Interview with Selena Meza

Selena Meza identifies as a Mexican-American queer trans femme assigned male at birth. She uses they/them and she/her pronouns. She’s from Chicago, Illinois originally and then moved to Nekoosa, Wisconsin, a rural town in Central Wisconsin, when she was around 5. They grew up learning about Native American culture or the Ho-Chunk culture that exists there. Their parents migrated from Mexico to find better farming jobs in Wisconsin. Meza grew up in a traditional Catholic Mexican-American family with five brothers and six sisters. Their parents raised them to garden, harvest, and live off the land. Meza didn’t know what LGBTQ meant until she went to college since she didn’t have many resources that she could access in school. Knowing school kids would single them out as a brown kid, she tried to blend in and kept quiet until leaving town. When she started taking Women and Gender Studies courses at the University of Wisconsin-Stout in Menomonie, Wisconsin, she realized she was trans and became a feminist, reading bell hooks and joining LGBTQ groups. She started off pursuing a degree in art but switched to industrial design. She graduated with her degree in 2016. She currently works for a company creating illustrations where she is out as trans where she is accepted. Meza hasn’t sought any transition related surgeries or hormones since it’s difficult for them to afford it. Her mother is pretty accepting as well as her father, even while he struggles with it.

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Item Information:

Identifier: 000000221
Collection: Oral Histories with People of Color
Institution: Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection, University of Minnesota
Creator(s): Meza, Selena
Contributor(s): Jenkins, Andrea
Publisher: University of Minnesota Minneapolis Libraries
Date Created: Nov. 19, 2017
Genre: Oral Histories
Transcriptions
Subject(s): bell hooks
Liv Mickla
Planned Parenthood
Project Runway
Places: Minnesota > Hennepin County > City of Minneapolis > Minneapolis
Illinois > Cook County > City of Chicago > Chicago
Wisconsin > Wood > City of Nekoosa > Nekoosa
Wisconsin > Dunn > City of Menomonie > Menomonie
Topic(s): Assigned gender
Bullying
Coming out
Families
Feminists
Femmes
Ho Chunk women
Latinos
Mexican American women
Migration
Transgender people
Transphobia
Women's studies
Resource Type: Moving image
Text
Language: English
Related URL: https://umedia.lib.umn.edu/
Rights: Copyright undetermined
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