The Westchester LGBTQ+ History Project

James Young was only nominally an adult himself when he first began working with LGBTQ+ youth in Westchester over 30 years ago. When he was 18 years old in 1992, he began Westchester’s first peer-to-peer LGBTQ youth group at the suggestion of his mentors at The LOFT.

After discovering The LOFT a year or so prior, James had begun to develop a sense of identity and community through discussions with other gay men often decades his senior. He understood this importance of this immediately.

“I went there religiously on Tuesday nights. I called it, I would say that was ‘charging my gay battery.’
…Before that, I knew no one. I knew no one. And I was just so hungry. I think at 17, I was hungry for a community. I was also hungry for a family, probably, right, living on my own. I didn’t realize how starving I was for attention and affirmation. I think that’s all it was, starving for understanding my own identities.”

Today, Young is a professor at Monroe College as well as a musical artist (I.Den.t.T) and the founder of Queery, a nonprofit focused on presenting queer theory to the general public in accessible, appealing, and fun ways. He is also a husband and father with ample friends and chosen family here in Westchester, where he remains active in community building.

In this interview with the Westchester LGBTQ+ History Project, James discusses growing up Asian and gay in Westchester, his early LGBTQ+ community experiences, and the journey his passions have taken him on in the years since.

To view the full transcript of this interview, click here.

“I think of myself as someone who’s in a pool of 3 feet, a 3 feet deep pool. Except I am myself am 3 feet tall, so my nose is under, right in the water. And so I’m splashing around as much as I can just to survive. And I’m not trying to make ripples. I’m not trying to throw water in your face. But this is the only way I can be. There’s no other way. And then I think about how there are others like me who are also doing that. So therefore these waves are connecting, these ripples, small or big or in different ways.”