Coming Out for Community, Coming Out for the Cause

Abstract This article focuses on the life experience and political activism of Palestinian American lesbian activist Huda Jadallah as a representative example of how lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT/queer) Arab Americans came out to both queer communities and Arab American communities in the 1980s and 1990s. The author argues that this dual outness was utilized as a strategy through which to accomplish three interrelated aims: to build a queer Arab American community, utilize that community as a starting point from which to challenge anti-Arab racism within queer communities, and challenge homophobia in Arab American communities. Based on an oral history interview with Jadallah, in conjunction with analysis of Jadallah’s personal ephemera collection, this article takes a queer archiving methodological approach to consider how outness as strategy may also be utilized with regard to queer Arab American archiving and history.