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WELCOME!
Thank you for taking an interest in me and my work. I invite you to explore my website and learn more about my books and activism.
You'll also gain insight into the projects and interests that keep me busy in Tucson, Arizona, such as LGBTQIA+ issues, environmental justice, community engagement and a research agenda that focuses on contested landscapes, and the power of resistance.
Learn too, how my memoirs offer personal narratives that intricately weave into broader historical and social issues, and offer a distinctive perspective on the intersections of identity, activism, and community.
Watch this 8 minute video,
made by documentary filmmaker
Lisa Molomot and her
University of Arizona film students,
as I take you on
a personal journey through
Barrio Viejo—one of Tucson’s oldest
and most diverse neighborhoods.
I share family stories and reflect on
urban renewal in the 1960s, as well
as the current gentrification taking
hold in the barrio today.
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I am honored to be the
keynote speaker at the
Western Association of
Women Historians (WAWH)
Conference
on April 25, 2025.
My talk will explore why I began
writing memories and how
they offer a valuable lens for understanding history.
Fun reel by the
L.A. Public Library
about how I kept
my track of my days
in the 1980s.
"Leaving Your Lane:
A Conversation with Lydia Otero"
"'Interchanges' suggests more than mere roads and connections; it evokes a transformative odyssey,
a journey where individuals reach pivotal junctures
demanding difficult decisions."
Read the entire LARB interview
I am a cohost for
Radio QGLLU,
the updated version of
Gay and Lesbian Latinos Unidos'
Radio GLLU,
which we started back in 1986.
It airs once a month on
KPFK 90.7 FM "Out Agenda"
in Los Angeles,
but is also available
anywhere you listen to
podcasts.
Tamarindo Podcast
Interview
June 2024
Tucson Festival of Books
Interview
March 2024
Headline in L.A. Daily News
dated August 3, 2023,
"Los Angeles Public Library acquires new archive highlighting L.A.’s queer, Latinx history"
It's official! I've handed over my collection of photographs, flyers, organizational documents, personal items, and other memorabilia that I've gathered over the past decades to the L.A. Central Library. It's a proud moment for me, and I'm thrilled that these materials will be preserved.
Related: "The Los Angeles Public Library Acquires Lydia R. Otero Archive."
On October 8, 2023,
I hosted Arizona Illustrated's
first show in Spanish
on PBS.
"Tucson author Lydia Otero's latest book, ‘L.A. Interchanges,' records history of 'Brown & Queer' activism"
in Los Angeles
A conversation with journalist Xavier Omar Otero
Here's a short video post from the Unidad: Gay and Lesbian Latinos Unidos screening in Los Angeles that took place on June 13, 2023, where I reflect on organizing and the transformative power of change. In this short segment, I emphasize the distinctions between the strategies employed in the 1980s and 1990s and the approaches that shape contemporary activism.
June 1, 2023
"Lydia Otero shares
experiences that
gave them Pride."
Photo of me carrying the Gay & Lesbian Latinos Unidos banner at 1987 L.A. PRIDE.
U.S. Transportation Secretary
Pete Buttigieg
holding a copy of
In the Shadows of the Freeway:
Growing Up Brown & Queer
During his visit to Tucson on August 11, 2022, Mayor Regina Romero (also in the photo) gifted Buttigieg my book that describes the steady expansion of Interstate 10 and how it separated and isolated a barrio of brown and poor residents from the rest of the city.
Read a related news item of Buttigieg's visit and learn more about my insights regarding infrastructural agendas.
"My Archive: 20 Years of Los Angeles’ LGBTQ+ Movement." Showcased as the cover story in High Country News' Special "ARCHIVE" Edition, April 2022.
Barrio Stories
My book La Calle inspired an outdoor, site-specific theatrical event, Barrio Stories, produced by Borderlands Theater in 2016 in Tucson’s downtown area. More than 5,000 people attended the play, which was designed to recover the history of a barrio declared expendable by city leaders who purposely devised an urban renewal program to demolish it in the late 1960s. Lean more about the production.
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