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Proud to report!
Storied Property: María Cordova’s Casa
received the 2026 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal for West-Mountain Non-Fiction.
WELCOME!
Thank you for taking an interest in me and my work. I am a historian and writer who explores the relationship between place, identity, memory, and power. My books move between Tucson and Los Angeles, and my newest work extends that journey into Sonora, Mexico. Across these places, I examine contested landscapes, urban renewal and displacement, environmental justice, Brown and queer histories, LGBTQIA+ activism, and the ways communities resist being erased.
My memoirs bring personal experience into conversation with archival research and broader historical and social forces. Throughout my work, I am interested in what places remember, what official histories leave out, and how people and communities make their presence known.
Watch this 8 minute video,
made by 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.
This April 29, 2026 virtual presentation took a different approach and was guided by slides, images, and archival materials that helped bring forward some of the book’s central arguments and highlights. For those who missed the livestream, or would like to spend more time with the material, the presentation is now available to
watch on YouTube.
L.A. Interchanges: A Brown & Queer Memoir
was recently reviewed in Pacific Historical Review.
The review appears in the May 2026 issue and is written by historian Craig M. Loftin. It means a great deal to see my memoir, grounded in queer life and brown Los Angeles histories, discussed within a major academic history journal. Read it here.
Headline in L.A. Daily News
dated August 3, 2023,
"Los Angeles Public Library acquires new archive highlighting L.A.’s queer, Latinx history"
In 2023, I donated 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."
Selected materials from my collection are now available digitally through the Los Angeles Public Library's TESSA Digital Collections, including photographs, flyers, organizational records, and other materials documenting queer Latine activism and community life in Los Angeles.
In 2024, I donated my Tucson and family archival materials to
the University of Arizona
Libraries Special Collections.
The collection features photographs and annotations that connect a working-class family's everyday barrio life to broader
historical narratives of the region.
Preparing for my collection to be picked up in 2024.
"Leaving Your Lane:
A Conversation with Lydia Otero"
A Los Angeles Review of Books interview about
L.A. Interchanges: A Brown & Queer Memoir
"'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
My chapter in Aquí se habla: Centering the Local and Personal in Spanish Language Education (2025)
begins with a familiar experience for many Chicane/x folks from my generation: being punished for speaking Spanish in the classroom in the 1960s. My contributions, both the chapter and in a discussion with fellow authors, trace my language insecurity and the forces that, over time, helped me overcome it.
Fun reel by the
L.A. Public Library
about how I kept
my track of my days
in the 1980s.
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 taken by the author, January 2026
I’m starting something new: sharing unpublished essays that may be of interest. I’m beginning with a paper on the Francisco “Pancho” Villa statue in downtown Tucson, which I worked on between 2008 and 2012, for those interested in Tucson history,
public art, and monuments.
The full essay explores the tensions over borders and public memory revealed by the statue.
Over the years, I have also publicly supported efforts to preserve the Villa statue in Tucson. The latest attempt to remove the statue occurred in 2018. You can read about it here.
June 1, 2023
"Lydia Otero shares
experiences that
gave them Pride."
Photo of me carrying the Gay & Lesbian Latinos Unidos banner at 1986 L.A. PRIDE.
"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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