LGBT Oral History 108: Amy Skillman

Amy Skillman talks about her childhood growing up in Michigan in a large Episcopalian family and the influence of spirituality in her life, both as a teenager and an adult. Amy went to an all-girls school where rumors circulated about certain boarders and a book they were reading. Amy believes that this was likely her earliest introduction to LGBT alternatives to heterosexuality. Even before coming out and joining the LGBT community, Amy had frequented gay bars as a young woman and lost many friends to AIDS. However, it would be many years before she herself would come to terms with her own identity. Amy discusses falling in love with a woman for the first time at the age of forty. She describes coming out to her parents and siblings as both a challenge and a relief. Amy also discusses her activism and her interest in folklore, which is rooted in witnessing inequities as a child in the African American community in Detroit. While a graduate student at UCLA, Amy raised money for AIDS charities and for the people of Nicaragua. Amy also talks about the play she helped produce about and starring LGBT youth. Currently, she is the Director of Goucher College’s Masters Program in Cultural Sustainability.