Frann Michel hosts this rebroadcast of Queer Communists: Hansberry and Hay, from Against the Grain.
C.S. Soong interviews Bettina Aptheker about her book Communists in Closets: Queering the History 1930s-1990s.
To be queer and communist at a time when the Communist Party in the U.S. banned LGBT people was tricky and often perilous. In her 2023 book, Bettina Aptheker profiles Lorraine Hansberry (who famously penned the play “A Raisin in the Sun”), Harry Hay (best known for founding the Mattachine Society), and other figures with radical sensibilities and closeted sexualities.
Against the Grain is a program of ideas, in-depth analysis, and commentary on a variety of matters — political, economic, social, and cultural — important to progressive and radical thinking and activism. Against the Grain is co-produced and co-hosted by Sasha Lilley and C. S. Soong and broadcast on KPFA Pacifica Radio in Berkeley, California.