Zen and the Art of LGBTQA+ Culture

Barry Hoy and and Teraj Allen discuss traveling as a gay interracial couple with reflections on challenges faced by the community and recommendations on what the tourism industry can do to be more welcoming. - hosted by Miami Beach Travel Legend, George Neary. 

Join us for an inspirational conversation with LGBTQ advocates Emil Wibelkin and Teraj Allen. For galvanizing black gay professionals to become advocates for their careers and one another, Emil Wilbekin is one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People of 2019. He is a media executive (Essence Editor at Large) who has recently created a powerful network for Black gay professionals: To raise awareness around the fact that black gay and bisexual men account for a quarter of new HIV diagnoses in the U.S., and to inspire, empower, celebrate and harness their collective - and too long compromised - power in all sectors of life. Among a younger generation of emerging Black gay men that Native Son has inspired is Teraj Allen, born and raised under difficult circumstances in Liberty City (Miami), a graduate of the Miami Dade County Pulbic Schools and Cornell Univeristy - and now an emerging NY-based performer, model, writer, and LGBTQ media advocate.

The word tortillera means lesbian in Español. The moniker is familiar to most Spanish speaking cultures, but especially particular to the Cuban experience. In most Cuban-American households to be called a tortillera (whether one is one or not) is the gravest of insults, the basest of adjectives, a cat call that whips through the air like a lash whose only intention is to wound, to scar. Many a first-generation, Cubanita (the ones who are into other girls, anyway) has suffered, denied, wailed over the loaded term, but in Caridad Moro-Gronlier’s debut collection, Tortillera, she not only applies the term to herself, she owns it, drapes it over her shoulders and heralds her truth through candid, unflinching poems that address the queer experience of coming out while Cuban.

FGO operatic tenor Michael Miller has curated a musical event that he describes as 'A man’s accepting of himself through musical theater and song'. This one hour event Includes works by Meredith Wilson, Leonard Bernstein, Evan Mack, George Gershwin, Stephen Sondheim, and more. Hailed by the New York Times as "spellbinding", tenor Michael Miller is a young and exciting talent in classical music who has sung regionally with young artist programs such as The Glimmerglass Festival and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. Michael joined Florida Grand Opera as a Studio Artist in their 2017-18 season.