Word Up welcomes acclaimed writer Caro de Robertis to celebrate So Many Stars: An Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color, a first-of-its-kind, deeply personal, and moving oral history of a generation of trans and gender nonconforming elders of color who tell their own stories of breathtaking courage, cultural innovations, and acts of resistance. In conversation with de Robertis will be Denne Michele Norris, author of When the Harvest Comes.

“Insightful and educative… Each personal history is notable in its own scope and perspective, but collectively these voices representing elder queer generations of color become extraordinary… The lasting impressions each of them has made on society beautifully amplify the heartbeat of queer trans life.—Kirkus Reviews, *STARRED REVEW*

Word Up is partnering with The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center, commonly called The Center, a nonprofit organization serving the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender population of New York City and nearby communities. Donated copies of SO MANY STARS will be distributed to students in The Center’s READY program, which gives workplace training and experience to 45 high schoolers around New York.* Their job placement sites are all vetted to ensure a safe and nurturing queer-friendly environment for their first step into the workforce. Some of these sites include: Word Up Community Bookstore, BRUJAS skate company, Bronx Botanical Gardens, Broadway for the Arts, Animal Care Centers of New York, Brooklyn Public Library, and Generation Q in Queens. Some of READY’s goals are to offer support throughout each learning curve of a youth’s first job, budgeting throughout their first paychecks, advocating for themselves as employees, and being able to enter their next internship/job/or college as seamlessly as possible. Most of all, the purpose of READY is to build confidence in the youth participating in the internship who are entering young adulthood.

*Donated copies of SO MANY STARS can be purchased on WordUpBooks.com (comment “donation”) or through our ticketing platform WithFriends.co/WordUp.

This event is a $5 suggested donation ticket with 50 max attendees. Please register in advance. 

In compliance with Word Up Community Safety guidelines, all attendees are encouraged to stay masked at all time.

Recirculation, a project of Word Up Community Bookshop, is located at 876 Riverside Drive (near 160th St.) in Washington Heights, NYC. You can take the 1 train to 157th St., A/C train to 163rd St., and the M4 and M5 to Broadway and 159/160th.

ABOUT THE BOOK

So Many Stars knits together the voices of trans, nonbinary, genderqueer, and two-spirit elders of color as they share authentic, intimate accounts of how they created space for themselves and their communities in the world. This singular project collects the testimonies of twenty elders, each a glimmering thread in a luminous tapestry, preserving their words for future generations—who can more fully exist in the world today because of these very trailblazers.

De Robertis creates a collective coming-of-age story based on hundreds of hours of interviews, offering rare snapshots of ordinary life: kids growing up, navigating family issues and finding community, coming out and changing how they identify over the years, building movements and weathering the AIDS crisis, and sharing wisdom for future generations. Often narrating experiences that took place before they had the array of language that exists today to self-identify beyond the gender binary, this generation lived through remarkable changes in American culture, shaped American culture, and yet rarely takes center stage in the history books. Their stories feel particularly urgent in the current political moment, but also remind readers that their experiences are not new, and that young trans and nonbinary people today belong to a long lineage.

The anecdotes in these pages are riveting, joyful, heartbreaking, full of personality and wisdom, and artfully woven together into one immersive narrative. In De Robertis’s words, So Many Stars shares “behind-the-scenes tales of what it meant—and still means—to create an authentic life, against the odds.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A writer of Uruguayan origins, Caro De Robertis is the author of six novels, including The Palace of Eros, Cantoras, and more. Their books have been translated into seventeen languages and have received numerous honors, including two Stonewall Book Awards, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, which they were the first openly nonbinary writer to receive. De Robertis is also an award-winning literary translator and a professor at San Francisco State University. They live in Oakland, California with their two children.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

Denne Michele Norris is the editor-in-chief of Electric Literature, winner of the 2022 Whiting Literary Magazine Prize, where she is the first Black, openly trans woman to helm a major literary publication. A 2021 Out100 Honoree, her writing has been supported by MacDowell, Tin House, and Kimbilio for Black Fiction, and appears in McSweeney’s, American Short Fiction, and ZORA. She co-hosts the critically-acclaimed podcast Food 4 Thot, and her debut novel, When The Harvest Comes, will be published by Random House in April, 2025, and Both/And, her anthology celebrating trans writers of color, will be published in August by HarperOne.