Interview with Adrian Newell P<\/i><\/b>\u0103un<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
Adrian Newell P<\/i>\u0103un <\/b>was born in Bucharest, in 1958. He is a graphic designer and gay rights militant. In 8th grade, he drew an anti-Soviet caricature on the blackboard. He was detained by the Vice division of the Bucharest Militia for homosexuality while attempting to pick up an <\/i>undercover<\/i> cop. In 1979, he was forced to give up his Romanian citizenship (which he regained in 1996). In 1980, he fled to <\/i>the US as a political refugee. In 1984, he started working for Hayward Daily Review<\/b>. He published poetry in local cultural magazines. Between 1987 and 1989, he travelled in Alaska, Canada, USA, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, supporting himself by doing odd jobs and teaching English. In 1992, he is appointed coordinator of the Romanian branch of IGLHRC (<\/i>International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission) in San Francisco. In 1996, he launched Romanian LesBiGays<\/b>, the first gay internet page in Romanian, and he returned to Romania for 3 months. In 1999, he moved back to Romania. In 2000, he became the CI&D coordinator of ACCEPT Association. In 2005, he produced the first LGBT radio shows in Romanian, broadcast by online radio GayOne<\/b>. He published articles and poetry in Tribuna<\/b>, Observator Cultural, revista 22<\/b> and gave interviews on the gay community in Romania for Flac\u0103ra <\/b>magazine and Ziarul Finanicar. <\/b>In 2012, he launched the portal Ro Q Doc<\/b>, dedicated to queer documentaries.<\/i><\/p>\n
Where did you grow up?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
I was born in 1958, on Petre Tina street, in Tudor Vladimirescu neighborhood, a proletarian neighborhood, close to \u201c23 August\u201d stadium. The street still exists, but the house I was born and raised in is gone. They demolished it in 1965. It was a lovely house. My grandma was a seamstress for the royal army. My mother was a worker and my father was a welder. Actual proletarians. The street was quiet, with many drinking fountains. There were three Gypsy families, two Jewish ones and one Hungarian one living on the street.<\/p>\n
Tell us about a moment in your childhood or your teens which you remember fondly.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
In 8th<\/sup> grade I had a classmate form a well-off family. His mother was an architect and his father was deputy director at a design institute and he received a Rothring drawing kit from Germany. Back then it was a big deal. I was already drawing by then and he invited me over to test the kit. He also loved drawing. We drew, we had fun, we cuddled, and then he told me: \u201cLet me show you something!\u201d. And he showed me a Paris Match<\/b> from 1969, with an article on the Stonewall riots.[1]<\/a> It was 1974, so 5 years after the events. He read me the article. He read and spoke French well. That was the first time I saw gays marching and realized that actually, \u201cfaggots\u201d were not that dumb. They were out there marching and had something to say. That\u2019s when something lit up in me. This article was like a Godsend. The image of those American gays protesting remained in my head ever since. I wasn\u2019t so afraid anymore. Without even knowing it, my classmate gave me courage. This was my awakening to who I was sexually and to activism. This is how I began to see that there was something else besides people waiting all day for \u201cpick-ups\u201d. That here was, indeed, more than that.<\/p>\n
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