SAGE Center Bronx Elders
This website features stories and photographs collected from elders at SAGE Center Bronx, a center for LGTBQ+ seniors, by students at Fordham University.
Taken together, the stories produce an archive of nine New Yorkers lives. Traditionally archives have been understood as repositories of material records, intertwined with histories of power and control. Here, students and elders worked together to enact the archive as an act of testimony and witnessing that celebrates individual lives, the cultivation of personal archives through photography and storytelling, and the transfer of these stories through conversation.
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Our Sage Elders
Donna Sue Johnson: Self described “Big Black Beautiful Bohemian Bougie Buddhist Butch”
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Jackie and Cookie: A Queer Power Couple
Laverne Tapley: “All that was like a teacher to me”
Vivian Jones: describes herself as a colorful person.
Any Villanueva: A life marked by courage, resilience and the pursuit of authenticity
Renata Ramos: ”I would rather die than to not live my truth.”
Shirley Parker: “I’m proud of who I am."
Eleanor and Audrey: sisters of the Bronx