Latina Lesbian Pride 

Carla Trujillo was born in Las Vegas, New Mexico and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the editor of Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About. The anthology won the LAMBDA Book Award for Best Lesbian Anthology and the Out/Write Vanguard Award. Her novel, What Night Brings, published by Curbstone Press in April 2003, won the Miguel Mármol prize, the Paterson Fiction Prize, and the Latino Literary Foundation Latino Book Award. Trujillo is currently the director of the Graduate Diversity Program at U.C. Berkeley.

American Sexuality: Are there any specific cultural differences in the coming out process for Latina lesbians versus Euro-American lesbians?

Carla Trujillo: About twenty-two years ago Cherrie Moraga and I, as an example, started a group here on the U.C. Berkeley campus called “La Familia,” which helps Chicano/Latino students with coming out issues and support . . . and what we found out was that students were very afraid to come out to their families because they felt their families would disown them—and many families did. . . .

There is a student I know whose mother was very resistant to get her into counseling, and [then] she got into counseling with an inappropriate counselor who thought she had a major illness, which she didn’t. She suffered tremendously because of it and her mother has finally come around. . . . We see some students who have parents who perhaps are more aware of the issues around sexuality and are a little more supportive; maybe they’ve done some reading or have seen it more in the media and so-forth. But there is still a lot that is not spoken, and many families don’t communicate about it at all.

AS: Going off of what you just said, the Latino culture and church have told us that we should suppress our sexual feelings and not talk about sex. Do you see that still being prevalent in today’s society?

CT: I still see us having to deal with issues of families and religion, but I have started to see a movement towards greater support. Another positive thing that I did see, even twenty-two years ago when some of these students had been disowned by their families, is that after two to three years they took them back. And it was interesting because I would ask the students, “What made your parents change their minds about you? They kicked you out of their house.”

I know this one woman who is quite young. Her parents were religious, Baptist Mexicanos from Texas. They not only kicked her out of the house, they took everything, her money, her car, her clothes—everything. They completely excommunicated her and left her standing on the porch with nothing. That was four years ago, so then I asked her, “What did you do?” and she said, “Well, I walked to my friend’s house and I slept on their couch. I had no money, no car, so I got a job bussing tables.” After three years they took her back. She’s got a good relationship with them, she forgave them, and she finished her schooling. Every family is different with what they do and what they go through. Homophobia throughout this country is very alive, very present.

AS: So what advice or support do you offer students who are having a hard time coming out?

CT: Well, the students and I are in a situation where they are more fortunate because they’re on campus where we have a gender equity center, where we have support groups; we have counselors who are supportive and wonderful . . . [W]e can refer them to all kinds of books—even though they may want to hide them from their families.

But what about the people who are not students, people who . . . aren’t in any kind of situation where they have access, what do they do? . . . I think about that. I’ve done readings for my novel, What Night Brings, in Texas.
. . . My novel has a really queer protagonist and when I read about her attraction to women in certain settings, like in the Bay Area, I can do that because it’s more progressive here but in other parts of the country, I have noticed that people squirm and don’t feel comfortable [during] parts when [the protagonist] speaks about her attraction. If I read about other things that are family focused then it’s really different. We have a lot of work to do.

AS: I read in an article that you were brought up in a Catholic household. How hard—or easy—was it for you to go through Catholicism and also identify as a lesbian?

CT: I didn’t meld them together so as a little kid I was really this intense little Catholic. I did all the sacraments, went to church every Sunday while my parents stayed in bed. They didn’t go. So I was a ten-year-old walking to church if you can imagine it.

I think it was part of how I grew up. It was a moralistic upbringing and I never felt that my attraction to girls was going to be a problem for the church. I don’t know why I never made the connection. . . . There’s church, and here’s me liking girls and I really did like them as a very young child. And so I felt completely natural liking girls. I never felt that it was anything taboo. Then in high school I continued going to church and it wasn’t until college—man, I’m embarrassed to say that I went to church all throughout high school—when I came out. That’s when I was like, “wait this is not working out; they are saying bad things about queers and well, I’m queer.” The only thing that was problematic is that I didn’t exactly venture into doing a lot of things sexually because I felt held back by the church and that whole virgen thing.

AS: Is there a different symbolism behind La Virgen in the lesbian community?

CT: Chicana lesbians have reconfigured the icon in a more empowered way, rather than a traditional way. So they sexualize her and they make her strong rather than passive . . . Chicana feminists who are not necessarily lesbian do this reconstruction and you see young men artists doing it as well. I’ve seen one where La Virgen looked like a penis . . . I haven’t seen a whole lot of this reconfiguration lately; maybe it was a phase that people were going through, but it’s been quite exciting. I like it. I wrote an end note in my article that said, “What if La Virgen de Guadalupe was my lover?” It scared my girlfriend. She goes, “You aren’t really going to publish that, are you?” People got a kick out of that.

AS: Although a lot of your work is fiction, your essays are very powerful and have helped many lesbians understand that they are not the only one’s dealing with issues around their sexuality. Have you ever seen yourself as a heroine in the lesbian community?

CT: No. Not at all. I just starting writing essays because I was moved by something that I was bothered by and I felt that I had to write about it and the homophobia that I had been confronting . . . I came out at twenty-one in college and saw how [differently] people treated me before they knew I was gay [versus] after they knew I was gay. It was so night and day for some people that it was very, very painful. I had to figure out how to deal with my life and learn to still think positively about it and still try to be successful. I was going to graduate school and I was twenty-one and real happy—like Hey everybody, guess what? I’m gay! Yahoo! I had been suppressing this for eleven years at least. And here I am—“I’m so happy!”—but not everybody was as happy for me. My mom said “don’t you dare tell your father.” And I asked why not. She said I would break his heart. I didn’t tell him but he figured it out on his own when I stopped bringing men around.

The kind of work that I do is just trying to . . . validate our existence, and it was just important for me to speak about things that were painful. So, no, I don’t feel like I am anything except somebody who is just writing stuff down that I felt had to be written.

AS: Who was your biggest influence growing up?

CT: You know, it is a really complicated question because I got a lot of good political analysis and support in one way from my father. And in other ways he was completely domineering and oppressive. But he instilled pride and said to never be ashamed of who you are and that you are always equal to everyone [else on] this planet. It really did help me because we were really poor. We went to crummy schools but I always felt pride. I always felt proud of who I was and that’s from him.