Marc Zinaman is a writer and queer historian based in New York City.
Queer Happened Here
NYC's queer history is everywhere, but rarely is it visibly documented. I grew up not knowing that James Baldwin once lived down my block or that the building I walked by each day once housed the gay bathhouse where Bette Midler got her start. This project is meant to map out and document the oft forgotten LGBTQ history of NYC in an accessible, visual format.
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Recent Writing
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Sarah Hegazi
What does it mean to insist on visibility in a place where visibility is criminalized? In 2017, Sarah Hegazi — an Egyptian writer, lesbian feminist, and self-proclaimed socialist — tried to answer this with a single gesture. She lifted a rainbow flag high above a Cairo crowd and, for a brief moment, made queer visibility possible. For that singular act, however, the Egyptian state caged her, segments of society shamed her, and the subsequent trauma of it all shadowed her exile, leading to her untimely and tragic death by suicide at the age of 30.
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Luis González de Alba
A provocative dissident, writer, psychologist, and early advocate for sexual diversity, Luis González de Alba was among the most fearless and multifaceted public intellectuals in modern Mexican history. Though less internationally known than many of his contemporaries, he helped bridge the worlds of political resistance, literary innovation, and queer visibility at a time when being openly gay in his country remained both dangerous and transgressive.
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Escuelita
Escuelita, also known as La Escuelita or Esco’s for short, was a pivotal LGBTQ+ nightclub in Manhattan that primarily catered to the Latino and Black communities, prominently showcasing drag and trans performers of color for over 50 years. Seen as a major New York institution, the club had several locations since first opening in the late 1960s, each on Manhattan’s West Side. Its longest-running address was 301 W. 39th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues.
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