NYC Trans Oral History Project

Interview of Armani (ArmaniDae) by NYC Trans Oral History Project

Interview of Gogo Graham by NYC Trans Oral History Project

Jeaux narrates their coming into black trans boihood, from their childhood in Atlanta to their life in New York City today. As the creator of Black Boi Complex, a virtual community for masculine-of-center black LGBTQI+ people, they have worked to foster interpersonal networks of support and care within black queer communities. They also discuss self-care, finding moments for joy and self-love, and...

Shelby Chestnut describes their childhood and adolescence between Montana and Minnesota, discussing friendships and family, bullying and acceptance, mixed-race (Native American and white) identity, queer identity, and learning disabilities. After two sudden deaths of loved ones, Shelby left for college in Ohio, spent a year in Seattle, moved back to live with her family in Montana, checked into re...

Interview of Rye Young by NYC Trans Oral History Project

Simone Kolysh describes their non-binary gender identity, growing up in a Russian immigrant family, becoming a parent, and their academic work on trans studies.

In this dialogue, Ryann Holmes discusses their life with Sir Knight of BlackTransTV. Ryann co-founded bklyn boihood, an organization for transmasculine people of color. Ryann discusses being a tomboy and lesbian in a supportive black family in Maryland, their religious development out of self-shame they faced in Christianity, and coming to a non-binary understanding of their gender. Ryann describe...

Violet shares her experience of being a musician and DJ in New York’s rave scene while navigating the political landscape of gentrification. Having grown up nomadically with immigrant parents, she feels connected to NYC’s trans and queer community and specific sub cultures that explore identities beyond gender through play, non-human kinship, and body modification. Violet elaborates on her politic...

Zeno is a wordsmith, performer and educator. He discusses his experience of traumatic narcissism, the difficulty with affirmations, and limitations pronouns have on encompassing an expansive relationship to one’s gender. He speaks about growing up rich and how he used his class as a defense against racism in the suburbs of New Jersey.

Eddie Jarel Jones is a Cleveland, Ohio native and current social influencer, media personality, producer, Emcee, and model. They reflect on the experience of attending a Historically Black College as a queer person and openly claiming their identities in this environment. Discussing their work, including with SlayTV, a Queer, Trans, GNC, people of color media agency, Eddie shares the origins of th...

Jackson Reddy reflects on their family dynamics and how these relationships shaped their growth. They also touch upon the role of trauma and the process of healing, especially in terms of self-care and aftercare. Reddy more broadly discusses queerness, visibility, and community as unifying factors. They speak of “feeling alive and joyful” because of art and creation, and how that desire for creati...

In this interview Mylo Mendez shares hir ongoing work with creating queer and trans self-defense. Ze discusses hir evolution as an artist, currently working in zines, as well as hir involvement with punk scenes and DIY venues such as Silent Barn.

Cayden discusses his work as an untenured and trans educator. He reflects on his involvement in the NYC’s teacher’s union the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) and the UFT’s social justice caucus, the Movement of Rank and File Educators (MORE). While a student at NYU, Cayden engaged multiple activist campaigns including advocating for higher minimum wage for campus workers and for the prioritiza...

Kim Watson is co-founder of CKLife, author of The Modern Day Woman, and trans advocate and leader. In this interview, she discusses growing up in Barbados as an intersexed woman, her years of homelessness in New York and time in the West Village drag scene, overcoming drug addiction and turn towards her work in trans advocacy. She also discusses being a parent, and the conflict between trans leade...

Interview of Anaïs Duplan by NYC Trans Oral History Project

McKenzie Wark discusses their career as a cultural critic, journalist, academic, and author. They came of age as a radical and writer in underground counterculture scenes in Australia, moving to New York to pursue love, and becoming a professor at the New School. Wark also discusses their relationship with Kathy Acker, their recent coming out as trans, and rethinking their sexual history through t...

Interview of Kiyan Williams by NYC Trans Oral History Project

Interview of Paisley Currah by NYC Trans Oral History Project

Rona Love discusses her early childhood hardships, three decade long incarceration and experiences in psychiatric hospitals. She details abuse, violence and the extreme isolation of being a trans-femme person in the prison system. Prior to being in-prisoned, Rona describes going to Limelight and other nostalgic clubs, visits to Riis beach and the general aura of the 70’s in downtown NYC. She is an...

Erica Connerney is a philosophy/trans literature professor and author living in Tribeca, NY. She discusses her past and present in terms of her identity as a transsexual woman, as well as her hopes for the future. Main topics include her personal involvement with both Catholicism and Dianic Wicca, the importance of community for LBGT people concerning psychological health and survival, and the per...

Hayden Gibson was born in Calhoun Falls, South Carolina. In this interview, Hayden shares their experiences about growing up in an adopted evangelical family, making the courageous move to New York alone, being a marshal at the NYC Dyke March, and spontaneously joining a queer band. Hayden also goes on and talks about his love for queer literature and how authors such as Walt Whitman, Alison Bechd...

Interview of Morgan Hunlen by NYC Trans Oral History Project

Tourmaline is a writer, activist, and filmmaker, involved in projects like Happy Birthday, Marsha and Atlantic is a Sea of Bones. In this interview, she recounts her childhood in Boston, where she attended a Black Nationalist church and formed intergenerational relationships with the queer and trans individuals in her neighborhood. After moving to New York for school, Tourmaline became heavily inv...

In this interview, Robbi Ann Mecus describes her journey from growing up with her family, experiencing gender dysphoria in a working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York City, to living as her authentic female self in rural Upstate New York with her daughter, where she works as a forest ranger. She also goes into detail about personal experiences along the way, including her searches for love...

(Photo of Tuesday and interviewer Michelle). Tuesday Smillie is a visual artist whose work grapples with power and violence. In this interview, Tuesday recounts her coming out in a radical queer youth scene in Portland, Oregon, moving to NYC to pursue her art practice, and the growth of attention on her work since her work's appearance in the 2016 show Triggered at the New Museum. She discusses he...