Everything we know about ourselves and the world is built upon our ability to remember and generations upon generations of memories. If it weren’t for our collective memory, human existence could hardly be described. But beyond just our humanity, we determine our ontology through imbuing matter all around us with memory. We know that glass bulb shapes are capable of producing light; and cylindrical vessels are containers waiting to be filled. We instinctively look into reflective surfaces to gauge our appearances; and we read essays like these and walk away with our own personal understandings, because we can store and process what we’ve read through memory. We know, however, that memory is imperfect: our memories are actively responding to stimuli and can be distorted by media consumption.

When I moved to Kansas City in 2021 after graduating college, and began searching for community, I found that the digital and physical realms––that is, Google, forums, institutional libraries and archives, people––had little-to-no knowledge, documents or materials pertaining to Black queer Kansas Citians. Through intensive research and community building, I found that Kansas City actually had a rich Black queer ballroom scene spanning decades that was undocumented. I was able to begin a community archive that populated our physical and digital realms with the stories of Black queer Kansas City elders––addressing several pain points in the process. Exciting as it was, I began to have a personal reckoning with how deeply our current reality is shaped by ways the ruling elite decide what we memorialize, “de-memorialize” or never record.

Memory Work has taken on various meanings over the past 70 years but has shown up to me in my journey as an umbrella term for archivists, librarians, griots, journalists, and, simply, people working in the realm of recording information. As world powers steep further into indoctrination––from local school districts banning books and history courses, to the deliberate bombings of historical institutions and libraries across an entire country––the act of remembering can no longer be done uncritically. 

This syllabus shares my approach to radical memory work in the Midwest––specifically through my Black queer archival project, {B/qKC}*––in hopes of inspiring folks to archive radically and beautifully in their own contexts for the sake of liberation.

0.1 the diagram

I created the diagram in mid-2023 to capture and understand the way I’d been using the archive to confront a multitude of pain points, a process I felt was necessary in birthing a non-extractive, communal-based Black queer archive in Kansas City. Black queer elders voiced their unease with the extractive, donation-based nature of Kansas City’s identity-based archiving institutions and the need to gatekeep their stories for safety in the early 00’s. I was dissatisfied with the barriers-to-entry to even try to access our institutional archives and the lack of relationships those institutions had with the Kansas City community. This basic version of the diagram was plain enough to convey the ways I could challenge institutional archiving at a macro level: in moving from a passive act of collection and storage to active memory work. 

Some things to note about the diagram:

• “the archive” is the grounding bubble of this diagram; all branches operate from this as the basis of the work, and it is the head of the so-called axis of this diagram.
• the “storytell” bubble is elevated above “repair” and “power-build,” and directly below “the archive,” in illustrating the axial connection between the storage and sharing of information.
• all lines in this diagram are signified with arrows in both directions to signify the fluidity of this work. There are no steps, stages or endpoints in this work; and all parts of this work are in constant communication and reflection with each other. You will find that the questions, works and resources I mention can easily be moved around to other parts of the diagram.

From here, I was able to scaffold the diagram into the specific ways I wanted to build a Black queer archive in Kansas City: 

The squares denote specific actions I take that are (1) unique to my experience, (2) unique to Kansas City and (3) unique to my archival focus, Black queer Kansas City histories in the 20th century. The floating, non-bounded words share considerations, fields of thought, or otherwise that inform these actions.

Zooming back in, I will hone in on the different parts of this diagram––describing what each bubble refers to, and resources and questions to consider in this work.

1.0 the archive

the archive refers to the central, grounding axis of this work: what materials are being collected, and how best to build collections within the materials’ context. Multiple syllabi can be made on the kinds of archives, how to build an archive, ethical considerations of an archive, copyrights, etc. For the purposes of this particular syllabus and diagram, this section refers to the contents of the archive itself as a rallying point for conducting radical memory work. Whether a journalist building a repository to initiate an investigation, or a health worker thinking about ways to construct a patient’s medical record when they don’t know their family history––what matters here is having a level understanding of the themes and community you are, or will be, working with.

Of equal importance is critical questioning and landscape analysis of what histories are under threat of being erased or forgotten or have never been recorded. In the case of my work in Kansas City, I was even more interested in Black queer histories because of the waves of racist, anti-trans and anti-gay legislation targeting schools across Missouri.

→ questions to consider:

• what is your context?
  • what are your identities? how do you show up in this work?
  • where are you located?
  • what types of materials are you interested in?
  • what communities are you interested in researching?
    • what are their pain points? are you at all connected to this community in a deep way––sans solely through any work-based relationship?

work I’m enjoying in this realm:

• Adama Delphine’s Ancestral Whispers
• Sean Nash’s “transSUBs” (a fellow Kansas Citian, hey Sean!)

resources:

• CENTRO’s “DIY Archiving Guide”
• Texas After Violence Project
• Architecting Sustainable Futures

1.1 storytell

storytell refers to the ways the archive is made accessible to the public. Mediums for storytelling are endless: books, plays, news articles, oral traditions, paintings, exhibitions, dances. It’s here where the archive and deep engagement with your context and communities frames the ways we can radically illustrate the archive. This act of deciding, or curating, what audiences should garner from the archive is memory work within-and-of itself and should not be taken lightly.

Access is key here, so in addition to publishing written research on Kansas City’s Black queer history, I began exhibiting the archival materials I collected in public spaces like coffee shops and bookstores. 

→ questions to consider:

• what are your personal capabilities or affinities for storytelling?
• who is your audience? what are their access needs?
• what about your archive do you want to add into communal memory?
• how can multiple methods of storytelling work in tandem with one another?
• what places can people easily encounter and engage with your work?
  • are they digital? physical? a combination?

work I’m enjoying in this realm:

• Lorena Molina’s Reconciliation Garden
• Georgia Dusk’s “Reproductive Justice Collection” of oral histories
• Late Night Copies Press’ “Queer Materials”

resources:

• CAC’s Oral History Tip Sheet
• Invisible Histories

1.2 repair

repair refers to how the archive can recondition our communal memory and rehabilitate the harm experienced by those we seek to remember. Perhaps the easiest way to understand this is examining how World Powers utilize memory to strip people of their sovereignty and shift generations of understanding the past. Or perhaps by examining representation––sans neoliberalist conceptions or “the model minority myth”––we discover more of the effects of communities being misrepresented or barred from the act of publishing, forcing folks to find ways to publish and advocate for themselves (e.g. The Combahee River Collective). Most specifically, the archive can help us trace through lines of how communities can be harmed in seeking reparative justice. 

In my context, I used the archive to build a co-ownership model with three Black queer elders––Gary Carrington, Tisha Taylor and Starla Carr; dubbed “shareholders”––and raise $2000 in institutional funds for reparative stipends for these inaugural shareholders to {B/qKC}. By ensuring these elders had a hand in their story being told and paying Black queer elders for their contribution to the archive, I was directly challenging the practice of giving up Black queer keepsakes and intellectual property to a holding institution as a “donation-based” act. I also used the archive to widely publicize how Kansas City’s Black queer community was directly affected by an $800 million dollar third-wave gentrification project by Cordish Companies––destroying Black gay bar, Soakie’s, and shifting the way Black queer community has been able to convene in Kansas City to this day. Continued work in this area could be advocating for municipal funding to be funneled back into the very communities our City government has stripped it from.

→ questions to consider:

• what harms has the community you’re archiving faced?
  • Specifically in relation to the historical pain points you’re honing in on?
• what can reparative justice look like in your context?
  • how can we use the past and memory to directly inform this repair?
• what work can be done to shift your audience’s understanding of the past to a more nuanced and well-rounded one?

work I’m enjoying in this realm:

• Paul Soulellis’ “Survival by Sharing”
• Media 2070’s “Reflection and Discussion Guide”
• Aaron Swartz’ Guerilla Open Access Manifesto

resources:

• Librarians and Archivists With Palestine
• Uncovering Hidden Narratives in Georgia Tech’s History

1.3 power build

power build refers to the archive’s capability to not only foster a sense of community, but organize individuals toward a brighter future through a better, more nuanced understanding of the past. If popular education tells us that we can not seek to educate folks by depositing information into human beings like obedient vessels, the archive will similarly be unsuccessful if there is not committed involvement and agency from all parties. Beyond this initial declaration, the archive can serve as a metaphorical third space and place of power. Through understanding the past and building cultural interventions radically, we build a fuller ontological understanding of the world that further divorces itself from a bourgeois lens.

Utilizing party and celebration as an initial entry point with audiences in Kansas City has proven to be successful in my work––fostering the spaces to build intergenerational community where there is not the capital or space to do so otherwise.

→ questions to consider:

• what spaces can you create and foster for community as a result of the archive?
• how can collective power be built through understanding your specific archive?
• to what extent can the archive be used to foster mutual aid, love, support, etc.?
• what through lines from repair can be examined and subverted to power build in your context?

work I’m enjoying in this realm:

• Colectivo Multipolar / Sandra Oviedo
• Interference Archive’s “This is Not a Local Struggle”

resources:

• Interference Archive
• “40 Acres and A Lie” Project

2.0 conclusion

Over the past year, I used the diagram to launch Kansas City’s inaugural Black queer archive, {B/qKC}. At its core, {B/qKC} preserves Black queer Kansas City histories, notably by circumventing extractive institutional models, then utilizing these histories to fight indoctrination. {B/qKC} launched with three inaugural collections named after their eponymous shareholders: Gary Carrington, Starla Carr, and Tisha Taylor. They are not donors, as their relationship with {B/qKC} is rooted in co-ownership. This means that each shareholder temporarily loaned their materials to be digitized, as a free service in exchange for a partial license to storytell with them. This also meant that these elders were able to both keep their materials and full copyrighting over them, and too, were paid a stipend, fundraised through local organizations and various grantors, towards rectifying harm they’ve faced.

Each of their collections tell the story of Soakie’s: an Italian sandwich shop turned Black gay nightclub from 1993-2004 that was ultimately shutdown by third-wave gentrification. This research has been shared by way of an online research paper, public art installation, video histories, gallery exhibition, printed zines and community partnership interventions. 

In 2025, I will continue expanding this work by developing a more accessible digital database for folks to explore the archive, and developing 4-part workshop series where, for the first-time, audiences will be able to intimately engage and ideate Black queer futurity through examining Black queer Kansas City past.

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Overall, this diagram and guide have helped me develop new ways to contend with the state of the world and battle fascism through the powers of archival science. The title of this work is a nod to Charli XCX’s “Everything is romantic,” and Charli’s use of varying symbols and motifs as archives––evoking a curated, amorous feeling from its listeners.

In understanding that much of Americana is constructed through the memories of the ruling class––and that memories can be pulled from virtually anywhere––there is, also, the opportunity to subvert power by the radical act of archiving. Archiving on its own––that is, the act of collecting and owning––cannot in and of itself be a radical act. But through deep love for our world and its people, we can utilize the archive to create more nuanced, polylithic dimensions of our reality and plunge into a more dynamic, anti-capitalist future. 

*To note, {B/qKC} is in the legal process of separating itself from The Kansas City Defender to become its own independent, artist-run archive by end of year.

bad tats; jesus christ, lemons; everything is archival references Sean Nash‘s syllabus, transSUBs: Recommendations for deep travel.