NYC Trans Oral History Project

Susan Stryker is an esteemed author and professor of gender and women’s studies. In this interview, she discusses growing up in Oklahoma, while also spending time in Germany and Hawaii as part of her father’s military service. After attending college in Oklahoma, Susan moved to San Francisco—a place she has dubbed “gay Paris”—to study US history. There, she became involved in union organizing on c...

Kate Bornstein discusses her life as a writer and actor. Moving between growing up in a Jewish family on the New Jersey shore, studying acting in school, joining the Church of Scientology, finding community in a dyke BDSM community in San Francisco and last twenty years living in NYC, Bornstein consistently emphasizes her grappling with gender, eventual revelation she is neither a man nor a woman,...

[Bilingual interview in English and Spanish/Entrevista bilingüe en Español y Inglés] Luca Lee, a Brooklyn-based new media artist and journalist, reflects on living outside his home country of Chile. He speaks of intergenerational trauma through the dictatorship, isolation in watching the Chilean revolution from afar, and his early dreams that guided his move to NYC. Through both Spanish and Englis...

Dioganhdih was born on sovereign Haudenosaunee territory of Onondaga Nation. They are a two-spirit, queer, hip-hop artist, public speaker and producer. In this interview, they speak about their complicated relationship to New York State and its historical violence as well as their early education both on the reservation and in non-native schools. They elaborate on how their queerness and indigenei...

Patty Gone is a performance artist, writer and the author of Love Life (Mount Analogue, 2019). In this interview, they discuss attending Catholic school in Harrisburg, PA. They describe early exposure to soap operas at their grandmother’s house, MTV music videos, Danielle Steel books and their collections of plastic figurines. They discuss years spent in New York and Western Massachusetts, with a...

Thomas Page Mcbee is a writer, journalist and is the author of two books: Man Alive (City Lights, 2014) and Amateur (Scribner, 2018). In this interview, he discusses growing up in Pittsburgh, PA, queer community in high school, literary community in San Francisco in the early 2000s, and working in journalism through moments of technological change in news media. He describes his writing practice t...

Interview of oni lem by NYC Trans Oral History Project

Interview of Felicita 'Felli' Maynard by NYC Trans Oral History Project

Ethan Roberts attends Union Seminary where he is a chaplain intern for incarcerated transgender folks at Rosie’s on Rikers Island. He discusses his early religious trauma being apart of a cultic group in Buffalo NY. He speaks about power and class manipulation as well as the greater culture of ‘toxic theology’ within his Mennonite and Baptist upbringing. At college his first encounter seeing a Dra...

Interview of Bethany Hine by NYC Trans Oral History Project

Interview of Harron Walker by NYC Trans Oral History Project

Interview of Chaya/Zoe Belinsky by NYC Trans Oral History Project

Jaheed Hines (he/him) is a black trans masculine man who was raised in Brooklyn, NYC. He begins detailing his childhood and how he found himself uncomfortable with societal expectations set upon him based upon his sex assigned at birth. He recounts attending his first pride in 2016 and feeling at home like he could fly. It was in that moment that he realized it was time for him to live fully in hi...

Noah Foster (they/them) is a black and white trans nonbinary human who was born and raised in New Orleans, LA. Today Noah is a graphic artist who resides in Brooklyn, NY. Noah's early years were very structured, so it didn't allow them much room to be different and live authentically. They never saw a reflection of anyone like themselves while growing up and today make it a point to document thems...

Mojo Disco is a multi-talented personality, youth educator, art teacher, fitness instructor, curator, designer, poet, model and artist from NYC. She is the creator of the popular underground event Paint And Poetry that created space for six years as a prominent place for all folks of all experiences to come together and share their brilliance in NYC. Her focus in life is to showcase the brilliance...

Denne Michele Norris is a writer, figure skater and musician. In this interview she discusses her writing practice, how figure skating relates to writing, nonlinear time, and growing up in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. She also discusses the importance of her queer community in New York and unexpected queer spaces throughout her life. Denne is one of the hosts of the podcast Food 4 Thot and is the auth...

Interview of Nika Lomazzo by NYC Trans Oral History Project

Interview of Sydney Baloue by NYC Trans Oral History Project

Interview of Leopoldo Bloom by NYC Trans Oral History Project

Yva Las Vegass was born in Venezuela in 1963. They recount their early childhood memories of playing folk music on the cuatro and singing boleros with their mother. Yva moved to the US as a teenager to attend boarding school but never finished and eventually found their way to Seattle where they created a music project called Sweet 75 with Nirvana’s Chris Novoselic. Moving to NYC felt like home wi...

Aoife recounts their experiences splitting time between New York City and a more suburban Connecticut setting as a child. They describe navigating their queer identity through high school and coming to terms with their trans identity as a first-generation student at a “historically women’s college,” where texts by authors like Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and Madeline Davis helped shape their politica...