Maya Henry Photographed by Niyah Shaheed (2025)
episode 2:
Maya henry
(they/them)
“There’s no right way to be Queer or Trans or nonbinary or anything. You’re a unique individual and you can present however you would like to on any given day. You don’t owe people a certain way of presenting and you don’t owe people an explanation.
You can just be.”
Maya Henry Photographed by Niyah Shaheed (2025)
“I felt such harmony, joy, and excitement over being Black and Queer when I was in college.”
“I started an organization called Aja with other people on campus and it was for Black women, Black Queer students, Black nonbinary students, all Black everything - but with a Queer, femme focus… I feel like that was the best thing I ever got to be a part of because it was exactly what a lot of people needed.”
(2022) Courtesy of @aja_swarthmore
“Charles Gregory and Jack Brown dancing the Cake-Walk in Paris”[1903]. Courtesy of Welcome Collection
“The principal made it very clear that both queerness and transness was not acceptable in the middle school. She gave me very strong negative pushback when I tried to include a gender expansive ancestor who kind of created ballroom culture.
He was a formerly enslaved man and he used to be at the YMCA, like a lot of Black men were, and that’s kind of where ballroom started out in DC.
There are kids who are questioning and they might see themselves in this ancestor…I know they’re seeing vogue and they’re seeing house. They’re seeing RuPaul’s Drag Race. I just want them to know, that’s Black culture.”
Kurts Night Club in Philadelphia (1990). Courtesy of John J. Wilcox Jr. LGBT Archives
“I feel like all the driving cuts a lot of the natural community that could be built easier here. You can really walk through all of Philly if you wanted to in a way you can’t in Atlanta. I feel like I see a lot in Philly walking down the street. I’m seeing people who look visibly queer. We’re seeing each other on a daily basis.”