Wu Youjian: Being Gay through a Mother’s Eyes

Wu Youjian: Being Gay through a Mother’s Eyes
Time: 7:30pm – 9:30om, 5th June, 2012
Venue: Xindanwei, 50 Yongjia Rd.

Cost: 40RMB

The speaker Wu Youjian will start with her own family story in order to explain how she came to understand and accept her gay son, how she came to make appearances in the media in support of her son, and later of the LGBT community at large. She will tell the story of her son: Blessed with family support, he has passed through stages of his love life as well as his career. Activities of both PFLAG China and her studio will also be illustrated with examples. By sharing real cases encountered in years of work, Wu will express her view on subjects such as same-sex love, coming out, marriage of convenience, and wives of gay men.

About speaker：

Born in 1947 in Guangdong, Wu Youjian is a retired editor, a mother who has been the first in China to openly support her gay son and has laterbecome an advocate for the LGBT community at large. Wu was prevented from going to college by the onset of the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Two years later she was sent down to the country where she farmed and learned at first hand the life of Chinese peasants. She returned to her hometown Guangzhou in 1979. Until her retirement in 2008, she worked with magazines successively as proofreader, editor, deputy editor-in-chief, and deputy editorial director.

Since 2005 Wu has given over 100 interviews to TV, radio, newspapers and magazines. Her photograph became the cover of the widely circulatedPeople Weekly of the Southern News Group. She co-founded the first PFLAG (Parents, Familes, & Friends of Lesbians and Gays) group in China and served as its president. In 2012 she established a new studio to continue her work in helping to build a more diversified yet inclusive society.

At the invitation of many universities across the nation, including Fudan and the Sun Yat-sen University, Wu gave lectures on college campuses of the subject “Being gay through a mother’s eyes.” Meanwhile, she attended gatherings of LGBT families and friends, as well as seminars on the fight against HIV/AIDS, in different cities.

A member of the Chinese Association of Writers, Guangdong Chapter, WuYoujianhas published fiction, nonfiction and essays in a dozen of newspapers and magazines; some of these won her awards. She is the author of a collection of true stories titled Love Is the Most Beautiful Rainbow: Gay World through a Mother’s Eyes.

Wu runs a free hotline 020-37611068 during 22:00–24:00 every Wednesday. Her blog has accumulated 3.3 million visits; her microblog 63,000 followers. Many LGBT people and their parents intimately call her “Mama Wu.”

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