
Pride Month | Arts & Culture | New Haven Pride Center | Ninth Square | Possible Futures
Diana Henderson and Benny Saldana. Lucy Gellman Photos.
Two spindly candles glowed atop a craggy birthday cake, a sheen of white frosting and red sprinkles catching in the flame. Beneath it, soft layers of green and yellow sponge fell to the sides, shaped like bright, unexpected puzzle pieces. At the table around Yu Fu, the New Haven Pride Center exploded into a spirited, cacophonous rendition of “Happy Birthday.”
One room over, Joy Goodman and Semaj Battle-Reed Leaned over a new little free library, celebrating a sort of literary birth in the building before the end of Pride Month.
On a recent Wednesday, close to 20 gathered at the New Haven Pride Center for its monthly community dinner, now celebrating half a year in the organization’s above ground space. Born as a way to break bread together earlier this year, the dinners have evolved into laughter- and conversation-filled evenings in which friendships are made, secrets are exchanged, and homemade cake is inevitably devoured before the end of the night.
“It’s the highlight of my month,” said co-organizer Diana Henderson, a Hamdenite who approached NHPC Support Services Coordinator Bennie Saldana about the dinners last fall, and formally launched them in January. “I’m just a mom. I spent a couple of decades just being a full-time mom, and now I’m in a volunteer era, and I’m realizing that there are a lot of people that need that mom love. That mom feeling.”
The dinners, for which Henderson spends several days cooking, grew out of a desire to feed the community and bring people together in an age that is increasingly digital. Last year, Henderson met Saldana through his drag alter-ego, Crystal Starz. By then, she had already been giving out Free Mom Hugs at Pride Month and LGBTQ+ events across the state, and wanted to deepen her volunteer footprint in the LGBTQ+ community. The two started talking about a program that might fit at the Center.
Then in November, Henderson heard an interview between drag artists Jinkx Monsoon and BenDeLaCreme about creating a sense of family through their holiday drag performances. Something clicked.
“I said, ‘That’s it!’” she remembered. “That’s what I want to do.’ I presented it as creating a sense of family, doing a traditional Sunday family dinner.”
By the end of the year, the two were deep into planning. They agreed that the dinners—which are reliably on Wednesdays, rather than Sundays—had to be monthly. They agreed that it was a chance to feed people in the LGBTQ+ community, who are more likely to experience food insecurity and homelessness than their straight peers (each dinner features to-go containers, so people can take home leftovers, no questions asked). And they agreed that a birthday cake would always make an appearance.
NHPC Executive Director Juancarlos Soto.
While Henderson does a fair amount of volunteering in food justice, “this has a different feel,” she said, showing off an apron that read The Secret Ingredient Is Always Love. “There’s an intentionality to it. It’s not just nutritious—which it is, I make sure there’s always vegetables—but there’s something to be said about that feeling of homemade, made with love [food]. Even if I’m not your mom, I’m somebody’s mom. And some of these people don’t have their moms in their lives anymore.”
The dinners began officially at the end of January, with a few dozen people and Henderson’s homemade chocolate cake. Since then, they have continued to grow, bringing in a mix of new and familiar faces every month.
Wednesday, those included Possible Futures Founder Lauren Anderson and team member Alex Contreras-Montesano, who stayed to eat after installing a little free library in the space’s bright foyer. Within minutes, both had struck up multiple conversations, bouncing between fellow attendees and Pride Center Executive Director Juancarlos Soto.
Top: Possible Futures' Lauren Anderson. Bottom: Eric Carrera and Wayne Hutton.
“It’s super wonderful to be here,” Anderson said as attendees filled their plates with helpings of chicken, vegetables, meatballs and baked pasta. “I feel like the New Haven Pride Center is just a steward of so much goodness, and it’s really an honor to be part of that.”
It’s a sort of full-circle moment, she added: her earliest bookspace dreams took root at a Pride celebration on Center Street. Now, they have literally bloomed across the city. The library, part of a Read In Color grant that Possible Futures secured earlier this year, is one of 10 that will ultimately pop up across New Haven.
As of this month, the bookspace has installed five, including the LaundroMax on Whalley Ave., Babz “Book Joy” Rawls-Ivy’s yard at 75 Ivy St. in Newhallville, the Waverly Townhouses at George and Day Streets, and Anderson’s storefront at 318 Edgewood Ave. Five more are slated to arrive in Edgewood Park, Jocelyn Square, the Armory Community Garden, Fair Haven and the Hill later this summer.
As the hum of conversation filled the room, Battle-Reed made his way over to Joy Goodman, who has been coming to the dinners since January. Within seconds, the two were trading stories about their respective childhoods, Goodman’s in North Carolina and Battle-Reed’s in New Haven.
Joy Goodman and Semaj Battle-Reed. Goodman, who was born in January, celebrated her birthday with homemade chocolate cake at the inaugural dinner.
A rising sophomore at New Haven Academy, Battle-Reed could feel his nerves subsiding. Initially, he said, he was anxious about coming to the dinner, because it was a new experience. While he came out last year, he said, high school posed a whole new set of challenges. Initially, “I was afraid of everything,” he said.
Then he pushed himself to venture out of his comfort zone. As he nibbled on pasta, he listened to Goodman’s story of coming out as a kid to parents who were farmers in the South. “They were very accepting,” Goodman said, and Battle-Reed listened patiently. He later said that the dinner may have been his first at the Pride Center, but likely would not be his last.
“I gotta show everyone who I really am,” he said. “Me putting myself out there is one of the best things that I do.”
At the front of the room, Henderson cleared her throat.
“Does anybody have a birthday in June?” she asked. A beat. Yu Fu, a first-year graduate student in physics at Yale University, slowly raised their hand. After hearing about the Pride Center through friends, they were checking it out for the first time—and celebrating a June birthday.
Yu Fu, who is new to New Haven. Prior to moving to the Elm City, they were in Illinois, after growing up in Shanghai.
Henderson looked around, scanning the space to see if she’d missed anyone else. “Do we want to make it a celebration cake?”
“Actually, it’s the birthday of the [library] box!” Anderson suggested with a smile. Henderson added a second tall, toothpick-thin candle to the top of the cake. She paused, frowning at the lopsided confection only slightly. Before it had collapsed in her trunk, it had been a checkerboard rainbow cake, complete with sweet frosting and ruby red sprinkles.
“It did a death drop,” Saldana said with a laugh, as if he was reading her thoughts. “Pride Month can be chaotic, so the cake was fitting.”
Praise for the messy cake soon mingled with the strains of “Happy Birthday,” sung in at least three different key signatures over less than a minute. A second cake, neatly iced and still ensconced in hard plastic wrapping, remained in its container from Stop & Shop. In a shirt that read Free Mom Hugs, Henderson beamed.
One room over, attendees and NHPC staff members orbited the library, delighting at titles from adrienne maree brown’s Pleasure Activism and Mike Curato’s Flamer to Gabby Rivera’s Juliet Takes A Breath. On a small door that swung open, notes in Anderson’s neat handwriting read New Haven Pride Center Bookjoy Box and Read The Rainbow!
Unlike its fellow Little Free Library boxes across the city, this one is also portable—meaning it can (and will) travel with staff to Pride events across the city, the region, and the state.
“We’re just really excited to be one of the host locations,” said NHPC Executive Director Juancarlos Soto.
Back at a long table covered in bright, rainbow bands of color, Goodman said she was delighted to see the book box. As a resident of the Ninth Square Apartments down the street, she’s found a sort of second home at the Pride Center already. For her, access to a new little free library is just the icing on the rainbow-checkerboard cake.
“I just love this place,” she said.
The next NHPC Community Dinner will take place on Wednesday, July 24 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the New Haven Pride Center, 50 Orange St. in New Haven. More information is available on the Pride Center’s website.