Cheryl Qamar - The Outwords Archive

Cheryl Qamar at age 2. She says, “notice the pearls!” Photo courtesy of Cheryl Qamar.

Cheryl Qamar (age 3) in overalls with “two other little girls born days apart” from her. She shares, “our parents were all close, all Lebanese and extended family.” Photo courtesy of Cheryl Qamar.

A yearbook portrait of Cheryl Qamar as a high school senior, 1968. Photo courtesy of Cheryl Qamar.

Cheryl Qamar and her then-boyfriend Don at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 1969. Cheryl shares, “We were hippies and leftists.” Photo courtesy of Cheryl Qamar.

Cheryl Qamar on the day she came out to her mother. She shares, “I went to visit my friends and I was initially so relieved until I returned home later that day and [my mother] began the psychological torture…” Photo courtesy of Cheryl Qamar.

Cheryl Qamar and Margo, 1974. She shares, “This was my first lesbian relationship.” Photo courtesy of Cheryl Qamar.

Cheryl Qamar as a “Fuzbian” in the lesbian separatist movement, 1978. Photo courtesy of Cheryl Qamar.

Cheryl Qamar and her lover Liz Hjeltness at Gay Pride, Washington, DC, 1978. Cheryl shares, “This was my second serious lesbian relationship. We met and lived in Boston.” Photo courtesy of Cheryl Qamar.

Mood Swings, a lesbian improv group about women in recovery from addiction. L-R bottom row: Cheryl Qamar and Liz Hjeltness (her lover at the time). L-R middle row: Alice Levine and Karen Kirby. Back row: Blitzen, the Director. Photo courtesy of Cheryl Qamar.

Mood Swings, a lesbian improv group about women in recovery from addiction. L-R: Alice Levine, Karen Kirby, Cheryl Qamar, and Liz Hjeltness (Cheryl’s lover at the time). Photo courtesy of Cheryl Qamar.

L-R: Lauren Chiten (Producer), Kiki Zeldes (Commercial Producer), Cheryl Qamar (Associate Producer), and Debra Granik (Assistant Producer) for their lesbian soap opera

Cheryl Qamar marching with the Combahee River Collective to memorialize the deaths of Black women who had been murdered in the Boston area, 1979. Their banner reads, “3rd World Women: We Cannot Live Without Our Lives.” Photo Credit: the Combahee River Collective Archives. Photo courtesy of Cheryl Qamar.

A portrait of the Laham family at Christmas. Cheryl shares, “I just noticed the pearls again! My sister's husband, their dog, and first child were all included here, but my partner was not allowed to come to Kansas.” Photo courtesy of Cheryl Qamar.

A portrait of the Laham family circa 1980. Cheryl shares, “Same story, different year: my sister's husband, their dog, and first child were all included here, but my partner was not allowed to come to Kansas.” Photo courtesy of Cheryl Qamar.

Cheryl and her partner Cris at Gay Pride, New York, NY, 1982. She shares, “this is the first weekend we came out as a couple. We had been friends for months then something clicked!” Photo courtesy of Cheryl Qamar.

Cheryl Qamar at the International Women’s Day Video Festival, 1985. She shares, “I co-produced the first women's video festival with my friend, Catharine Russo, who’s next to me holding the monitor.” Photo courtesy of Cheryl Qamar.

Cheryl Qamar with her parents during their “first out visit”, New York, NY, 1989. She explains, “I had come out when I lived in Boston in 1973, but it wasn’t until I moved to Woodstock, NY in 1989 that my parents finally agreed to meet me and my partner at the time. This is the only photo of us from that seminal trip. They agreed to visit me again in Saugerties, NY in 1993 after I bought my first home with my current wife, but my father died 2 months before.” Photo courtesy of Cheryl Qamar.

Cheryl and Cris exchanging rings on their wedding day, 2015. Photo courtesy of Cheryl Qamar.

Cheryl and Cris holding their wedding license, 2015. Cheryl shares, “we married after being together for twenty-two years.” Photo courtesy of Cheryl Qamar.

A family portrait of Cheryl, Cris, and their dog. Photo courtesy of Cheryl Qamar.

Cheryl Qamar was born on October 17, 1950 in Wichita, Kansas, and grew up on the east side of Wichita–the only Arab family on that particular block. Most of Wichita’s Lebanese community was centered around the Orthodox Christian Church in the west side of Wichita. So, along with her family, Cheryl made many crosstown trips to be among her own people.

At the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Cherly got involved in the university’s radical civil rights, hippie, and anti-war movement scene. As for her queerness, she didn’t have word for that, until she had her first relationship with a woman during college. The different pieces of Cheryl fell into place. She became a committed feminist, and began experimenting with separatism.

From Kansas, Cheryl headed to Boston University for grad school in social work. In Cambridge, against the backdrop of male-dominated Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings and the lesbian bar scene, Cheryl helped open the first federally-funded safe spaces for lesbians seeking to get sober. Cheryl also trained women’s counseling groups on how to identify and help people struggling with alcoholism, eventually empowering women to start their own AA groups. She got involved with the Amethyst Women Collective, sponsoring alcohol-free women’s dances, and also formed the improv group The Mood Swings, performing skits to an eager audiece of recovering lesbians in Boston.

On a visit home from Boston, Cheryl came out to her mother. When her mother reacted very badly, Cheryl stopped coming home for three years. During this time, she took the adopted surname of Qamar. Eventually, Cheryl was reunited with her family on a shared trip to Hawaii. But for years afterwards, she still did not bring partners home, and remained closeted to extended family.

By the 1980s, Cheryl’s activism broadened to include the TV screen. Cheryl co-produced The Families We Choose, a documentary on different lesbian families in Boston; and in 1983, she worked on the lesbian soap opera Two in Twenty, which toured internationally with screenings in festivals from New York to London.

In 1989, Cheryl moved to Woodstock, where she fell in love with her wife, Cristeen. Although Cheryl’s mother visited the couple several times in Woodstock, Cheryl was still not allowed to bring Cris home. Years later, at a family wedding, Cheryl’s mother finally asked Cris for forgiveness for the years of rejection and exclusion that she inflicted on Cris and the couple.

In Woodstock, Cheryl found a vibrant gay community, including an organization called the Active Culture which brought musicians to perform in the area. When Israel invaded Lebanon, she joined the American Arab Antidiscrimination Committee and later worked for the international organization Jewish Group for Peace. Today, Cheryl is a board member of Eyewitness Palestine, and she also runs a project called Wichita2Woodstock, which brings people from the two cities together to discuss issues and questions. She lovingly embraces all aspects of her identity, so the world will know that Arab lesbians like her have been around. “We were there, we existed,” she said toward the end of her OUTWORDS interview. “Here we are. Here I am.”

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