Pérez travels across America, including to several southern states, to interview and document trans and gender-variant lives on camera. The interviewees act as storytellers, detailing their experiences as artists, entrepreneurs, HIV advocates, veterans, and more.…
Arts+Culture
Señorita Cinema: Meet the Queer Filmmaker Behind the World’s Only All-Latina Film Festival
Posted on July 7, 2017Texas filmmaker Stephanie Saint Sanchez used to work at a mom-and-pop video rental store for many years. She would wander through the aisles and look at the covers of the shop’s nearly 70,000 movies, mesmerized by the fact that each film started off as a small idea in someone’s mind—and, for better or for worse, they persevered and saw their idea through to the end. …
Queer Qomedy: Texas Trans Comedian Carina Magyar Stands Up for Equality
Posted on July 5, 2017Carina Magyar, a transgender standup comedian, uses jokes to educate and inform the masses. “I found my voice onstage, incorporating my transition and identity as a woman into my stand-up comedy,” she explains. And the message Magyar pushes the most when she performs? That she is a normal person with a normal life with normal problems.…
From Bus to Brick: TOMO Mags Builds Community Through Independent Print Magazines
Posted on June 28, 2017Walking into TOMO Mags on West Alabama Street in Houston’s Montrose district, you encounter the city’s only magazine shop that is both an artistic incubator and community sanctuary at once. Co-founded by husbands Vico Tadeo and Keiwing Chong, TOMO Mags offers a range of niche magazines—including local publications on architecture, photography, and design—that you cannot typically find in corporate hubs like Barnes & Noble.…
Southern Fried Queer Pride: A Home-cooked Celebration of Arts and Activism
Posted on June 26, 2017SFQP is described as being “cooked in the oils of our forequeers of the Compton Cafeteria Riots, the Stonewall Riots, ACT UP, and the many radical uprisings of years past.” The collective holds close to the political identity of being queer and bases their efforts in arts and advocacy. SFQP strives to provide an intersectional, radically inclusive festival along with events throughout the year.…
Pride from the Slight Right Side: A Queer Moderate’s Take
Posted on June 23, 2017Because of my background doused in conservatism, Pride was and still is somewhat of a foreign concept to me. I never imagined taking a liking to its theatrics, provocative nature, and pure eccentricity.…
Jotxs y Recuerdos: Podcast Archives Queer History in the Rio Grande Valley
Posted on June 14, 2017What was it like for LGBTQ people before photos could be readily shared and made visible on social media? Their pictures—which were often the only proof of them living their queer truths—must have meant something so much more. What were their lives like and what did it take to survive when it was dangerous to be out? Rio Grande Valley native Alexandra Nichole Salazar Vasquez explores those questions and more in her podcast, 'Jotxs y Recuerdos.'…