All truths. All giggles. Cecilia Gentili at Rattlestick Theater, 2023

Photo: Bruce Morrow

Cecilia Gentili 🕊️🕊️

Cecilia Gentili was a trans activist.

Cecilia Gentili was a mother.

Cecilia Gentili was a friend.

Celicia Gentili was an icon.

Celicia Gentili was here.

Cecilia navigated an often unkind world with a disarming and empowering grace. Her journey from Argentina to the heart of New York City was not merely a search for sanctuary but a quest to make the invisible seen, the silenced heard, and the marginalized celebrated. Her activism was her art, and her art was a form of activism. Cecilia painted vivid pictures of resilience, struggle, and triumph through her storytelling. She brought to life the experiences of the trans community, advocated the decriminalization of sex work, and supporting those living with HIV/AIDS. Cecilia's voice was a clarion call for justice, echoing in the corridors of power and the streets, demanding change, equity, and love.

Cecilia was a force.

Cecilia's legacy is not only in the many movements she helped shape or the policies she influenced, but also in the lives she touched. She mentored many, sharing her wisdom, warmth, and wicked sense of humor, oh so generously. To be loved by Cecilia was to be seen in your entirety, embraced for who you were, and inspired to become who you might be. I know this from personal experience. Her capacity for love was boundless, and she gave it freely, fiercely, and without reservation.

Cecilia was a healer.

Like her activism, her art reflected her soul—bold, beautiful, and transcendent. Cecilia used her creativity as a tool for advocacy; her performances and storytelling were not just entertainment but powerful statements on identity, society, and the human condition. Through her art, she challenged systems, questioned injustices, and oriented communities in the discipline of hope.

Cecilia was a teacher.

Cecilia Gentili leaves behind a world forever changed by her presence. She showed us that change is possible, that love is powerful, and that living one's truth is the ultimate form of resistance. Let us honor her memory by supporting one another with compassion, living our truths, and building the world she knew we all deserved.

Cecilia is now an ancestor.

Rest in power, Cecilia. Your journey here has ended, but the love you left us is everlasting. We love you, miss you, and will never forget you.

i cannot overstate what a fucking loss Cecilia Gentili's death is

CANNOT overstate

god FUCKING damn it 💔

we've lost the iconic Cecilia Gentili, Mother of Thousands, an asskicking light unto the motherfucking world 🕯️

may she rest in power, may her memory be a blessing, may she never thirst 🙏🏽

remember her name, tell her stories, read her writing, watch her performances, let her ferocity ignite you to fight for trans people (particularly trans women immigrants!) in the US and across the planet ✊🏽🤎🏳️‍⚧️

I’m not seeing any posts on here about her (maybe it’s because I follow so many Trek blogs) but I just want to hold space for the loss of and celebrate a pillar of the trans community. Cecilia Gentili’s memory will be a blessing and source of strength for so many, and her legacy will never be forgotten. I can’t claim to have known her, but many of my loved ones did, and they have always spoken of her as a brilliant shining light, hilarious friend, and community member who always shows up. May we all aspire to show up for each other in the way she showed up for us.

Whispering to each other only “did you--?” “were you--?” through the mist, knuckle to knuckle until the touch pulls us by the spine and suddenly we’re clinging to each other in the storm, because of course the answer is always yes, we did, yes, we were, we all were, each of us just as much as each other. Cecilia, flame in the dark, the waterfall of your laugh, endless and full as the world, the gentleness of your grip, Cecilia, we love you. The whole world you built around you will build a new babel from all the languages we love you in. Come to me in a dream, beloved, press the chest that you made for yourself against the chest that I made for myself just one more time, bless me with one more taste of your hot breath on my ear, whispering, “Aren’t my tits amazing?”

Cecilia we love you

Cecilia Gentili: Scenes From the Trans Activist's Funeral | TIME

May you rest in Power ❤️🏳️‍🌈

RESPECT

Rest In Peace 🌈

*ੈ✩‧₊˚ 🕊️Cecilia Gentili 🕊️*ੈ✩‧₊˚

Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn't My Rapist by Cecilia Gentili

goodreads

A story of sex, theft, murder, motherhood, and outrageous fashion choices, Cecilia Gentili reinvents the transgender memoir in this hilarious and heartbreaking debut. In these hilarious and heartbreaking letters, Cecilia Gentili reinvents the trans memoir, putting the confession squarely between the writer and her enemies, paramours and friends. Is she here for revenge, or forgiveness? Both! And more! A story of sex, theft, murder, motherhood, and outrageous fashion choices, FALTAS is a beautiful, messy meditation on what it takes to heal, and even grow.

Mod opinion: I have this book as an ebook and I'm excited to get around to it at some point (hopefully soon!).

Monthly reading update for February

I meant for this to be another bimonthly one, but I forgot to update it a couple weeks ago, and by the time I remembered it was almost the end of the month anyway. At the time, I was thinking "it's a short month, I've not been reading much, it'll be fine" but it turns out I actually did read a lot. So it's gonna be a long one today:

Arkady Martine - A Memory Called Empire

Spent most of this time thinking that it was just a political intrigue type book disguised as science fiction (not necessarily a bad thing, I love scheming!). The sci-fi elements are a bit more important than that, upon reflection (e.g. the imago machines play a pretty significant role), but the scheming is the real reason to read it. If you like the early chapters of Dune better than the revolution part, you probably don't need me to tell you that you need to read this. I'm definitely going to be getting the sequel next time I'm at a bookstore.

Amelia Earhart - 20 Hrs., 40 Min.

Earhart's been a longtime hero of mine, albeit one I don't think about much these days. I found this one in a box of old books I pulled out of the basement to sell to the used bookstore, and that childhood love led me to hold onto it. Sadly there's not really much of interest in there; the autobiographical part doesn't cover any ground I'd not heard before, and the supposed central event of the book (crossing the Atlantic) is handled over the course of about 5-10 pages. If you want to hear about weather keeping her trapped in Newfoundland for weeks, then maybe give it a shot? But I'd not recommend it.

Cecilia Gentili - Faltas

This one was absolutely incredible; really loved Gentili's narrative voice. It's about growing up trans, growing up abused, growing up poor, but despite all that it feels almost triumphant. Probably that's because it's written in the form of letters to people who didn't leave the town, whereas she got out and made something of herself. Not really able to talk about what I loved about it, but I'll definitely be recommending it.

Forman Brown - Better Angel

It's gay fiction (thinly veiled autobiography) from the 1930s, what more need I say? He reads too much, gets a superiority complex about his intelligence, and ends up unfit for heterosexual society. Basically, he's just like me. He seems to have a very dim view of 20th century gay society though; perhaps the result of discovering homosexuality through reading ancient Greek literature? But what would you really expect from a socially respectable gay guy from 90 years ago?

Junichiro Tanizaki - Quicksand

Immediately after reading The Makioka Sisters for the first time, I was ready to proclaim Tanizaki as one of my favorite authors ever. Every book I've read of his since then has slowly been changing my mind on that. Superficially, The Makioka Sisters seems like it sticks out in his discography (it's almost like Jane Austen, whereas his other work seems to be different ways sex can ruin your life), but it doesn't really? It's all just different ways of saying that he thinks modernity is killing Japan; in this one, Tanizaki's modernity of choice is bisexuality. It's kinda fun reading about the evil lesbian for a bit, but it all just comes to a sudden stop, as if he got bored with it and just threw one last chapter in to provide an ending.

Min Jin Lee - Pachinko

I am such a sucker for these multigenerational family sagas. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Homegoing, Pachinko: I'll read them all, just keep them coming. I'd not known anything before about the Korean community in Japan, and now I do (or at least I think I do), so that's pretty cool as well. Noa is, sadly, another "he is so me" type character; always reading, a bit snobby, dead-set on being One Of The Good Ones.

Qiu Miaojin - Last Words from Montmartre

I'd read Notes of a Crocodile a while back and never really knew what to make of it. There was a bit of a narrative there, but not really? And you never got a sense of anyone. Anyway, Last Words from Montmartre is like that too, but a bit more understandable as the narrator is trapped in a spiral of isolation that it's too late to get out of. Knowing Miaojin's fate, it's hard not to think that the distance between author and narrator was extremely thin, if not non-existent. I started feeling really bad about my own life while reading this, and I think that it was probably a contributing factor, because I started to feel better as soon as I finished reading.

Luke Dani Blue - Pretend It's My Body

It's a trans short story collection, but none of the stories really do much for me. Maybe the one about the "con" who's planning to upload her consciousness to the Internet? Maybe it's just a small sample size, but nearly all of the trans short fiction I've read hasn't really done anything for me in the past (Casey Plett's work being the main exception). I'm not sure why that would be the case though, because basically every trans novel ends up impressing me? I guess it's possible I don't like short fiction as much as I think I do. If y'all have any other trans short story recommendations, I would love to hear them though!

CECILIA GENTILI // ACTIVIST

“She was a Latina transgender advocate, author, artist, and actress. Born in Argentina, she came to the United States for a safer life as a transgender woman and lived in the country undocumented for 10 years. During this time Cecilia gained her living through sex work; her experience surviving this time in her life impassions her desire to ensure that all people living on the margins are provided with access to the dignity and respect deserved in all spaces. Among her many accomplishments, Ms. Gentili was the Director of Policy at the GMHC, a New York City-based AIDS service organization, and was one of the hardest fighters for the passage of GENDA (Gender Non-Discrimination Act). She is also the founder of Decrim NY and Trans Equity Consulting (@transequity). Ms. Gentili spent her life fighting for the rights of undocumented immigrants, sex workers, and LGBTQIA+ people. Ms. Gentili is the author of Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn't My Rapist (2022) and her autobiographical one-woman off-Broadway show Red Ink (2023). As an actress, she also performed The Knife Cuts Both Ways and appeared as Ms. Orlando on Pose, the FX drama about the experiences of trans women of color set against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis in 1980s New York. She passed away as a result of a drug overdose in February 2024.”