Transcripts

Hi! I got some logistical wires crossed on my end and I'm gonna release this week's planned episode next week instead. Stay tuned-- it'll be worth the wait.  Also, shh, later this week we're soft-launching our new social media stuff, so expect to hear more about that soon. Maybe I'll even drop a little note in the feed about that.  xo

Today, an episode of Queer The Table, a show that describes itself as about "the joyful, messy, radical magic that happens in spaces where queerness and food intersect." I met host Nico Wisler when they were working on an episode of the podcast Bodies, but they reached out recently to share this amazing interview they did with Black trans activist Ianne Fields Stewart of The Okra Project. You'll hear how the project got started, what they're doing to keep supporting Black trans people during COVID, and how they're trying to leverage their suddenly much-larger platform while being mindful of their own capacity, which is NOT EASY. Take a listen. ---------- Quick programming note-- in TWO weeks, we'll be putting out our first non-English-language episode, a collab with a new Latinx oral history project, and then in FOUR weeks we'll have a brand new in-house produced episode from the Tretter Trans Oral History project! This new episode focuses on trans Southerners and their struggles to achieve housing justice, even though "home" is a fraught and sometimes even traumatizing idea. We have such a powerful set of voices, plus some genuinely incredible radical trans southern music, and we're so stoked to share. So be on the lookout for that soon! ------ We're Transcripts, a project of Tretter Transgender Oral History Project, a project of the University of Minnesota Libraries. Keep listening for more from us-- we're about to launch some big things, including virtual community events, new social media, and more! So as always, please rate and review, share with a friend, and help us grow. Talk soon.

Welcome to a new administration, for those of us in the United States.  With that in mind, it feels like today is the right day bring you a piece that focuses on thinking transness across borders. This episode is called "They / Them," and it's from Fil Corbitt's new show The Wind. I love love love these deeply felt conversations about language beyond the gender binary in English, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Portuguese and Hebrew. I learned a lot, and I think you will too.  We're Transcripts, a project of Tretter Transgender Oral History Project, a project of the University of Minnesota Libraries. Keep listening for more from us-- we're about to launch some big things, including virtual community events, new social media (!!!), and more!  So as always, please rate and review, share with a friend, and help us grow. See you next time. 

What a time to be gay and alive. I decided not to post yesterday on our regular every-other-Wednesday schedule because honestly, I didn't know what to say. But I definitely don't want to go another two weeks without bringing you this trailer for Transition of Style, a podcast that takes fashion seriously as a trans way of forming our identities. I really love how host Phil aka Corrine thinks about style as a way to unpack gender-- it reminds me of what the scholar Jules Gill-Peterson says about gender as an aesthetic form, which is a whole conversation that maybe I'll ask Jules to come talk about one day. But! Here's the trailer for Transition of Style, from Phil aka Corrine. Thanks so much for listening-- this is Transcripts, a project of the University of Minnesota Libraries, bringing you both original content and unique voices from across the trans audio landscape. Happy new year and stay safe out there.

Today's episode is called "Parable and Preppers," from the new podcast Queers at the End of the World. This is show is by Nina McQuown and Nat Mesnard, and it's a show about "nerdy queer and trans folks prepping for the apocalypse [...] by talking about books, games, shows, movies and comics."  This conversation really takes you on a journey: from a bunker is Southwest Virginia waiting out Y2K, to an exploration of cross-dressing as survival in Octavia Butler, to how to have your Go-bag ready. This is going to be our last episode in 2020, and thanks to each of you for being part of what gave me joy this year. And thanks, too, to the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project, a project of the University of Minnesota Libraries. Have a great new year, and we'll talk to you in 2021. -------- You can find out more about Queers at the End of the World @queerworldspodcast on Instagram, by going to queerworlds.com, or by emailing queerworldspodcast@gmail.com. The incredible show art is by Ellie Yanigasawa, @elliethecosmicjelly on Instagram. 

This week: a clip of an episode that Mara Lazer made for a mini series called "e4e", embodied 4 embodied. In conversations with trans viewers and makers of porn, Mara investigates porn as a healing portal for trans people seeking embodiment. Find Mara on Twitter @LazerMara You can listen to the whole episode on The Heart's website or  by searching "stop living on video" by The Heart wherreverrrr you listen to podcasssstsss  (bonus consonants added by Mara, lol) "stop living on video" was written, sound designed & produced by Mara Lazer, edited by Nicole Kelly & Phoebe Unter, with editorial advisement from Sharon Mashihi and Ari Mejia. ---------- Transcripts is a production of the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project, a program of the University of Minnesota Libraries. We're currently funded by Virginia Humanities. You can learn more about us at bit.ly/transcriptspod. Thanks for listening <3

You might have noticed that we took a short break last week-- we'll be back in your feeds this upcoming Wednesday with an amazing piece by friend of the show and award-winning trans audio producer Mara Lazer. In the meantime, we wanted just to let you know that féi hernandez, the illustrator who did our AMAZING show art, has a new book of poems out called Hood Criatura, and there's a virtual launch party TONIGHT (if you're hearing this on December 5th). Whether you can make the party or not, I HIGHLY recommend that you go check out their work at their website, feihernandez.com. Hope you have a great rest of your weekend! -------- Press description of Hood Criatura: In this stunning debut collection, Inglewood-raised poet féi hernandez weaves an intricate latticework of stories in the betwixt and between. Hood Criatura explores the intersections of trans and queer resilience, citizenship and belonging, and resistance against gentrification that threatens both city and the body. hernandez’s poems take us through a coming-of-age story that delineates the existential wars of gender, race, sexuality, and im/migration, as well as the pains and joys that bind communities, family, and love. In a world that seeks to simplify and reduce the self to binary boundaries, Hood Criatura serves as a reminder of what it means to exist unbounded, to claim all of the multitudes within us that make us who we are. Masterfully juxtaposed in myriad poetic forms throughout the book, these poems are a love letter to all of us who exist within liminal spaces and who dare to claim one’s true self. ------------- The Transcripts podcast is a project of the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project at the University of Minnesota Libraries. We're funded by the TAWANI Foundation
, Virginia Humanities, and the Minnesota Humanities Innovation Lab. 

This week, we bring you a small show that's doing an incredible job bringing the voices of incarcerated people, including trans and gender non-conforming people, to the airwaves. It's called Kite Line, and it's based at WFHB Community Radio in South Central Indiana. I love finding shows that are doing crucial justice work in so-called "red states." No one, and no place, is disposable.  --------------- Original show notes: Our episode this week is a conversation between Rojas and Cyrus, two advocates with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners.  CCWP is an organization that exists, in their words, to “monitor and challenge the abusive conditions inside California women’s prisons. We fight for the release of women and trans prisoners. We support women and trans people in their process of re-entering the community.” Rojas and Cyrus address the conditions of transgender and gender non-conforming prisoners, or GNC prisoners, in the California prison system. Subject to increased surveillance and retaliation from both cops on the outside and correctional officers on the inside, Rojas speaks out about what they were subjected to while within the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation- or CDCR. You can find out more about the California Coalition for Women Prisoners at: womenprisoners.org ---------------- The Transcripts podcast is a project of the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project at the University of Minnesota Libraries. We're funded by the TAWANI Foundation
, Minnesota Humanities Innovation Lab, and Virginia Humanities. Check out our website at bit.ly/transcriptspod, and don't forget to rate and review us. Thank you!

This week, an audio meditation that my friend Arlie Adlington and I made about trans care and support across borders. We produced this short piece earlier in the pandemic for Jacobin's podcast The Dig and their series Antibody: thanks so much to everyone at The Dig, and especially Liza Yaeger, for allowing us to share this with you all.  Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you're feeling able to participate in acts of solidarity and care this week, whatever that means to you. The Transcripts podcast is a project of the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project at the University of Minnesota Libraries. We're funded by the TAWANI Foundation, the Minnesota Humanities Innovation Lab, and Virginia Humanities.

This week, we're presenting a pilot podcast episode from the Southwest Virginia LGBTQ+ (Plus) Oral History Project, which is based in Roanoke, Virginia, a small city in the Appalachian foothills. Gregory Samantha Rosenthal, a dedicated oral historian and public scholar, is training queer and trans people to collect stories from their peers and elders, and this podcast is derived from those oral histories. I love these voices and I love the spirit in which they're collected. The tape is sometimes gutting, but it's not without bright spots-- especially listen for the tape of "the condom lady" 20 minutes in.  The Transcripts podcast is a project of the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project at the University of Minnesota Libraries. We're funded by the TAWANI Foundation
 and the Minnesota Humanities Innovation Lab. I'm producer Cassius Adair. 

Another installment in our Fall Anti-Fascist Radio series, this time from the Asheville-based show The Final Straw Radio. I'm so heartened by the work that audio producers are putting in so we can hear the voices of incarcerated trans people-- doing an interview with someone who's in prison takes some different methods, and I'm really grateful that we get to share this interview with you. (PS-- there are two interviews in the full episode, we cut out the second one for time, but I encourage you to listen to both on the website for the original audio!) Thanks so much, and please rate and review if you'd like to help us out! And donate to your local mutual aid fund.  ********* Original Show Notes: First you’ll hear Jennifer Rose. Jennifer, formerly known as Jennifer Gann, is a member of the Fire Ant Collective which just released it’s 6th issue and is due to put out another very soon. She is a trans woman who came up in the southern California punk scene, became politicized and began organizing inside of prison since the late 1990’s. Read the transcription below. You can learn more about Jennifer Rose’s case by visiting BabyGirlGann.noblogs.org where you can find out how to donate to her legal fund. You can read issues #1-5 of Fire Ant Journal up at Bloomington ABC’s website & #6 at Blue Ridge ABC’s website. And you can write to Jennifer at: Jennifer Rose E – 23852 Salinas Valley State Prison D3-1250 P.O. Box 1050 Soledad, CA 93960 ********* The Transcripts podcast is a project of the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project at the University of Minnesota Libraries. We're funded by the TAWANI Foundation
 and the Minnesota Humanities Innovation Lab. Find out more about us at bit.ly/transcriptspod. 

Next up in our "trans anti-fascist Fall podcast series," an episode of Rustbelt Abolition Radio about how queer and trans struggles are linked to abolishing prison and detention centers. It's difficult stuff, but timely and important. Some of this audio is hard to hear: you can use the episode transcription to follow along or as an alternative method of engaging this material.  Quick note: since this episode was first released, some things have changed-- Dr. Treva Ellison now works at Pomona College, and the scholar-activist Tourmaline was referred to in this episode by a former name.  This episode contains descriptions of physical violence and abuse in detention. -------------- ORIGINAL SHOW NOTES: In this episode we examine the relationships between carcerality, gendered and sexual violence on the one hand, and on the other: queer and trans liberation and the abolitionist horizon. Josue Saldivar and Karolina Lopez from the Arizona-based organization Mariposas Sin Fronteras discuss the ways that migrants fleeing heteropatriarchal and transphobic oppression in their home countries are re-subjected to this abuse through the gendered and sexual operations of the U.S. carceral state and its militarized borders. We also speak with abolitionist scholar and activist, Treva Ellison, who examines the ways in which racial capitalism has continuously reproduced queer criminality, and how queer abolition may fundamentally shift our understanding of the geographies of carcerality. To learn more about Mariposas Sin Fronteras and ways to support their work, click here. Image credit: Abby Gordon ----------- The Transcripts podcast is a project of the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project at the University of Minnesota Libraries. We're funded by the TAWANI Foundation
 and the Minnesota Humanities Innovation Lab. You can learn more about us at bit.ly/transcriptspod. Thanks for listening. 

We're gonna make it through this fall, y'all.  To inspire us to keep up the good fight, this episode kicks off a short series of shows about combatting fascism from a trans perspective. First up, from History is Gay, a Nazi-fighter from a century ago. (Note: this episode is slightly abridged for time.)  ------------ Original show notes: Claude Cahun's name might not be well known, but their work as an artist has been hugely influential in the lives of many Western pop culture icons (David Bowie, for example). But the line between life and art wasn't always so clear for Claude Cahun and their life partner Marcel Moore. Whether it was fucking with gender norms in self portraiture or fucking with Nazis during World War II, Claude never did things in a straightforward manner. We'll say it again, "Nazi punks, f*ck off!" Now with surrealism! Longer notes and some extremely classic trans images here.  -------------- The Transcripts podcast is a project of the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project at the University of Minnesota Libraries. We're funded by the TAWANI Foundation
 and the Minnesota Humanities Innovation Lab. 

This week: an amazing piece of trans experimental audio, plus a big announcement during the end credits.  ************** Slow-Burn Seeking, is a short work of audio fiction inspired by text from dozens of 80's & 90's era personal ads drawn from an archive of the On Our Backs women's erotica magazine. Using only remixed text from these ads and from their own contemporary dating profile, Ariana Martinez composed this heart-to-heart conversation between a lovesick queer, nonbinary person still finding their footing and a benevolent queer ghost (voiced by Casey Orozco-Poore). This re-imagined conversation makes space for more expansive readings of gender than were present in the original archival material and lays bare some of the questions and anxieties that come with seeking love and physical intimacy as a nonbinary person.  This work originally aired on March 17, 2020 on BBC Radio 4’s Short Cuts with support from Falling Tree Productions.  **************** The Transcripts podcast is a project of the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project at the University of Minnesota Libraries. We're funded by the TAWANI Foundation
 and the Minnesota Humanities Innovation Lab. 

On today's Transcripts, we're bringing you an episode of Tuck Woodstock's show Gender Reveal. Recently, Tuck's been on the front lines of the uprising in Portland, Oregon, reporting on racial justice in the midst of tear gas and police abuse and federal agents snatching people up in vans. But in their other life, Tuck is an amazing podcaster and overall good trans media-maker. We're especially excited to share this epsiode because Transcripts is about centering trans activism and its many histories, and you'll get to hear Tuck's interview with the amazing Alyssa Pariah (she/her), a Black trans activist and one of the smartest liberation thinkers out there.  ----------- Content warning from Tuck: "today's episode includes frequent discussion of murder, police brutality, and death, as well as brief explicit descriptions of sex. So please take care of yourself." ------------ This is Transcripts, bringing you both original programming and a round-up of the best and brightest in trans audio. We're a program of the University of Minnesota Libraries. To learn more about us, go to bit.ly/transcriptspod. See you in two weeks for more trans activist brilliance. Thanks for listening!