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I attended my first queer potluck the summer after I graduated from college. I was living in a new city, fresh from breaking up with my first girlfriend, and knocking on a stranger’s front door.
In my hands, I clutched my token of entry: a twisted loaf of chocolate babka. My grip softened as I was welcomed inside like an old friend. I wove my way through clumps of individuals who, like me, bore their queerness in the way they dressed, the way they cared for one another, and tonight, the way they ate. I released my offering onto the overflowing table, right between the green chile mac and cheese and a mason jar of pickled nopales.
I was raised by dinner party people, and my parents fully equipped me with the skills of a solo dinner host. My queer ancestors, however, left me their collaborative culinary art of potlucking. Though this was my first queer potluck, this very meal unfurled from a deep-rooted history of potlucks in spaces that don’t just contain queerness, but hold onto it.
Potlucks are meals that center community and celebrate variety. They can be spaces for showing up as our authentic selves—especially because of the opportunity to choose and prepare a food to bring. My babka was delicious, but it also allowed me to enter the potluck already feeling a bit like myself. Given that these values overlap so tenderly with those held by queer experiences, it seems hardly coincidental that potlucking has been a commonplace practice for past and present generations of queer communities.
Much potluck talk in the queer discourse refers to potlucks held by and for lesbians—also known as Lesbian Potlucks. Indeed, The Daughters of Bilitis, the first known lesbian civil rights and political organization in the United States, is credited with that first foray into queering the potluck. While queer people often felt rejected from the church communities or family reunions where potlucks or "covered-dish suppers" really got their start in America, this meal of the commons was swiftly adopted as a covert and nourishing get-together by lesbian communities across the country.
Nina Katz
And yet, potlucks have existed at many intersections of queerness. Records of potlucks spanning the LGBTQIA+ alphabet are well documented in queer newsletters and fliers archived from pre-internet days. From the West Coast’s Seattle Gay News to the East’s Gay Community News out of Boston, announcements of potlucks were a constant bell ringing in the community calendars and classified sections. A flier for a 1994 Pride month get-together invited guests to bring a dish and come hear revolutionary activist Leslie Feinberg speak on trans liberation. Even ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), a leading force in AIDS research, prevention, and organizing had its humble beginnings in a series of potlucks hosted for grieving community members.
Years after attending my first queer potluck, I began hosting my own. While I still relish curating a formal, coursed out dinner party with matching flatware and even some table manners, taking luck in the pot has allowed me to better imbue the values I seek and hold as a queer person into the meals I share with others.
For hosting a potluck for your own queer community, here are some potluck-friendly tips and recipes to get you started.
