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Saint, Assotto (Yves-François Lubin)
(1957–1994)
Writer, performer, editor, and AIDS activist Assotto
Saint was born Yves-François Lubin in Port-au-
Prince, Haiti, where he was reared. He moved to
New York City in 1970, where he attended Queens
College as a premedicine major. He also danced
with the Martha Graham Dance Company. As his
interests broadened to include theater and writ-
ing, Lubin chose the pseudonym Assotto Saint. As-
sotto is the Haitian Creole pronunciation of one
of the drums used in Vodun (Voodoo) rituals and
ceremonies, and Lubin took the name Saint from
one of his heroes, Toussaint Louverture. Although
Lubin initially spelled Assotto with only one t, he
added the second t when his CD4 T-cell count fell
to only nine.
An outspoken member of the gay and lesbian
community, Lubin was committed to speaking the
“truth at all costs.” He encouraged HIV-infected
gay men to be open about their seropositivity
(HIV status). As editor of the history-making an-
thology The Road before Us (Galiens Press, 1991), a
compilation of the works of 100 black gay writers,
Lubin urged contributors not to hide their HIV
status, particularly if they were infected. In the
introduction Lubin writes, “there is nothing that
those of us in this predicament could reveal in our

bios that is more urgent and deserving of mention

than our seropositivity or diagnosis” (The Road

before Us, xxi).

Lubin’s actions spoke as loudly as did his words.

Well known is Lubin’s interruption of the funeral

service for gay black poet Donald Woods in order to

“out” and affirm Woods’s life, so Woods would not

be buried in secrecy and shame. In his poem “going

Home Celebration,” Lubin writes, “Donald / the

spectacle of your funeral / was a wake-up call from

the dead... in lunatic denial of an epidemic that dec-

imates us / gay black men” (Spells of a Voodoo Doll,

135). This event is the subject of Thomas Glave’s

short story “The Final Inning,” which received the

O. Henry Award for Fiction in 1997. Lubin appears

in Emmy and Peabody Award–winning filmmaker

Marlon Riggs’s film Non, je ne regrette rien, in which

five sero-positive black gay men speak of their indi-

vidual confrontations with AIDS.

Lubin was founder and artistic director of

Metamorphosis Theater, through which, in col-

laboration with his life partner, Jaan Urban Holm-

gren, he created and staged theatrical works that

focused on the complexity of the lives of black gay

men. His works include Risin’ to the Love We Need,

his first play, which was awarded second prize in

the 1980 Jane Chambers Award for gay and les-

bian playwriting; New Love Song; Black Fag; and