Narrator

Narrator

Bambi Gauthier was born April 16, 1968 in Springfield, Massachusetts and grew up in the Springfield and Chicopee communities. He dropped out of high school just one month into freshman year due to homophobic bullying. However, getting an education was important to him, so he earned his GED from the OWL Center in Springfield and then attended Holyoke Community College for one and a half years. As a young man, he became more politically active in the gay community. He decided to move to Northampton because of the vibrant queer community and attended the Northampton Pride march for the first time in 1986. Additionally, he helped to coordinate the March on Washington in 1987. During the late 1980s and 1990s, he became active with the Valley Gay Alliance, the Western Massachusetts Chapter of ACT UP, Queer Nation, and the Radical Faeries. He attended and helped organize most of the Northampton Pride marches from 1986 through the mid-90s. He was also a part of the Committee for an All-Inclusive March in the early 1990s when there was tension over the name and inclusivity of the march. Realizing that he wanted to become more involved with the gay youth population in Western Massachusetts, he started the Pioneer Valley Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Youth Project in 1991. Since the 1990s he has become more involved with the Radical Faeries and helped to establish Faerie Camp Destiny in Vermont in 1994. In the mid-1990s, he enrolled in the University Without Walls program at UMass with a focus on Medical Anthropology. He considers himself primarily a devotee of Shiva and often goes to the Hindu temple in New York City. Over the years, he has collected ephemeral material relating to the queer community in Northampton and Pride since the mid-80s, which can be found at his home in Northampton.

Abstract

Abstract

In this interview, Bambi Gauthier reflects on his childhood growing up in Springfield and Chicopee, Massachusetts. He discusses being a gay man and living in Northampton since the mid-1980s, which has its progressive roots from the lesbian feminist community. He talks about participating in and helping to organizing Northampton Pride from 1986 to the mid-90s. He also discusses his political activism surrounding a variety of other issues pertinent to the gay community including HIV/AIDS and queer youth. In addition to this, Bambi shares insight on how Northampton has transitioned as a city from the 1980s to the present, as well as the evolution of Northampton Pride.

embedded oral history