La Venano (Cristina Ortiz Rodríguez)

About La Venano:

• Born José Antonio, in Almería in 1964, La Veneno noted in her memoirs that from an early age she was different from other children. She soon realized that she was transgender, and she suffered assaults and ill-treatment by relatives and neighbors who could not accept her gender identity. La Veneno showed early signs of talent in the fashion world and began working as a model. La Veneno was one of the first transgender women to become widely known in Spain, and has since been recognized as a pioneering trans icon.

• Her life changed in 1996, when she was discovered by journalist and TV presenter, Pepe Navarro. She was cast for numerous collaborations in his late night adult theme chat shows and she went on to secure a career in daytime television gossip programs. However, La Veneno’s career was interrupted in 2003, when she served a three-year prison sentence for arson and fraud. She was prosecuted for deliberately setting fire to her apartment in order to claim on the insurance policy.

• On leaving prison, suffering obvious physical deterioration, she returned to daytime television. In 2010 she suffered from bulimia and depression, and took a short break from television. In May 2013, she appeared on the popular television program Sálvame Deluxe, where she presented her latest boyfriend to the world. However, a few months later, the 23-year-old toy boy disappeared with La Veneno’s life savings of more than 60,000 euros.

• In October 2016, La Veneno bounced back again, when she launched her long-awaited autobiography, Hooker or Saint (Memories of La Veneno). In her memoirs, which sold out immediately, she confessed to having sex with famous celebrities, politicians and footballers. Approximately one month after publication of the book, La Veneno was found in her flat bleeding severely from a head wound. She was rushed to hospital but never recovered after surgery. Rumors soon began to circulate that La Veneno was killed because she revealed her secret sex sessions with important personalities. The authorities said that her death was not treated as suspicious.

• In April 2019, a plaque was unveiled to honor her in the Parque del Oeste A week later, the plaque was stolen. In October 2020, the City Council of Madrid announced that the plaque would be replaced after many popular petitions were submitted. It was placed on December 4.

Resources:

Film:

Veneno (TV Series): “Based on the memoir by Valeria Vegas “Not A Whore, Not A Saint: The Memories of La Veneno,” Spanish creators and directors Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi bring the most beloved transgender icon of the 90s, Cristina Ortiz (La Veneno) to 2020.”

Chicago LGTBQIA+ Resources:

• https://queery.org/
• https://www.projectfiercechicago.com/

Larry Kramer

About Larry Kramer:

• Laurence David Kramer (June 25, 1935 – May 27, 2020) was an American playwright, author, film producer, public health advocate, and LGBT rights activist. He began his career rewriting scripts for Columbia Pictures, which led him to London, where he worked with United Artists. While in London he wrote the screenplay for the film Women in Love (1969) and received an Academy Award nomination for his work.

• “In 1978, Kramer introduced a controversial and confrontational style in his novel Faggots, which earned mixed reviews and emphatic denunciations from elements within the gay community for Kramer’s portrayal of what he characterized as shallow, promiscuous gay relationships in the 1970s.”

• In 1981 he was a founder of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, the first service organization for H.I.V.-positive people, though his fellow directors effectively kicked him out a year later for his aggressive approach.

• He was then a founder of a more militant group, Act Up (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), whose street actions demanding a speedup in AIDS drugs research and an end to discrimination against gay men and lesbians severely disrupted the operations of government offices, Wall Street and the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

Below is a list of his Bibliography and works for more resources:

Drama

Sissies’ Scrapbook, aka Four Friends (1973)
A Minor Dark Age (1973)
The Normal Heart (1985)
Just Say No, A Play about a Farce (1988)
The Furniture of Home (1989)
The Destiny of Me (1992)

Fiction

The American People Volume 1, Search for My Heart (2015)
The American People: Volume 2, The Brutality of Fact (2020)

Nonfiction

Reports from the Holocaust: The Making of an AIDS Activist (1989, revised 1994)
The Tragedy of Today’s Gays (2005)

Screenplays

Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush (1967) – Writer (additional dialogue)
Women in Love (1969) – Writer/producer
Lost Horizon (1973) – Writer
The Normal Heart (2014) – Writer

Speeches

The Tragedy of Today’s Gays, November 10, 2004

Podcast: https://makinggayhistory.com/podcast/larry-kramer/

Audre Lorde (Audrey Geraldine Lorde; February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992)

About Audre:

• Audre Lorde was an American writer, feminist, womanist, librarian, and civil rights activist. She was a self-described “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” who dedicated her life and her work to confronting and addressing injustices of racism, sexism, classism, capitalism, heterosexism, and homophobia.

• “Lorde earned her BA from Hunter College and MLS from Columbia University. She was a librarian in the New York public schools throughout the 1960s. She had two children with her husband, Edwin Rollins, a white, gay man, before they divorced in 1970. In 1972, Lorde met her long-time partner, Frances Clayton. She also began teaching as poet-in-residence at Tougaloo College. Her experiences with teaching and pedagogy—as well as her place as a Black, queer woman in white academia—went on to inform her life and work.

• Indeed, Lorde’s contributions to feminist theory, critical race studies, and queer theory intertwine her personal experiences with broader political aims. Lorde articulated early on the intersections of race, class, and gender in canonical essays such as “The Master’s Tools Will Not Dismantle the Master’s House.”

• Lorde’s honors and awards included a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. A professor of English at John Jay College and Hunter College, Lorde was poet laureate of New York from 1991-1992. Warrior Poet (2006), by Alexis De Veaux, is the first full-length biography of Audre Lorde.

The Audre Lorde Project: https://alp.org/

Published Works:

A Burst Of Light
The Black Unicorn
Between Ourselves
Cables To Rage
The Cancer Journals
The First Cities
From A Land Where Other People Live
I Am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities
Lesbian Party: An Anthology
Need: A Chorale For Black Women Voices
The New York Head Shop And Museum
Our Dead Behind Us: Poems
Sister Outsider: Essays And Speeches
The Marvelous Arithmetics Of Distance: Poems
Undersong: Chosen Poems Old And New
Uses Of The Erotic: The Erotic As Power
Woman Poet—The East
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name