Season 1

The power of firsts. The roles we play. Finding our stories. Learning how to love, radically. The first season of Being Seen, hosted by award-winning author and advocate Darnell Moore, focuses on the gay and queer Black male experience through conversations with leading voices including Lee Daniels, Luke James, Lena Waithe, Kiese Laymon and Dyllon Burnside.

All Episodes

Stories as freedom. Our futures. Transforming culture and ourselves through the power of narrative, community, and our connection to our pasts.

Featured in this episode: Lena Waithe (Writer, Actor & Producer) and a special interview with James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni (courtesy of WNET and originally recorded for Soul!). Artwork for this episode provided by Ronald Jackson and photography provided by Texas Isaiah and Gioncarlo Valentine.

The pain of stigma and the power we have to dismantle it. Building communities that embrace and care for people living with HIV in all the ways. Giving them the love, care and consideration they have always deserved.

Featured in this episode: Dr. Kimberly Smith (Head of R&D, ViiV Healthcare), Emil Wilbekin (Founder, Native Son), Tboy (Community Activist), Antwan Matthews (Activist & Scholar). Artwork for this episode provided by Ronald Jackson and photography provided by Kennedi Carter.

Creating inclusive communities of faith, sexuality and the divine, the church as a “horizon for imagining the terms of Black life.” How can we create spaces of faith that expand and affirm the fullness of all of our existences?

Featured in this episode: Mykal Kilgore (Musician & Activist), Bishop Yvette Flunder (Pastor & Activist), and Josef Sorett (Scholar & Author), and Jordan E. Cooper (Writer & Actor). Original artwork for this episode created by Diana Ejaita and photography provided by Nate Palmer.

Black men loving Black men is, as the deceased Black gay writer Joseph Beam opined in the 1980s, a “revolutionary act” because every moment a Black man is transgressive enough to love what he has been socialized to hate, he commits an act of insurgency. And this is what it is to love, radically.

Featured in this episode: Luke James (Musician & Actor). Original artwork for this episode created by Olivia Fields and photography provided by Faith Couch.

How do we define intimacy and in what ways do we cultivate it or allow it to show up in our lives? Are our intimacies many or are they few? And do we ask the people we let into our spaces to show us the care and consideration we both need and deserve?

Featured in this episode: Zeke Thomas (Musician & Activist), Dyllon Burnside (Actor), Kai M. Green (Scholar & Advocate), Ita O'Brien (Intimacy Coordinator). Original artwork for this episode created by Olivia Fields and photography provided by Elliott Jerome Brown Jr.

Double consciousness. Who defines how we are seen and who creates our archives? What is the power of process when creating more accurate representations? The effects of the many gazes that fall upon us and the ones we apply to ourselves.

Featured in this episode: E. Patrick Johnson (Artist & Scholar), Gioncarlo Valentine (Photographer & Curator), Texas Isaiah (Photographer & Curator). Artwork for this episode provided by Kara Walker and photography provided by Texas Isaiah.

Mississippi, Texas, the Bronx, Camden. The power of context. The places and landscapes that define us from our countries to our bodies. The stories that take place amongst these backdrops and the ways in which our specificity should never be denied or overlooked.

Featured in this episode: Kiese Laymon (Author), Diedrick Brackens (Artist), Jerome LaMaar (Fashion Designer & Stylist). Artwork for this episode provided by Diedrick Brackens and photography provided by Shan Wallace.

Spaces. Space. The places we occupy and a trip that takes us beyond to a point where we can transcend. Eddie Ndopu plans to be the first disabled person to go to space, the first Black queer disabled person. This quest is confirmation of what we should all already know, that people like Eddie are magnificent in all of their multiplicities.

Featured in this episode: Eddie Ndopu (Activist, Author & Scholar) and music by Sun Ra. Artwork for this episode provided by Olivia Fields and photography provided by Clifford Prince King.

What is the impact of the roles we are often asked to play? How do we make more spaces where these roles can be self-defined? How do we use our roles to shift culture and empower others? Featured in this episode: George M. Johnson, Kenyon Farrow, Samira Nasr.

Who decides what stories will be told and how can we rewrite the narrative of what constitutes the “American” story? How can stories become our proof of life? What will it take to bring forth more stories from places that aren’t officially sanctioned? Featured in this episode: Saeed Jones, Ben Cory Jones, Yashua Simmons and Marc Meachem.

A Strange Loop, making it in Hollywood, getting to Broadway, Billie Holiday. What is the story behind culture firsts that break down barriers, push back against invisibility and refute stereotypes? How does the creation impact the creator? Why are we still fighting to get these firsts made? Featured in this episode: Lee Daniels, Jordan E. Cooper, Michael R. Jackson and Wesley Morris.