""Still at the back of the bus": Sylvia Rivera's struggle"
Gan, Jessi. ""Still at the back of the bus": Sylvia Rivera's struggle". Centro Journal, vol. XIX, no. 1, 2007, pp. 124-139. Editorial The City University of New York.
This journalistic essay by Jessi Gan entitled "Still at the back of the bus": Sylvia Rivera's struggle, chronicles the life and achievements of the drag queen and Latinx queer activist Silvia Rivera. As one of the inciters of the 1969 Stonewall riots and an outspoken transgender activist, Gan introduces Rivera as a central symbol in today’s transgender politics. The argument of Gan is that beyond the symbol of gay liberation Stonewall represents, beyond how the image of Rivera as a transgender icon is invoked to unify the entire LGBTQ community, there exists a greater narrative of disjunction between the experience of queers with power and privilege and those without. A single, rigid model of oppression divided along the lines of sexuality or even gender refuses to acknowledge the reality of marginalization within those categories.
This piece begins with a depiction of the historical importance, as well as the historical inaccuracies, of the Stonewall riots themselves. Many view the event as the spark of the gay liberation movement, and it continues to be cited with pride by the LGBTQ community. Gan argues, however, that in the emphasis of the ‘gayness’ of the rioters, the pivotal role of gender-variant people of color is lost. Though the riots originated at the Stonewall bar filled with middle-class, white, homosexual patrons, Gan stresses that the street people and drag queens of color began and led a resistance against the police raid attempting to arrest the bar patrons for exhibiting their queer sexuality. After the riots, both mainstream and queer publications labeled the resistors as ‘gay,’ and gay alone. In doing so, they ignored the important factors of racist police brutality and undermined the compounded hardship of a people marginalized not only for their sexuality, but also their race and economic status. The role of Rivera as one of the original resistors in the Stonewall riots, when rediscovered in the 1990’s, enabled transgender people to write themselves into gay history. This representation helped solidify their significance and sense of belonging within the LGBTQ community, adding fuel to their fight to be included under the queer rights umbrella. Silvia Rivera, herself a working-class, Puerto Rican/Venezuelan drag queen, became an iconic symbol for political change.
Jessi Gan analyzes the political position of Silvia Rivera herself as profoundly characterized by her personal experience. She was excluded first from the Puerto Rican/Venezuelan culture of masculinity, then the community of white, middle-class gay maleness. She grew up in poverty, and her early femininity and sexuality isolated her. She was homeless at age thirteen, selling herself to survive, and yet, she found her family within her fellow drag queens. These gender nonconforming people became her community, and she served them her whole life, becoming a queen mother to an extended family of her own creation. Her efforts to help her community were continually stifled and manipulated, just as her central role in the Stonewall riots was first forgotten then appropriated. Silvia harbored deep anger over the gay rights movement gaining momentum at the cost of transgender people. Her fiercely inclusionary philosophy was queer world-making, molding a welcoming LGBTQ community. The conclusion Gan comes to is that any attempt to rigidly define Silvia Rivera with any label, personal or political, is evaded by her love and acceptance for all her queer ‘children.’
Unbiased and informative, Jessi Gan tells the history of the transgender icon Silvia Rivera. She analyses both primary and secondary sources, reviewing written histories and the autobiographical chronicles of Rivera herself. Gan writes for the academic, using the biography of this beloved queer figure as a platform for the analysis for the multifaceted oppression of the queer, the gender-variant, the people of color, the poor, and any combination of the above. She argues that ever-narrowing categories of identity politics work against the achievement of full human rights and freedom of expression. A change must be made to benefit all the marginalized and oppressed, not just those with a platform to speak out.
Of all the articles I annotated, I believe this one to be the most comprehensive. Its historical evidence was unbiased, and the author presented a thorough critical analysis of both Sylvia’s personal philosophy and her lasting legacy as a gender nonconforming, Latinx icon and a timeless pillar of the LGBTQ community. I would have loved for a bit more elaboration on the lives Rivera personally touched, as well as her personal life, but I acknowledge that this was not the point of the piece. The purpose of this writing was to give voice to her as a larger than life figure, and analyze how she, willingly or not, was propped up as a symbol for so many different peoples, each with different agendas. The memory of Sylvia Rivera is larger than life, so it is only right that a bibliographic article written about her would marry her true self with her memory as the unifying queen mother. I found it important to include this piece in my annotated bibliography not only to gain insight into the roots of the LGBTQ rights movement, but also to explore another kind of family. Rivera built her family on the streets, and throughout her life, she became a mother to countless lost souls who fit in nowhere else. This raises a very fundamental point. Who is anyone to define family? Family can be exactly what you make it. Silvia and other queer people have, especially before being able to indulge in the nuclear family American dream, been creating their own families from the ground up. Drag culture’s history is filled with mother-daughter relationships. These family structures, though unconventional from the heterosexual standpoint, are entirely valid and deserve due recognition.