bklyn boihood
Natan Dvir
“Coming to New York was my try at adulthood,” Ryann Holmes says of moving to the city at age 20 after graduating from college in Northern Virginia, hesitant about their masculine-of-center identity and feeling completely unaffirmed. “I just wanted to find my tribe.”
The PG County, Md. native soon settled in Bedford-Stuyvesant, finding community and connection in the local Black queer scene. “I felt like my life was opening up, and I was a lot less isolated,” says Ryann, now 35. “My instinct was to create something where that could be replicated.”
In 2009 with artist Genesis Tramaine, Ryann co-founded bklyn boihood, a collective of queer and trans people of color who create safe, celebratory spaces.
In addition to producing the legendary Joy party, bklyn boihood hosts retreats, conducts workshops and community conversations, and provides other avenues for masculine-of-center queer and trans POC to commune.
“It started as a visibility project in response to not seeing bois or more masc queer folks other than, like, Queen Latifah in ‘Set It Off,’” Ryann says, detailing the group’s early work creating an annual calendar with stylish, regal photos of its members. “I love those characters, but they showed a limited view of who we are. We wanted to show the depth and diversity of our communities because they were fly as shit. People had all kinds of cool jobs; people were organizing and being creative. Our community is rich with talent and joy that we wanted to bring out.”
suzanne e. abramson
suzanne e. abramson
suzanne e. abramson
“The queer nightlife scene has been a source of community.”
suzanne e. abramson
suzanne e. abramson
suzanne e. abramson
suzanne e. abramson
suzanne e. abramson
suzanne e. abramson
suzanne e. abramson
“In New York, the queer nightlife scene has been a source of community,” Ryann says of bklyn boihood’s focus on providing dance floors as sacred spaces for Black and Brown queer and trans people to celebrate. “It's where we gather; it’s how we make friends; it’s how we meet lovers. It’s a place to let it all out with people who understand you and are going to make sure you're safe.”
Joy — a summer day party collab between bklyn boihood and DJ Rimarkable — maintains exactly this. With roots in house parties that the collective started in 2009, Joy officially launched in 2016 as a memorial for the people killed at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Fla. The consistently sold-out event has grown into a vital space for queer POC to feel free, loved up on and delighted in each other’s company.
While the coronavirus has relegated Joy to a digital format this summer, they’re keeping that same energy through Zoom chat boxes. “It reminds people of AOL chat rooms back in the day,” Ryann says. “People are still down to have that interaction, which is so cool and fun. No matter what, our folks are going to figure out a way to be in community.”
Courtesy of bklyn boihood
Courtesy of bklyn boihood
Courtesy of bklyn boihood
Fifteen years after moving to Brooklyn and more than 10 years since co-founding bklyn boihood, Ryann has emerged through the fraught process of getting comfortable with their queerness to radiating self-possession and self-love.
“My deepest fear is that, when I’m dead and gone, kids like me are going to have to go through the same shit because they never heard of a bklyn boihood,” says Ryann. “The community we’ve cultivated is life-changing and life-giving, and I feel good about doing work that’s going to leave the world a slightly better place than it was when I got here.”
You can support bklyn boihood by purchasing “Outside the XY: Queer, Black and Brown Masculinity,” the collective’s 2016 anthology of stories, poems, essays and letters. You can also book a workshop or training around masculinity, trans visibility, and community building as bois of color, among other subjects.
