This week, I met with Charles Rice Gonzalez, the esteemed writer and director at the Bronx Academy for the Arts and Dance. I phone-recorded an interview of more than 30 minutes about his experiences as a gay man. He was born in Puerto Rico but grew up in the Bronx. He came out during the '80s. He brought up a lot of points about gender roles, expectations of masculinity and the characteristics of a Latino man that is irresponsible and disrespectful to women. He also told me that in terms of literary accomplishment, gay Latino's are behind the curve. He thinks that we are just now entering the time for exposure and the gay Latino's coming out story is being documented even though there was a boom in the 1980's for the white man's coming out story. He contextualized his coming out to the growth of the HIV and AIDS epidemic of the 1980's.
Speaking to him helped me start to form an idea for the documentary. What if I did a period analysis of the gay coming out story? If I had four main interview subjects, I could do something like a view of the gay homosexual during the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00's/now.
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