#5 BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ Voices

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book Between the World and Me and Jennie Livingston’s documentary Paris Is Burning focus on different communities and art forms, but both works reveal how marginalized groups use storytelling, self-expression, and collective identity to push back against social forces that try to limit their lives. Together, they show how BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ voices share experiences of vulnerability, creativity, and resistance in ways that support each other.

One clear similarity is the way both works focus on “the body”, how it’s judged, threatened, and reclaimed. Coates writes to his son about living in a Black body in the United States, emphasizing the constant negotiation of fear and safety. This fear is not abstract; it is lived daily through interactions with police, schools, and public space. In Paris Is Burning, Black and Latin queer and trans performers face their own forms of policing, both literally and socially. The ballroom scenes become a place where they can reshape how their bodies are seen. Through fashion and performance, they create a world where they control how they’re viewed rather than being controlled by it. Though the threats differ between racial violence in Coates’s book and transphobia and homophobia in the film, the underlying struggle to gain ownership over their body connects them.

Coates’s work also teaches us that listening to marginalized voices means recognizing the depth and specificity of their experiences rather than generalizing them and placing them into universal narratives. His refusal to generalize Black pain mirrors the way Paris Is Burning emphasizes the specific conditions shaping the lives of queer and trans performers: poverty, racism, homelessness, and chosen families. These are not metaphors; they are lived realities. Coates encourages readers to meet such stories with humility and seriousness, acknowledging the knowledge they carry.

Overall, the book and the film both show how BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ artists use art to confront oppressive systems while imagining better lifestyles and ways of living. Coates educates us on how structural violence can shape our personal lives, and Paris Is Burning offers examples of how people respond with resilience and a sense of community. Both works remind us that marginalized voices do not merely endure injustice; they create powerful forms of expression that expand our understanding of what it means to live authentically in the face of oppression.