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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Tre'vell Anderson originally planned to put their master's in journalism from Stanford to work by writing an extensive examination of the onscreen representations of trans and gender-expansive individuals, but it became clear the book would also be personal. Titled, We See Each Other: A Black, Trans Journey Through TV and Film, the introduction's first line reads, "I don't remember exactly when I was taught to hate myself." In the book, Anderson writes about their southern upbringing in the church, gender ignorance and transphobia, the ways in which they played with their gender expression without sounding off alarms, and how queer characters in the media invoked a sense of wonder about what life could be as someone both out and proud.

They revisit films like 1995's To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar and more recent work like Orange is the New Black, heralded for its portrayal of a trans inmate, Sophia Burset, played by actress Laverne Cox. Tre'vell Anderson is an entertainment journalist and co-host of two podcasts, What a Day and FANTI. They also have a talk tonight at Barnes & Noble on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn at 6:30 PM to discuss We See Each Other: A Black Trans Journey Through TV and Film. Tre'vell, welcome to All Of It.

Tre'vell Anderson: Thanks so much for having me.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, we want to get you in on this conversation. Who was the first trans person you saw on screen? What did you think of the way they were portrayed? How do you think representations of trans and gender-expansive communities have expanded on screen in recent decades? Share your thoughts with us, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or you can also shout out on social media @AllOfItWNYC. As I said, in the introduction, you mentioned you first thought this was just going to be a very straightforward book about trans images on screen. When did the shift happen?

Tre'vell Anderson: The shift happened while I was watching Boys Don't Cry, which if you have not seen that movie or you haven't seen it in a while, it's very tragic. It's based on the real-life killing of Brandon Teena, who was a trans man who was violated in unspeakable ways. Hilary Swank plays that character in the movie. Watching that film, it just triggered so much for me as a trans person moving through the world, trying to exist and find love and all of that other stuff. I was like, "You know what? I think that that personal impact of these images hopefully will make people think differently about what they're seeing on screen and then turn into how we treat each other in our everyday lives."

That's the point in which the book shifted and it became a lot more personal. I was not planning on putting all my business out there, but it seemed most appropriate in service of this conversation about the paradox that is trans visibility.

Alison: How did you take care of yourself when you were writing this book, as you were excavating a lot of personal stuff and a lot of history?

Tre'vell Anderson: I didn't.

Alison Stewart: Oh.

Tre'vell Anderson: I know, real bad. I didn't. I actually wrote the book in a very abbreviated amount of time. I won't tell people that. I just had to get through it, but once I made the decision to lean into my own personal story and my own personal journey alongside this history of representation, so many things clicked a lot easier. The original intention was supposed to be more of a clinical approach to trans history, just documenting the moments. It shifted after I was like, "You know what, let's talk a little bit about my own personal story and the impact that these images have had, not only on me, but also on other trans folks."

Alison Stewart: You write about your grandmother who helped raise you in Charleston, South Carolina. You describe yourself as her shadow at one point, and your grandmother founded a church in her own living room, and you write about learning to perform in church. How so?

Tre'vell Anderson: Well, anybody who's ever been in a church, you know that there are roles. Everybody's got roles, the ushers do this, the church mothers do this. Everybody has their role, but for me, I also learned so much about gender in church. My grandmother was one of those women who was not allowed to preach in the church that she came into her calling. She left and created her own church as a means of manifesting that call she feel like she had, but in so many ways, it still had these structures of men do this and they show up in this way, women do this and they show up in this way.

For me, there was just always some conflict because I was like, "I don't--" Didn't have the language for it at that time, to be clear, but I was like, "I like a little bit of what the women do, and I like a little bit of what the men are doing," but because things are often so rigid-

Alison: Binary.

Tre'vell Anderson: -yes, and super binary, there was no interplay or no crossing between the two. It's interesting, I still consider myself to be a church queen. I love God and all that other stuff, like they say, but in thinking back to the beginnings of my journey and where I learned to hate myself, the truth of my experience, it started there.

Alison Stewart: You write in the book, "Preacher man was a nickname I dreaded mainly because while everyone just knew I'd follow my granny's footsteps, I knew that wasn't my ministry, not like that at least, but I got the name because of my abilities, or so I remember." When you think of your ministry, do you think of your journalism a little bit? Not to be grandiose, but is that it?

Tre'vell Anderson: Other people have said that, have made that comparison, have said that despite me not being in a pulpit per se, that the work that I do, that the space that I take up in the various ways that I do so end up being a sermon of some sort, a ministry of some sort, and I take it, that's fine. My goal is really just to allow more folks who look and live and exist like me to see themselves and to be able to tell their own stories in the ways that make most sense to them.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Tre'vell Anderson. The name of the book is We See Each Other: A Black, Trans Journey Through TV and Film. It's so interesting, because it's your story, but then also you put on your historian hat, you take us all the way back to vaudeville, and you wrote, "By the turn of the century, in the US, female impersonation was a legitimate career path." What was something, if you look back, that was truly problematic about these performances, and what, if anything, was helpful to get us to where we are today?

Tre'vell Anderson: Well, I think when we talk about trans representation, we have to go back to the history. Oftentimes, it feels like other people believe that we as a community dropped onto the face of the earth with Laverne Cox in Orange is the New Black, as if we are some new creation, but there is a very long history, and by going back to vaudeville, in particular, in which you had men dressing up as women for comedic purposes largely, we can begin to see how those early images on stage in vaudeville filtered into the earliest moving images on screen and now have manifested in terms of the various violences that Black trans people, in particular, are experiencing every day.

While, yes, it was great for introducing, perhaps, what gender play and gender transgression could look like back then, the way that it has evolved since then is not great, to put it plainly.

Alison Stewart: Understood. Then you also bring in the idea that specifically Black comics have often dressed as women whether it's Flip Wilson as Geraldine or Tyler Perry as Madea. How does race then complicate this conversation about [crosstalk]

Tre'vell Anderson: Ooh, tell me. Listen.

Alison Stewart: Dig in.

Tre'vell Anderson: Here's the thing. We as Black folks are dealing with a lot in this country, in this world, and I think when it comes to gender play, when it comes to-- Tyler Perry is basically the RuPaul of the church. Come on now, but we don't look at Tyler Perry as Madea as a drag performance, but it is, and it's interesting to me that even as we see drag culture being banned in various ways across the country, these men, and the ones I care about are the Black men, who have become famous for playing some of these women characters, aren't engaged in those conversations. That's interesting to me.

I think part of it, to get to the question about how race plays into it, we are dealing and navigating with a number of other isms and phobias, as I like to call them, and a number of things that we are navigating to where we are often concerned about the emasculation of the Black man. We think of those types of characters and this idea that Black men seemingly have to put on a dress in some capacity to become "mainstream successful."

That complicates so much for us because we're worried about not emasculating the Black man, not realizing that while focusing on that piece of the conversation, we don't get to talk about the ways in which many of these characters make fun of and demean Black women, and how they then manifest as violence for Black trans people, particularly Black trans women in Black trans films.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a couple calls. Francis is calling in from Forest Hills. Hi, Francis. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Francis: Oh, hi. There are two films from the early 1970s I'd like to recommend. One is a British film called I Want What I Want, and the other was a film version of The Christine Jorgensen Story, although there was one scene in that film that comes across as homophobic. I thought your listeners might want to be interested in seeing it because the term transsexual was coined from Miss Jorgensen, so it's an important part of trans history. I thought your listeners might like to know about those two films.

Tre'vell Anderson: Absolutely.

Alison Stewart: Thank you for calling in. You mentioned, obviously, Christine Jorgensen is known to be the first, I don't know if celebrity is the right word, but first person to undergo sex reassignment surgery that became really well known and was in magazines. You focus on two other women, Carlett Brown, correct? Am I saying that right?

Tre'vell Anderson: Yes.

Alison Stewart: And Ava Betty Brown, who are referred to as the Black Jorgensens in the press. Tell us a little bit more about them.

Tre'vell Anderson: I'm so glad the caller brought up Christine Jorgensen, because in relation to the question you asked before about how race complicates these things, because Christine Jorgensen did what she did and was the type of, for lack of a better word, celebrity that she was. Any Black trans person who maybe they were interested in engaging with the medical establishment, maybe they weren't, every time you find them covered in a lot of the archives, a lot of the press, all of the references are back to Christine Jorgensen.

They don't even get the beauty of being their full selves. They have to always be considered a Black Christine Jorgensen, which goes to show again the ways that race complicates things and makes it just a different experience for Black people who are also trans. Love those suggestions though. Those are great suggestions for me to check out.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Joel from Brooklyn. Hi, Joel, thanks for calling in.

Joel: Yes. Hi, I just wanted to mention the documentary Southern Comfort, which won the jury prize award at Sundance in 2000. That is a story of a woman who transitions into a man and then dies of ovarian cancer. It's a beautiful story, and full disclosure, I did the soundtrack for the film.

Tre'vell Anderson: Oh, wow.

Alison Stewart: Oh, wow, Joel. Thank you for calling in and sharing that. My guest is Tre'vell Anderson. The name of the book is We See Each Other: A Black, Trans Journey Through TV and Film. I want to give you a little bit of time to read a little bit from your book. If you could set it up and read a few pages, that would be terrific.

Tre'vell Anderson: Yes. I'm going to read a few bits from the introduction, to give people an idea of where this book started for me. I first thought about writing a book about trans images on screen in 2015. I was working at the Los Angeles Times as a reporter in the entertainment section, which they call Calendar. Though my main responsibilities involved covering movies, by this time I'd already carved out my own much more expansive beat, diversity in Hollywood with a focus on Black and queer film. Months before the Season 2 premiere of Transparent, I had this idea to create a fairly comprehensive timeline of trans representation on screen.

I forget the exact thing that got me interested in this project, but it was the same year that Caitlyn Jenner became perhaps the most famous trans person in the world after Laverne Cox's historic Time cover ushered in the "transgender tipping point," and before actress Daniela Vega, of Una Mujer Fantastica, became the first openly transgender person in history to be a presenter at the academy awards ceremony. I remember searching for a resource like this online and coming up empty. Every time I came up empty, the one person I knew would have some insight was Nick Adams [unintelligible 00:13:21] director of trans representation.

For over two decades, Nick's been silently steering Hollywood in his professional capacity, advising on scripts, supporting casting efforts, and holding folks accountable for their foolishness. When I reached out to him, he provided me with a list of what seemed like every trans person or character who had a meaningful presence on screen, films, and television shows, scripted and otherwise. Some of them I was super familiar with like Isis King's reality TV stints, or that singular episode of The Jeffersons, titled, Once a Friend, where one of George's Navy buddies has transitioned.

Others like Ed Woods Glen or Glenda from 1953 or The World According to Garp from 1982 were news and new to me. With this information, I created the timeline, one where audiences can toggle options to only show them films, documentaries, reality shows, or scripted series. It was and is one of my favorite things that I helped bring to life, largely because I found it to be a rejoinder to sentiments that made it seem like trans people dropped out of the sky when Lavern's historic Time cover was released in 2014.

That felt like and still feels like the prevailing idea, robbing us as a community of our history and providing justification for the ignorant and hateful to further shun, oppress, and disappear us. Because it's a lot easier to look the other way when we're discriminated against and killed if you feel like we're not your neighbor or your local nail tech, and are just figments of a Hollywood writers' room. "Somebody needs to put this in a book," I thought casually at the time.

Fast forward a couple of years, during which my gender journey Bankhead bounced its way further toward my truth and I filmed my interview for Sam Feder's pioneering documentary on transmedia representation, Disclosure, which is on Netflix, all of which I detailed throughout the pages to come. The thought came back to me as I contemplated a host of ideas for what my first book could be. By this point, trans folks were even more visible in film and television than when I made that additional timeline, and my relationship to those images had changed. Having now grown into my transness, building a more meaningful relationship to and with the images of my community feels important, even vital.

Alison Stewart: That's Tre'vell Anderson reading from their book, We See Each Other: A Black, Trans Journey Through TV and Film. If people could watch one film this weekend, what would you want them to watch?

Tre'vell Anderson: I'm going to tell you to watch Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, starring the iconic Lady Chablis.

Alison Stewart: Tre'vell Anderson will have a book talk tonight at 6:30 PM at Barnes & Noble on Atlantic Avenue. They'll be in conversation with--

Tre'vell Anderson: Fatima Jamal, one of my loves, love her.

Alison Stewart: Filmmaker, model, writer, and artist Fatima Jamal, that is at Barnes & Noble Atlantic Avenue tonight at 6:30 PM. Tre'vell, thank you so much for coming to the studio, sharing your book, and reading from it.

Tre'vell Anderson: Thank you so much for having me.

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