RI DaSēr K"Truthout: In the chapter on the AIDS crisis, Sharyn Grayson talks about how Black trans women were actively prevented by a Black gay service organization from accessing resources for HIV in the early years of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Honestly, it shocked me to learn of this blatant exclusion at the hands of Black gay men, not just white service providers. And I think this is the potential of anecdotal history, that you learn something you didn’t know before, and this opens doors to making other connections.
Caro De Robertis: I’m so glad you brought that up, because the experience of Black trans women in the AIDS crisis — from the transphobia they faced in queer spaces to their role in spearheading change — was one of the elements I learned about, too, during the course of this project. I didn’t know before that Black and Latinx trans women had been pressured to detransition in order to access services. And that leaders like Sharyn Grayson and Adela Vázquez responded by blazing trails for trans women to find not only services, but dignity, and to build movements of their own.
How could I have been a queer activist for 25 years, and not known that history? That’s just one example of how bearing witness to these remarkable people’s personal stories was a conduit to expanding my deeper understanding of who we are, of our inheritance."
