Speaker 1: This is Latino USA, the Radio Journal of News and
Speaker 1: Kurturre Latino USC Latin Latino USA. I'm Maria Inojosa. We
Speaker 1: bring you stories that are underreported but that mattered to you,
Speaker 1: overlooked by the rest of the media, and while the
Speaker 1: country is struggling to deal with these, we listen to
Speaker 1: the stories of black and Latino Studio United Latino Front,
Speaker 1: a cultural renaissance organizing at the forefront of the movement.
Speaker 1: I'm Maria Inojosa, Ola, Latino USA. Listener. Here's a really
Speaker 1: important show from our archives and one quick heads up.
Speaker 1: This episode contains a mention of sexual violence, so please
Speaker 1: take care.
Speaker 2: I believe that storytelling is advocacy, and the advocacy is storytelling.
Speaker 2: The best way to create the change that we want
Speaker 2: in society, in our lives is by sharing our stories
Speaker 2: and asking for what we need.
Speaker 3: So this book is not.
Speaker 2: Just about stories. This book is screaming revolutionary ask to
Speaker 2: support trans young folks.
Speaker 1: From Fudromedia and PRX. It's Latino USA. I'm Mariao Oosa.
Speaker 1: Today transactivist actor and author Cecilia Gentili on the intersections
Speaker 1: of advocacy and storytelling. Cecilia Gentili is a very busy person.
Speaker 2: I work a lot, have a company, and I do
Speaker 2: a lot of extra activities or related with community.
Speaker 1: When she's not advising organizations or government agencies on how
Speaker 1: to better serve the trans community, Cecilia might be writing
Speaker 1: an op ed for The New York Times or speaking
Speaker 1: in that a rally sharing her thoughts on the need
Speaker 1: to decriminalize sex work.
Speaker 4: Sex workers are again being forced to the impossible situation
Speaker 4: of choosing between prioritizing their heads or having enough money
Speaker 4: to survive.
Speaker 1: Some of you might be familiar with Cecilia for her
Speaker 1: role as MS Orlando on the FX hit series Pose,
Speaker 1: a show portraying underground black and LATINX queer culture in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen eighties and nineties.
Speaker 3: Now are we going to do this or not?
Speaker 2: Because it's going to take time and I'm I have
Speaker 2: a hair forming at them.
Speaker 1: Pose, of Course, was the first TV series with a
Speaker 1: mostly transcast, but when the pandemic struck, Cecilia decided to
Speaker 1: try her hand at something new, writing a memoir. Because
Speaker 1: of the pandemic, she no longer had to commute to work,
Speaker 1: so instead she used that time at home to start writing.
Speaker 2: I Open My Eyes and walk to my computer and
Speaker 2: start writing with a coffee.
Speaker 1: And so last year, at fifty years old, Cecilia published
Speaker 1: five tests, her first memoir, in the form of seven
Speaker 1: letters written to people in her hometown in Argentina. Writing
Speaker 1: to people like her grandmother or her father's mistress, Cecilia
Speaker 1: uses humor and vivid storytelling to talk not only about
Speaker 1: abuse and trauma, but also about joy and survival. Here's
Speaker 1: Cecilia Gentili in her own words.
Speaker 2: My name is a Legende Lely. I live in Brooklyn,
Speaker 2: New York City, and I am originally from Argentina. I
Speaker 2: didn't know what storytelling was. One time, after I changed
Speaker 2: my name legally, Transgender Legal Defense helped me navigate my
Speaker 2: name change. And during those meetings of changing my name,
Speaker 2: I met this amazing trans individual. His name is Noah Lewis,
Speaker 2: and he invited me to be a part of a
Speaker 2: storytelling event. And I was like, what is in a
Speaker 2: storytelling event? And he explained to me that he thought
Speaker 2: that I could be good at telling stories. So I
Speaker 2: was like, what, sorry, I'm gonna say. So he asked
Speaker 2: me to practice with him. That we were driving to
Speaker 2: my grandmother's house and my brother while.
Speaker 3: We were crossing a railroad. Elbowed me and said, do
Speaker 3: you see the railroad? And I said, why are we whispering?
Speaker 2: And I found the process of talking about an event
Speaker 2: and talking about my feelings and talking about my story
Speaker 2: and talking about people around me throughout those times was
Speaker 2: really healing and very entertaining. We found you in the
Speaker 2: railroad and I said, what's that in the basket and
Speaker 2: he said, no, no basket, which is kind of depressing, right.
Speaker 2: The basket would make it look cute. I love attention.
Speaker 2: I'm an aquarius. I enjoy being the center of attention.
Speaker 2: And that was all put together was perfect. But I
Speaker 2: loved telling stories life right. So you know, when you
Speaker 2: tell a story, it's easy because you manipulate the story
Speaker 2: as you want, rights on the goal, You change things around.
Speaker 3: Because it's your story. Who's going to tell you anything
Speaker 3: about it? You can do whatever you want.
Speaker 2: But when I started writing, it's different because you write
Speaker 2: something and it's structure and its rigid. It's there, it's
Speaker 2: in a piece of paper, and every time somebody reads it,
Speaker 2: it's going to be the same. There's no way to
Speaker 2: tweak it or to play around. When I started writing
Speaker 2: these stories, I thought it would be important to have
Speaker 2: a public that for these stories to be told to somebody.
Speaker 3: So that's how I came with letters.
Speaker 2: I thought, I'm gonna say these things that I have
Speaker 2: to say to the people that I want to say
Speaker 2: them right.
Speaker 3: Many of them are alive and many of them are not.
Speaker 2: And that's how I started writing these letters to There
Speaker 2: are seven letters to seven individuals that had some kind
Speaker 2: of impact in my life, good or bad. That you
Speaker 2: love to talk about my hometown I was born, and
Speaker 2: see that de Galabes. Most of people live from agriculture.
Speaker 2: The town is very little, and everybody knows you, and
Speaker 2: everybody knows everything about you, and everybody talks about everybody,
Speaker 2: and everything that is a little bit outside the normal
Speaker 2: becomes some kind of sensation. When I was a leader
Speaker 2: in Argentina was going through a dictatorship, my mother was
Speaker 2: very clear about the political climate. She told me that
Speaker 2: she wanted me to know what the reality was because
Speaker 2: she clearly saw me as a queer kid. And you know,
Speaker 2: oppressive regimes go first for people who think, write for poets,
Speaker 2: for thinkers, and for artists, and many of those folks
Speaker 2: are queer. So the queer community is one of the
Speaker 2: communities that suffered the most when it comes to repression
Speaker 2: from oppressive regimes or government. So my mom told me
Speaker 2: that most of the things that she was oppress round
Speaker 2: was just because she wanted me to leave. I grew
Speaker 2: up with an extreme sense of a binaryness. So a
Speaker 2: person who was a sign melobird should be masculine and
Speaker 2: do all masculine things and be rough and be all macho,
Speaker 2: and a woman had the expectation of being submissive and
Speaker 2: beautiful and wear dresses. And at the time, as it
Speaker 2: was the seventies, it was no concept of like trans
Speaker 2: people or non binary people. I didn't meet another transperson
Speaker 2: until I was seventeen, so for many years I thought
Speaker 2: like I was an extra terrestrial or I thought that
Speaker 2: I was crazy. I never never felt like anybody was
Speaker 2: like me. So that's how I grew up. I grew
Speaker 2: up having to perform a sense of masculinity that it
Speaker 2: was not really innate or really came naturally to me,
Speaker 2: but I navigated in a way in which I was
Speaker 2: able to indulge in my femininity and in the beauty
Speaker 2: of being a queer kid. My mom used to give
Speaker 2: me flowers to bring to the teachers very often. It's
Speaker 2: a form of appreciation that we do in Latin America.
Speaker 3: My mom sent me to.
Speaker 2: School with my carnation in my hand, and when I
Speaker 2: got to school, I was confronted and told that I
Speaker 2: shouldn't go to class, that I had to go to
Speaker 2: see the superintendent la Dilectora de la Cuela. And you
Speaker 2: know that something is wrong, and they don't send you
Speaker 2: to see the superintendent if you are doing good. They
Speaker 2: send you to see them if it did something wrong.
Speaker 2: And there was my mom and Tho these two women,
Speaker 2: one was a psychologist and another one psychiatrist, and.
Speaker 3: They with very.
Speaker 2: Not very pedagogic ways. They explained to me that I
Speaker 2: shouldn't use the girls bathroom because I was using the
Speaker 2: girls bathroom.
Speaker 3: I thought that that was normal.
Speaker 2: I felt and always see myself as a girl, so
Speaker 2: are would going to the girls bathroom? So they explained
Speaker 2: to me that because of my gen italia, which is
Speaker 2: such a difficult conversation to have with the kids six
Speaker 2: years old, you know, it's just hard. I think that
Speaker 2: was the first time that I learned to negotiate, you know,
Speaker 2: with people. And I was like, you know what, I'm
Speaker 2: not gonna have find this. I'm just gonna do what
Speaker 2: they tell me and I stop using the girls bathroom.
Speaker 2: But I actually thought at the moment that they were
Speaker 2: all crazy. As a child, I was obsessed with UFOs.
Speaker 2: I'm from an area of Argentina that was very famous
Speaker 2: for people seeing UFOs. One day, we were driving with
Speaker 2: my father and my mother to my grandmother's house. We
Speaker 2: were driving and we passed through a railroad and my
Speaker 2: brother was like, that's where we found you.
Speaker 3: And I was like what he says, like, yeah, we
Speaker 3: found you there.
Speaker 2: You're not my brother, you know, we found you there,
Speaker 2: and you in race, you know, with us, but you're
Speaker 2: not part of this family.
Speaker 3: Which is like really really nasty.
Speaker 2: But you know, I guess as both brothers and sisters
Speaker 2: and siblings do, right, And I totally believed him, and
Speaker 2: it kind of made sense, right. I put to a
Speaker 2: two together and I was like, this is a known
Speaker 2: UFO area. I was found in a railroad. I am
Speaker 2: a girl, but I have a peepee and I can't
Speaker 2: use the girl's bathroom. Everything led me to believe that
Speaker 2: I was left in this earth by mistake, by a
Speaker 2: group of extraterrestrials. And I went to my grandma and
Speaker 2: I explained that to her, and my grandma, being the
Speaker 2: amazing woman that she was entertained, and she said that, yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe you are. I told her, like, maybe they'll come
Speaker 2: back for me. And that night we waited for the
Speaker 2: UFOs to come back to get me. So we waited,
Speaker 2: and of course nobody came. But she told me that
Speaker 2: we have to thrive with what we have a hand.
Speaker 2: And she told me that what I had was her
Speaker 2: and my family, and even if it wasn't my family,
Speaker 2: even if I was from another planet, I had to
Speaker 2: make the best out of it. It was a very
Speaker 2: important lesson of a very, very wise woman. I think
Speaker 2: it's important that we talked about the importance of giving good,
Speaker 2: healthy attention to our children, because if we don't give
Speaker 2: them good, healthy attention, somebody may try to give them
Speaker 2: a negative attention, like it was my case. I've been
Speaker 2: in therapy for more than ten years, and I believe
Speaker 2: that was the time that took me to come to
Speaker 2: terms with my history of abuse and also with my
Speaker 2: history of survival. Right because this book is not just
Speaker 2: about sexual abuse. It's about surviving sexual abuse. It's about
Speaker 2: finding ways to thrive as a young person. It is
Speaker 2: one phrase in the book that for me summarized a
Speaker 2: lot of the whole book that when we talk about
Speaker 2: sexual abuse and the person who sexually abused me, I
Speaker 2: say that he saved my life and.
Speaker 3: Ruin it forever.
Speaker 2: Right, because this person was the only person that was
Speaker 2: understanding me as a girl, that was entertaining my femininity
Speaker 2: in the terrible way that it happened. It was also
Speaker 2: life saving for me because I felt validated and recognized
Speaker 2: through the terrible actions that he committed. I think is
Speaker 2: important that we talk about sexual violence, and that we
Speaker 2: talk about sexual violence and children and young adults. So
Speaker 2: this book is a lot about that, but it's a
Speaker 2: lot about surviving and the beauty of surviving and the
Speaker 2: strength of surviving and thriving. So, after ten years of therapy,
Speaker 2: I found the courage to talk openly about my history
Speaker 2: because that history and the terribleness of some of the
Speaker 2: things that happened to me were a big part of
Speaker 2: my bad mental health, my need to use substances. So
Speaker 2: as part of my process of therapy, I came to
Speaker 2: understand that I could talk about these things that it
Speaker 2: was a hate to talk about these things. Finally, after
Speaker 2: so many years of therapy, I understood that it was
Speaker 2: not blame of my part, and all of these terrible
Speaker 2: things that happened to me that I was not to blame,
Speaker 2: which I did blame myself for many years. I decided
Speaker 2: not to soften any of the narrative. But also I
Speaker 2: decided that I didn't want to create a piece that
Speaker 2: was just about trauma, because I.
Speaker 3: Believe that.
Speaker 2: People in general, specifically cis gender people, have a tendency
Speaker 2: to fit said with the trauma and with the pain
Speaker 2: and with the terribornness of the lives of a transperson. Right,
Speaker 2: So I wanted to intertwine the trauma with the joy
Speaker 2: that I experienced. So at the same time that these
Speaker 2: bad things were happening to me, I was also experiencing joy,
Speaker 2: and those two things can live.
Speaker 3: At the same time.
Speaker 2: So that's why the book, I hope it translates as
Speaker 2: those two feelings living together and intertwine. All the letters
Speaker 2: that I wrote were really important for me. It was
Speaker 2: very important. Letters that is addressed to my grandmother is
Speaker 2: meant to describe the joy and the beauty that we
Speaker 2: can create when we support people, specifically in this case
Speaker 2: children who are different and is the story of a
Speaker 2: woman who decided to stand up for her grandchild. My
Speaker 2: grandmother loved tangos and Argentina. The tangos is, you know,
Speaker 2: part of the culture is so important, right. But my grandmother,
Speaker 2: who watch a show called Grandest Ballories del Tango. In
Speaker 2: the middle of the show, at a moment where I
Speaker 2: thought it was the most important for me, with the
Speaker 2: song that I like the most, I come out of
Speaker 2: her room with all her clothes and jewelry and I
Speaker 2: do a performance of a tango for them. So they
Speaker 2: stopped looking at the TV and they moved their heads
Speaker 2: to look at me. And the TV was just the music,
Speaker 2: but I was the show. I was doing the show.
Speaker 2: And I remember myself doing this at four or five, six,
Speaker 2: seven years old. That's one of the most beautiful memories
Speaker 2: of my grandmother, her just allowing me to be me right.
Speaker 2: And if more people will have allowed me to be
Speaker 2: me like she did with good intentions, maybe my life
Speaker 2: would have been a little bit better. But even though
Speaker 2: it wasn't better, it was a life and it's to
Speaker 2: be celebrated, and that's what we do.
Speaker 3: That's what we do as trans people.
Speaker 2: We have to celebrate ourselves when others don't. Trans kits
Speaker 2: are extremely underattacked with business of legislation throughout the whole country,
Speaker 2: where like trans kits are not supported in helper or
Speaker 2: like demands on sports for trans people right, and all
Speaker 2: of this is the result of this ideology that trans
Speaker 2: people are this new phenomenon. Trans people have been here forever.
Speaker 2: I've been here for fifty years. This is not new.
Speaker 2: The thing is that now trans kids are able to
Speaker 2: better understand themselves because like the Internet, because information. But
Speaker 2: in my time, I didn't have any of that. So
Speaker 2: I had to improvise, and I had to be myself
Speaker 2: and my feminine self and the little girl that I was.
Speaker 3: As I could.
Speaker 2: And that's what I did, and I think it informed
Speaker 2: a lot of my life till nowadays I find ways
Speaker 2: to do what I need to do to survive and thrive.
Speaker 2: I believe that storytelling is advocacy, and the advocacy is storytelling.
Speaker 2: The best way to create the change that we want
Speaker 2: in society and in our lives is by sharing our
Speaker 2: stories and asking for what we need. So this book
Speaker 2: is not just about stories. This book is screaming revolutionary
Speaker 2: ask to support trans young faults. So this book is
Speaker 2: an act of advocacy.
Speaker 3: On its own.
Speaker 1: That was Cecilia Gentily gentily passed away on February sixth
Speaker 1: at our home in Brooklyn. She had just turned fifty
Speaker 1: two years old. This episode was produced by Julia Rocha
Speaker 1: and edited by Daisy Contreras. It was mixed by Julia Caruso.
Speaker 1: The Latino USA team also includes Victoria Strada, Renaldo Lanos Junior,
Speaker 1: Andrea Lopez Cruzado, Lori mar Marquez, Marta Martinez, Mike Sargent,
Speaker 1: Nor Saudi, and Nancy Trujillo. Bennileei Ramirez is our co
Speaker 1: executive producer. Our director of Engineering is Stephanie Lebau. Our
Speaker 1: marketing manager is Luis Lunap. Our theme music was composed
Speaker 1: by Sanie Robinos. I'm your host and executive producer Maria
Speaker 1: Jojosa joined us again on our next episode and in
Speaker 1: the meantime look for us all of your social media.
Speaker 1: I'll see you there and remember off y Yes Joo.
Speaker 5: Latino USA is made possible in part by New York
Speaker 5: Women's Foundation. The New York Women's Foundation funding women leaders
Speaker 5: that build solutions in their communities and celebrating thirty years
Speaker 5: of radical generosity, the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur
Speaker 5: Foundation and the Ford Foundation, working with visionaries on the
Speaker 5: front lines of social change worldwide.
Speaker 1: From futuro Media and prx it's Latino USA. If I
Speaker 1: remembered my name, that would be good