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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.
Building Community & A City in the 1980s
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Available on leading online platforms such as Bookshop and Amazon.
Learn more about the book and
other purchase options.
Tucson Festival of Books
Interview
March 2024
"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.
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."
"Tucson author Lydia Otero's latest book, ‘L.A. Interchanges,' records history of 'Brown & Queer' activism"
A conversation with journalist Xavier Omar Otero
I am featured in the PBS documentary
"UNIDAD: Gay & Lesbian Latinos Unidos."
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 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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