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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.
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Fun reel by the
L.A. Public Library
about how I kept
my track of my days
in the 1980s.
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Honored that
The American LGTBQ+ Museum's Lavender Literary Society
has chosen to feature
L.A. Interchanges
in their book club
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Tamarindo Podcast
Interview
June 2024
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"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
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Tucson Festival of Books 
Interview
March 2024
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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."

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On October 8, 2023, 
I hosted Arizona Illustrated's 
first show in Spanish
on PBS.
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. 

Photo of me carrying the Gay & Lesbian Latinos Unidos banner at 1987 L.A. PRIDE.

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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. 
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"My Archive: 20 Years of Los Angeles’ LGBTQ+ Movement." Showcased as the cover story in High Country News' Special "ARCHIVE" Edition, April 2022.
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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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