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2 weeks ago | 
roughdraftatlanta.com | Maria Dolan
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2 weeks ago | 
roughdraftatlanta.com | Maria Dolan
History. Stories about the way things used to be, the stuff that got us here, the elements that allow us to figure out how and where we proceed. Seems simple enough, but it's not. "The winner names the age!" This has been true, and the stories upholding the winners usually leave out women, non-passing queers, the "wretched refuse," people too poor/too old/too pacifistic or who have the wrong skin color or religion.
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Mar 11, 2025 | 
roughdraftatlanta.com | Maria Dolan
Say "Women's History Month" in Atlanta and echoes reverberate far outward. Select only one jewel to examine? I choose ZAMI-NOBLA (National Organization of Black Lesbians on Aging), the nation's only organization focused on Black lesbians over the age of 50.
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Dec 12, 2024 | 
thegavoice.com | Maria Dolan
“I always had the attitude that if I want to do something, you are not going to stop me.” Aida RentasChris and I postponed our nuptial celebrations from February until May of 2024 so my good friend Aida Rentas could make it from her home in Puerto Rico. Brent Duncan filmed her at my house speaking on her life as part of his Queer Stories series with me and the Georgia LGBTQ History Project. If you don’t know Aida’s name, then you were not plugged into ATL life in the 1980s, the aughts, and beyond.
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Nov 8, 2024 | 
thegavoice.com | Maria Dolan
Charlene and her namesake bar had a great run. I raise a glass to both. Decades ago, my brother lived in New Orleans and I visited a few times a year. Thank Goddess for Charlene’s on Elysian Fields Avenue. During Carnival, it was basically open 24/7. I visited one early morning and grinned at the large and colorful chalkboard set outside the front door.
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Oct 10, 2024 | 
thegavoice.com | Maria Dolan
True story: Jonathan Ned Katz brought me out as a queer historian. As a baby dyke, I read his “Gay American History — Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A.” (1976), sat back, and said “hole-lee sheet!” How was this info never accessible before now? I’d stumbled upon a treasure chest, running my hands through the riches. Fortunately, Katz has never ceased to research and write, which is how we get Eve Adams. I’d been seeing little articles about Eve for a while.
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Sep 5, 2024 | 
thegavoice.com | Maria Dolan
Pivotal moments in civil rights struggles sometimes go unremarked until long after the fact — think Stonewall. Sometimes, these moments upend stone walls, with the cracking apart thunderingly audible, visceral, and instantaneous. The much-vaunted “Battle of the Sexes,” the Billie Jean King vs. Bobby Riggs tennis match on September 20, 1973, was one such moment.
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Jun 21, 2024 | 
thegavoice.com | Maria Dolan
Wonder Woman made me do it. I was three years old and obsessed with her comic books. I made my poor parents read them to me over and over, until covers and nerves were shredded. My mother noticed I was picking out words and trying to read sentences. “This kid goes to school now!” Mami yelled. So at the age of four, I was packed off to Sister Maria Immaculata’s kindergarten and learned to read. Not just comics, of course. But I never really left them.
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May 24, 2024 | 
thegavoice.com | Maria Dolan
Editor’s note: The author intentionally uses “Filipine” in reference to Pura Luka Vega instead of the more commonly used “Filipino” because it is more neutral than the Spanish masculine “-o.”Are there places on this globe of ours where drag performance has been rendered effectively illegal? Where television offers drag franchise competitions, but drag performance outside screens is criminalized?
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Apr 19, 2024 | 
thegavoice.com | Maria Dolan
This charging Aries with flaming red hair was born in Poland and grew until she reached 4’9” tall. Her tailor father and seamstress mother, unlike many Orthodox Jews, prioritized education for daughters. Precocious, Rose eventually learned to speak and write in four languages (English, Yiddish, Hebrew, and Russian). The family immigrated to the gritty tenements of the Lower East Side when she was five, joining the eventual two million Jews, Italians, etc.
