I was sitting at my table, doing the lunchtime scroll when I saw the news: Cecilia Gentili was gone. The shout of grief was immediate, loud enough to disturb my wife upstairs, but this loss still seems impossible. She had just turned 52 on January 31st, and her Instagram shows that she had a fabulous kiki. Just in time for her birthday, Gabriel García Román completed a print for his Queer Icons series, solidifying what so many of us already knew. Cecilia Gentili was a saint: our Mother of Trans Liberation.
There is so much to say about her shining light and who she was. Originally from Argentina, she came undocumented to the United States for a safer life as a transgender woman. I have never met a fiercer advocate for transgender people of color, sex workers, immigrants, and artists. She loved her people like a mother, and her unstoppable power was always led by that love.
Cecilia and I crossed paths in the very beginning of my work as a professional advocate. In 2019, she selected me to join the New York State TGNCNB (Transgender, Gender Non-Conforming, Non-Binary) Collective Meeting, one of only 3 or so folks coming from this side of the state. She represented a hopeful future I desperately needed to believe was possible, and her genuine interest in getting to know me meant the world at a time I felt unseen and unsure.
She called me in that weekend to leave behind the last lingering vestiges of shame about my own identity, and to become an accomplice to every trans and gender non-conforming community of color. One of her many gifts was the way she loudly lifted up everyone and connected us to one another. Mother, sister, mentor, friend— she was everything, to hundreds upon hundreds of people.
Fighting for healthcare for the transgender community, especially for people living with HIV/AIDS was a massive part of her life’s work. She was the TGNC Consultant for the NYS Department of Health when we met, and had been a major champion of GENDA (the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act). It had just been signed in January 2019, and gave us critical legal protections at home and at work. When a rule that eliminated non-discrimination protections based on gender identity under the Affordable Care Act went into effect in the height of the COVID outbreak, she and Tanya Asapansa-Johnson Walker sued the administration responsible. I was just one someone that had lost jobs and lost healthcare because of my transgender identity, and she fought that fight for all of us.
She was a founder of DecrimNY, an organization working to decriminalize, decarcerate and destigmatize the sex trades, and launched Trans Equity Consulting. There, their work “is committed to building the leadership of trans women of color, and to the centering of sex workers, immigrants and incarcerated peoples as experts in creating a more just world.” She went on to be part of repealing the infamous “Walking While Trans” law, and establishing the Lorena Borjas Trans Equity Fund. She also served as a board member and enthusiastic supporter of Queer | Art, a New York based “non-profit arts organization serving a diverse and vibrant community of LGBTQ+ artists across generations and disciplines.”
She penned her ALA Stonewall Book Award winning memoir in 2022, Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn’t My Rapist and starred as Ms. Orlando on the FX show Pose. Her 2023 one woman show, Red Ink turned out to be her final love letter to divine trans women, exploring “what it means to find God where you least expect it,” according to the summary written by Colleen Hamilton for them. I’ve said it many times this week and I’m saying it again— she was truly just getting started.
As so many of us do in the TGNCNB family, she had a complex relationship with faith, yet still dared to wonder what religious repair could look like. Faltas will tell you some of her stories, colorful and authentic, as they are her truth. I feel that she followed the call, because she dedicated every bit of her time, resources and energy to ensure that “all people living on the margins are provided with access to the dignity and respect deserved in all spaces.” My solace this week is in knowing that she is with the ancestors, and we’ll get the overdue catch up I failed to make happen when my own race is run.
I’m calling all of you to get to know Cecilia this week, through her writing and through the stories so many people are sharing of their own paths crossing. I’ve loaded this tribute with links so that you can do that. Every single one of us has an obligation to carry on this work for justice and liberation in honor of this relentless, unforgettable trailblazer.
I joined the livestream of the vigil that was held Wednesday night in Judson Memorial Church, where this reading that says it all was offered:
Proverbs 31:10-31
A wife of noble character who can find?
She is worth far more than rubies.
Her husband has full confidence in her
and lacks nothing of value.
She brings him good, not harm,
all the days of her life.
She selects wool and flax
and works with eager hands.
She is like the merchant ships,
bringing her food from afar.
She gets up while it is still night;
she provides food for her family
and portions for her female servants.
She considers a field and buys it;
out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.
She sets about her work vigorously;
her arms are strong for her tasks.
She sees that her trading is profitable,
and her lamp does not go out at night.
In her hand she holds the distaff
and grasps the spindle with her fingers.
She opens her arms to the poor
and extends her hands to the needy.
When it snows, she has no fear for her household;
for all of them are clothed in scarlet.
She makes coverings for her bed;
she is clothed in fine linen and purple.
Her husband is respected at the city gate,
where he takes his seat among the elders of the land.
She makes linen garments and sells them,
and supplies the merchants with sashes.
She is clothed with strength and dignity;
she can laugh at the days to come.
She speaks with wisdom,
and faithful instruction is on her tongue.
She watches over the affairs of her household
and does not eat the bread of idleness.
Her children arise and call her blessed;
her husband also, and he praises her:
“Many women do noble things,
but you surpass them all.”
Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting;
but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
Honor her for all that her hands have done,
and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.
Rest in Power, Pride, and Peace.