Ruth Ellis and the Atmosphere of Black Queer Longevity

Ruth Ellis and the Atmosphere of Black Queer Longevity

Presented by the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society

This talk focuses on Living with Pride: Ruth Ellis @ 100 (1999) by Yvonne Welbon a documentary film centered on the life of African American lesbian centenarian Ruth Ellis. In the film, Ellis asserts that cultivating “atmosphere” interpersonally in daily life engenders longevity. I examine Ellis’ formulation of black queer atmosphere as a site of imagining that advances the livability of racialized sexual difference. Drawing on queer of color critique, black gender and sexuality studies, and visual cultural studies, I argue that Living with Pride puts forth a model of longevity that is personally and collectively grounded in queer of color resistant social practice that troubles public health life expectancy discourses. I closely consider Ellis’ assertion in the film that she: “. . . was never in—What you call it? . . . Closet.” Although Ellis explicitly disavows “the closet," in the film and commonly she is often referred to as “out.” I engage the ways in which both “out” and “never in” render Ellis’ living legible within LGBTQ cultural politics. .