BUFFALO, N.Y. — The trials and tribulations of the LGBTQ community are far from well documented. However, there are those working diligently to preserve stories and history.

"I wondered what made me think this was the place I could fit — and what if I didn't?" Jeffry Iovanonne read from the pages of a paperback on a city bench in Buffalo. "This was everything I could have hoped for in life."

Iovanonne remembers the first time reading "Stone Butch Blues" by Leslie Feinberg and the impact it would have.

"It was the first representation I saw of anything related to LGBTQ history in Buffalo," Iovanonne said.

Books like Feinberg's are an inspiration to LGBTQ youth and adults alike. The way was paved by literary trailblazers across the state and nation from authors and readers to publishers and distributors.

"That might not have happened if Nancy Kay Bereano didn't take a chance in the early 1990s and publish this book so that it could get out into the world and into the hands of readers who needed to see the life and the struggle of a gender nonconforming protagonist at that time," he added.

It's part of why Jeffry is hosting a live and online tour, hours away in the Southern Tier.

"There's a total of four stops on the tour that each relates to different aspects of print culture," Iovanonne said, walking down the Pride flag-filled streets leading up to downtown Ithaca.

The first spot was the former Ithaca Gay Peoples Center where Cornell students formed the second-ever students' LGBTQ organization and shared literature. Iovanonne described the next location.

"The building located behind me, Firebrand Books building on the Ithaca Commons, was designated by the common council as an individual local landmark on October 5, 2022," Iovanonne said.

It was the result of countless hours of work by Jeffrey to have an official designation — his work and passion are instrumental in passing along knowledge.

"I see my work as a preservationist is going beyond just documenting important places and then ensuring that they are conserved," added Iovanonne. "We also have to create education and interpretation around that."

It's hard to do that when you can't see it present all the time.

"Often places that are significant to LGBTQ history," he said. "That's not obvious by just looking at the physical place. So we need to do other things to interpret and make that history visible to the community."

"Take Mitchell's House, who would know when you're walking by the street that an important gay press was founded here in the 1970s," Iovanonne continued. "Not everyone is going to go to the archive at Cornell and look through Mitchell's papers or other collections to find this information."

And that's why Jeffry and others will continue to shine a light on the pages of the past.

"If we look at the story that gets told in the mainstream to think that that only happens in big cities like New York or San Francisco, when in fact, this history is being made everywhere," he said before turning back to the pages of a book. 

"There was no turning back and I didn't want to. For the first time, I might have found my people."