When composer and researcher Sultana Isham first learned of Papa Joe’s World Famous Female Impersonators—a historically segregated trans strip club in New Orleans—at a Black trans circle in 2018, she was immediately intrigued. Since 2023, she’s been creating a multimodal project about the venue and its complex history, forming connections with women who worked at the club, gathering footage and photographs, compiling stories and unpacking the ways its policies changed as society evolved around it. She tells writer Megan Wallace how she’s looking not only to fill the “archival void” about the venue, but also to fill in a missing link in wider, global trans history.
Growing up in Virginia, Sultana Isham had heard whispers about Papa Joe’s World Famous Female Impersonators ever since she was a child. Referencing a Laverne Cox quote, where the trans actress and activist recalls a teacher who warned that she would end up “wearing a dress in New Orleans,” Isham mentions that the venue was never explicitly referred to as a club—but was rather framed as a “cautionary path” to transness that was “never really called for what it was.”
The first time she heard the strip club called by name was in 2018, after she had moved to New Orleans, at a Black trans circle, a community gathering which facilitated intergenerational storytelling. There, several of the women who had gathered spoke about their past experiences at Papa Joe’s before encouraging Isham—a composer, violinist and academic who has scored films, including the documentary “All Skinfolk Ain’t Kinfolk,” for which she also acted as a researcher—to tell their story.
There’s a creative experience, because they’re creating performances: they are artists and choreographers.
For Isham, whose practice is committed to broadening and expanding cultural perception, the concept was immediately intriguing. “With the history of trans women, people think about New York, LA or San Francisco—these big metropolises—and they often think about street work,” Isham explains. “However, this is a story rooted in the South and, this is not to say that the women weren’t also doing street work, but Papa Joe’s was a club and you had to fill out tax forms.”
In contrast to drag bars—where drag queens explored “feminine illusion” via singing, cabaret and elaborate outfits—Papa Joe’s was a space for so-called “female impersonators” who could “pass” as cis women (or “everyday ladies”). In short, punters came for the beauty and fleshy, womanly reality of the employees. “The girls were strippers, it was about breasts and ass.”
The history of the club reflects the changing social realities around it: it was initially segregated and remained so until desegregation in the French Quarter, Bourbon St., which started in the mid-60s. Even then, though, the policies of the club remained discriminatory (“They wouldn’t have two Black girls working at the same time,” Isham explains) throughout multiple decades, although in later years the staff was primarily made up of Black and Latina women. There’s also the fact that the club experienced an influx in clientele during the Iraq War, when American sailors sought out the company of trans women before they may lose their lives at war.
From a labor perspective, Isham was compelled by this complex history as well as the level of agency Papa Joe’s workers were afforded in contrast to other forms of sex work available to trans women, and was interested in emphasizing the artistry within their performances. “There was a level of protection and security that you cannot get when you’re working the street. The employees have a choice of who they want to work with or not work with,” Isham says. “There’s also a creative experience, because they’re creating performances: they are artists and choreographers.”
At the time, Isham didn’t feel experienced enough to embark on the project, but the idea stuck with her as she progressed in her career. So, some five years later in 2023, she began gathering footage and compiling stories to document the club from 1950 until 2009. Now, she’s working towards a multimodal project encompassing a documentary film, performance lectures and efforts to fill the “archival void” about the venue.
So far, Isham has developed a directory of 30 women who worked at Papa Joe’s, but her project is particularly indebted to her co-producers, three women she refers to as “ambassadors”—Kineen Mafa, Jasmine White and Kyra Kincaid—as well as Teryl Lynn Foxx, the first Black person to regularly perform in the clubs of New Orleans’ French Quarter. Working collaboratively with these women and more, Isham has been able to unspool the contradictory history of Papa Joe’s, a club which boasted of being “world famous” but which remained strategically underground. “Celebrities and royalty would all come there. People knew about it, but they kept it so secret,” Isham says.
As part of her research, Isham was granted access to a collection of images from the late 1990s and early 2000s that was shared to a Papa Joe’s Facebook alumni group, and was given permission to share these photos as part of her project. The resulting photos show a range of women in bright, multicolored outfits: snake print skirts, a Stars and Stripes metallic bikini, slip dresses and patterned bras. Whether posing outside the club, reclining against a pole or covered in money as part of a New Orleans birthday tradition, their individuality and vibrancy is clear.
As she sees it, the images are a proud statement of the resilience of New Orleans’ people, including the integral but under-acknowledged women who danced at Papa Joe’s. “New Orleans is in a constant state of grief, the fact that these images even exist is super important,” Isham says. “So many images were lost after storms like Hurricane Katrina. But you can’t kill spirit. In fact, the storms make us stronger: they push us to go far, go further, go harder and be greater.”
She also views the photos as reflecting moments of togetherness between women who were often pitted against each other and treated unequally. “Seeing these images of Latina trans women, Black trans women and white trans women altogether in this place is so beautiful,” Isham adds. “I love these images of their art and the celebration of their bodies.”
For Isham, this documentation of the women of Papa Joe’s helps her to connect to an inheritance and legacy of trans women from the South. “Usually the history projected onto us is as if we’ve just come out, but we’ve been around since the beginning of time,” she says. “It’s important for future generations to understand that we’ve always been here and that our lineage is very old, sacred and beautiful. Southern trans women have something to say, and they are a missing link in our overall global history.”