In Conversation: On Baggage: Tales from a Fully Packed Life

Alan Cumming’s many awards for his stage and screen work include a Tony, Olivier, BAFTA, and Emmy. He is the author of two children’s books, a book of photographs and stories, a novel, and New York Times bestseller Not My Father’s Son: A Memoir. Discussing Baggage: Tales from a Fully Packaged Life (Dey Street Books), he writes that “No one ever fully recovers from their past. There is no cure for it. You just learn to manage and prioritize it. … you have merely decided to stop being vigilant and embraced denial as your modus operandi. And that is what this book is about, and for: to remind you not to buy into the Hollywood ending.” Much of Baggage chronicles his life in Hollywood and how, having recovered from a nervous breakdown at 28, work took him away from personal calamities to sets and stages around the world. “… [I]n every bad decision or moment of sensual joy I have endeavored to show what I have learned and how I’ve become who I am today: a happy, flawed, vulnerable, fearless middle-aged man, with a lot of baggage.” Douglas Stuart, Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain, called Baggage a “wonderful book that is funny, honest, fearless, and generous in its vulnerability.”

Dr. Julio Capó, Jr. is a transnational historian whose research and teaching interests include modern U.S. history, especially the United States’s relationship to the Caribbean and Latin America. He addresses how gender and sexuality have historically intersected with constructions of ethnicity, race, class, nation, age, and ability. He teaches introductory and specialized courses on all these subjects, as well as courses on public history. Capó’s research and teaching interests extend to his commitment to civic engagement and public-facing work. He curated “Queer Miami: A History of LGBTQ Communities,” which won the 2019 Museum Excellent Award from the Florida Association of Museums, for HistoryMiami Museum. He worked as a broadcast news writer and producer and, more recently, his work appears in mainstream publications, including The Washington Post, Time, The Miami Herald, El Nuveo Día (Puerto Rico), and The Abusable Past. He was a commentator for BackStory with the American History Guys (Podcast) and the PBS/Miami Herald documentary The Day It Snowed in Miami. He also works with the National Park Service and contributed to efforts to promote and identify historic LGBTQ sites, including writing a theme study chapter on Miami. The Organization of American Historians recently named him a Distinguished Lecturer. Dr. Capó’s first book, Welcome to Fairyland: Queer Miami before 1940 (UNC Press, 2017), highlights how transnational forces—including (im)migration, trade, and tourism—to and from the Caribbean shaped Miami’s queer past. The book has received six awards and honors, including the Charles S. Sydnor Award from the Southern Historical Association