo/transphobia in
Caribbean-diasporic and BIPOC
communities, and both within the
general public. His work was not
only coalitional, it was patient.
“I mean, if you’re an activist like
me, categorizing someone as a homophobe
is reductionistic,” he once
wrote to me. “Everyone has the potential
to do homophobic things or
to grow into new awareness. ‘Zero
tolerance’ is such shit.”
One of the last pieces of advice
Colin gave me was in December,
2020. I showed him the photo below
of him from the early ‘90s in
the loving embrace of Marlon Riggs
and other community members. I
thanked him for his contributions
— to me and to the community.
“Ah,” Colin responded. “Look forward.”
The fee for this article is donated
to the “Colin Robinson Hard Head
Award.”
Nicholas Boston, Ph.D., is an associate
professor of media studies
at Lehman College of the City University
of New York (CUNY), and author
of “The Amorous Migrant: Race,
Relationships and Resettlement”
(Temple University Press).
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