Hi, gay!
I started this website after my first LinkPile started to outgrow its space. What is a LinkPile? Excellent question! It is a pile of links. Duh.
In all seriousness, one of my most transformative creative experiences was in a rhetoric class in college. My professor (excellent dude btw--go surf around his experimental digital book) had the entire class hosted on a private wiki. We didn't have a textbook or printed anthology--just a set of open-source readings and a page called "LinkPile!" with the motto "linking is thinking" written underneath the title. We were encouraged to share whatever we found relevant, and it led me to new ideas and texts I never would've encountered otherwise.
Given our lack of textbooks, the question of: "Well, what the hell is the literary canon anyway?" came up. Years later, I still think about this essay that a classmate linked to that made rethink how I view information. You'll never be able to read everything, so why not play around and see what you can find rather than place a concrete (and biased) canon on a pedestal? It makes a lot more sense, even if it seems silly at first.
For me, a LinkPile is part commonplace book, part playground, part personal canon. I love queer media, but I am never going to consume every piece of queer media. I can't. It's impossible...but I can build a gay little sandbox online where information is a joy rather than a burden, and invite others to play--especially since queer history isn't always easy to stumble upon.
The name "HomoPile" is a playful homage to queer history, harkening back to the pre-Stonewall homophile movement. Members of organizations like the Daughters of Bilitis and the Mattachine Society discreetly mailed queer magazines (The Ladder and ONE, respectively) as a way to connect queer people, distribute information, and advocate for rights in a time where homosexuality was vilified and queer folks had virtually no safe public spaces.
This is never going to be a comprehensive collection--I am one person with a specific identity and interests connected to that identity. But I hope you, on the other side of the screen, find some joy and solidarity in poking around here. Maybe you'll discover something you've never heard of, or stumble into a rabbit hole that takes you somewhere unexpected. Maybe you'll find validation in seeing a piece of your own queer experience reflected, or curiosity sparked by a perspective different from your own.
Either way, this site is an open invitation to digitally meander, to learn, to question, and to remember that building knowledge can be playful as well as serious. After all, linking is thinking.
--TwentyFifty
