Project: Authoritative power against Queer/Trans people of color “Tracing the stories of Andrea Anderson and Cece McDonald”

This project was created by students in the GWSS/GLBT 3404 spring 2023 class. To explore other projects created by students in this class, please visit the complete collection available at this MNT project library page.

Our project aims to unsilence the voices of two transgender women, Cece McDonald, and Andrea Anderson, by analyzing the heteropatriarchy in their lives. We aim to mobilize their stories to the queer community by engaging with the stories of their lives. We have been delving into the interview within the Tretter collection about the life of Andrea Anderson, a transgender woman who immigrated from Mexico to live her life freely. She discusses positively how, previously, being a little boy attending a Catholic school was constricting for her. She used the outlet of writing to express herself, mainly using poetry as a form of activism, therapy, and healing. While crossing the border did not solidify her future, she was uncertain about her identity. Instead of highlighting her uncertainty and insecurities, we aim to connect the institutions of power, specifically the criminal justice system and policing system, which have overtly failed these two women based on their skin color, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Our method of this Project is to incorporate audio clips from Cece and Andrea to portray this story without disrespecting the fragility of their stories. We are not acting as journalists; instead, we are students who believe institutions have failed individuals like Cece and Andrea. While we want to use their voices as integral parts of this Project, we do not want to naturalize or romanticize their struggles. The criminal justice system favors the cis-white population, failing the majority of the World and leading them into uncertainty and insecurity due to their identity.

Andrea Anderson - Interview

Andrea Anderson grew up in Mexico City, where her authentic identity was suppressed due to her surroundings and family. Struck by the restricting reality of her environment, after migrating to the United States, she began her journey towards authentic self-expression to find freedom, more specifically, freedom meant for her. Being confronted with the language barrier and culture shock, she was immediately faced with negativity instead of open arms. Andrea simply wanted to live freely without the constraints of her identity weighing down on her. She wanted to be out in her places of work, yet her undocumented status hindered this opportunity for freedom. Facing transphobia in her workplace, which resulted in her being fired from her waitressing job, is a much larger issue when you consider how much harder she had to work to find that job in the first place. Finding jobs that will hire regardless of immigration status is much more complicated than looking for jobs when you have papers. The jobs offered to those without immigration status are also much more often more labor intensive and tend to pay much less, which is why being fired over something as minuscule as not charging for an extra sauce was so much worse.

Cece McDonald

CeCe McDonald is a bisexual, African American trans woman who was a victim of institutional violence. In 2012, Cece was wrongly incarcerated for defending herself against racist and transphobia-motivated violence. She had acted in self-defense when she and her friends were attacked outside a bar in Minneapolis late at night, resulting in the attacker dying of a stab wound. The attackers had been shouting racist, homophobic, and transphobic remarks at CeCe and her friends before assaulting them with a glass of alcohol. She was tried for second-degree manslaughter and was sentenced to an all-male prison for 41 months, which blatantly disregards her gender. This act of ignorance stems from the criminal justice system using its authority to discriminate further and misgender queer and POC individuals. Her case was one that the media picked up on. Public outcry due to the media's attention to her story was part of the reason why she was released after 19 months. She is now an activist who works hard to fight the prison industrial complex as well as the other institutions that aim to oppress LGBTQ+ and BIPOC individuals, using her story to spread awareness for the discrimination that trans women of color often have to face.

Loring Park - “a site of queer possibility”

Queer history is full of duality, with there being so much gathering and solidarity as well as so much violence and oppression by the dominant hetero-patriarchal groups that hold power. This resilience has always been a crucial part of the queer experience, so we use Loring Park to memorialize these queer feelings and resilience.

Loring Park has a long history of cruising and queer gatherings, but also violence and over-policing targeting queer people in the park. Minneapolis Pride has occurred in Loring Park since the 70s to celebrate queer history and experience. While now the park is known as a much more accepting of queerness, it is impossible to talk about this park without recognizing that this is also a place where multiple police raids took place to try to silence queer voices. It is also where numerous murders occurred in the 90s, a series of serial killings targeting gay men. This history that is full of both celebration and hurt is why it is an accurate representation of queer history as a whole.

Minneapolis has a long history of racism, transphobia, and sexism, the root causes stemming from various institutions of power such as healthcare, policing, education, immigration, the media, and many other institutions that have been created either without BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ people in mind. Through the stories of McDonald and Anderson, we explore these histories through the people who lived them and how these institutions work against BIPOC queer people. While neither McDonald’s nor Anderson’s stories explicitly take place at Loring Park, we felt their stories present a unique overlap with the park and allow us to tell their stories in a place with a shared history of perseverance, violence, discrimination, and love.

Learn more at the Trans Oral History Project- The Tretter Collection website.

Sources

1. EBONY. “Cece McDonald:Attacked for Her Identity, Incarcerated for Surviving.” Ebony, 18 July 2022, https://www.ebony.com/cece-mcdonald-bias-attack/.
2. Jacgares. “Watch Free Cece! Online: Vimeo on Demand.” Vimeo, 23 Apr. 2023, https://vimeo.com/ondemand/freecece.
3. Free CeCe McDonald Panel. 2016-10-29. University of Minnesota Libraries, Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies., umedia.lib.umn.edu/item/p16022coll97:174 Accessed 24 Apr 2023.
4. Anderson, Andrea. Interview with Andrea Anderson. 2016-04-26. University of Minnesota Libraries, Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies., umedia.lib.umn.edu/item/p16022coll97:160 Accessed 24 Apr 2023.
5. Jenkins, Andrea. Interview with Andrea Jenkins. 2017-07-20. University of Minnesota Libraries, Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies., umedia.lib.umn.edu/item/p16022coll97:80 Accessed 24 Apr 2023.
6. McDonald, C. (2017). Go Beyond Our Natural Selves. Transgender Studies Quarterly, 4(2), 243-265.
7. Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl was born in New York City little aware of her destiny—to live well in Minnesota. Dara writes about food. “An Oral History of LGBTQ Life in the Twin Cities.” Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, 21 June 2020, https://mspmag.com/arts-and-culture/the-pride-behind-pride/.
8. “Inside the 1990s Serial Killings Targeting Minnesota's Gay Community.” Investigation Discovery, https://www.investigationdiscovery.com/crimefeed/serial-killer/minnesota-gay-community-1990s-serial-killing-joel-larson.
9. Mills, Karren. “Gay Community Alarmed at Unrelated Killings of Homosexuals.” AP NEWS, Associated Press, 5 Feb. 1987, https://apnews.com/article/c2c05fdf0cb40abf554c3c86a0540bc3.
10. Erdely, Sabrina Rubin. “The Transgender Crucible.” Rolling Stone, Rolling Stone, 25 June 2018, https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/the-transgender-crucible-114095/.
11. Walsh, Paul, and Star Tribune. “'Cece' McDonald Freed after 19 Months in Prison for Killing MPLS. Bar Patron.” Star Tribune, Star Tribune, 13 Jan. 2014, https://www.startribune.com/cece-mcdonald-freed-after-19-months-in-prison-for-killing-mpls-bar-patron/239960331/.