Media of the Month
One Film, a Book, and a Podcast
In honor of Pride month, the INELDA team has put together a few media resources that look at LGBTQIA2S+ relationships and end of life.
The Film: Radical Acts of Love
created by Jacob Y. Miller and Camila Faraday
Synopsis: Filmed over a three-year period, the film Radical Acts of Love chronicles Linda Folley’s struggle with early-onset Alzheimer’s. The film tells the story of Linda, a master programmer, pilot, scientist, and philanthropist, who was diagnosed with the disease at 52. Stories are woven together with interviews from Linda’s partner and film coproducer Camila Faraday, friends, and family, as well as home movies captured prior to Linda’s diagnosis. This loving tribute directed by Jacob Yana Miller explores the concepts of legacy and identity—impressing the sacred importance of living with grace and dying with dignity.
Jacob Y. Miller was born and raised in Ithaca, New York, and currently lives in Los Angeles, where he tells stories that celebrate the enormous potential of humanity while also shining necessary light on the darkness of our trying, troubled natures. Radical Acts of Love won the Audience Award for Outstanding Documentary at Film Invasion L.A. in 2019.
Camila Faraday was born in Hawthorne, California, the daughter of two factory workers—her father an enameler, and her mother a factory seamstress. She attended University of California, Santa Barbara in 1974, and 10 years later, earned her bachelor’s degree in nursing at Loma Linda University. She held a long career as a public maternal and child nurse in Ithaca and raised a family with her husband. Camila later fell in love with Linda S. Folley and lovingly walked hand and hand through life with her, up until Linda’s death in spring of 2016. Since Linda’s passing, Camila has dedicated herself to educating the public on the scope of this terrible disease.
Available to stream on Amazon Prime.
The Book: Don’t Cry for Me
by Daniel Black
This 2022 release was named an “Anticipated Book” by Essence magazine and was on the New York Times “Shortlist.” The novel tells a story of empathy and forgiveness through the tale of a Black father making amends to his estranged gay son in letters written on his deathbed. Daniel Black writes in his author’s notes, “When, in 2013, my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, I knew what it meant—he’d soon forget what he’d done or said to me over the years.” The series of letters written by the protagonist, Jacob, to his son Isaac speaks to the lasting effects of slavery, gender roles, homophobia, and reconciliation—allowing the conversation that the author hoped to have with his own dying father play out on the pages of this book.
Dr. Daniel Black is an author and professor of African American studies and English at Clark Atlanta University. He is the winner of the Distinguished Writer Award from the Middle-Atlantic Writer’s Association and has been nominated for the Townsend Prize for Fiction, the Ernest J. Gaines Award, and the Georgia Author of the Year Award. He was raised in Blackwell, Arkansas, and lives in Atlanta.
Available through HarperCollins Publishers.
The Podcast: Queering Death
by Ori Basto Aguila
This podcast, now in its second season, covers the often-taboo subjects of death, grief, loss, and spirituality from the justice and liberation approach and perspective of a trans and two-spirit Indigenous Muisca/Jewish death walker as well as their trans and gender expansive guests. Ori gets comfortable on the virtual couch, creating a brave space for intersections of mortality, afterlife, ritual, cultural practices, and meaning making involved in loss in life and loss of life.
Ori Aguila is a two spirit Indígena Muisca and Jewish trauma specialist, death doula-walker-educator, grief & loss guide, writer, artist, and bruje. For over 3 decades, Ori has provided care to the dying, the grieving, those who have experienced loss. They fight for people’s right to sovereignty in death, life, and spirituality. They are also an advocate-activist who takes on transphobia, antisemitism, as well as oppression-based hate, intimate partner abuse, and adoptee rights.
Listen through Amazon Music