For the last few weeks, The California Report Magazine has been sharing conversations between transgender and nonbinary kids and the people in their lives who love and support them — a series called Love You for You.

As we enter Transgender Awareness Month, we shift the lens toward intergenerational stories — young people in their twenties in conversation with transgender elders whose lives trace the long arc of LGBTQ+ activism in California.

These bonus episodes carry heavier histories and more mature themes than the family conversations featured earlier in the series. They offer deeper context to the ongoing fight for safety, dignity and self-expression.

This week’s story brings together Zen Blossom, a 26-year-old Black transgender rights activist at the Transgender Gender-Variant & Intersex Justice Project in San Francisco, and Andrea Horne, a San Francisco-based actress, model and jazz singer who once performed with Sylvester, the legendary disco artist, in the 1970s.

Now a historian working on her forthcoming book, How Black Trans Women Changed the World, Andrea reflects with Zen on those who came before them and those who will come after.

Read the transcript for this episode.

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