Call Me Mother with Shon Faye

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Shon speaks to Argentinian American health worker and trans advocate Cecilia Gentili. When Cecilia gets a week's internship at a New York health centre, she realises she has the skills to help young trans people have better choices than the ones she faced.

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Shon speaks to Rupert Raj, a Canadian trans activist and psychotherapist who has dedicated his life to creating a world that’s better educated on – and safer for – trans people everywhere.

Rupert opens up on losing his parents at 16 years old, just as he was starting to grapple with understanding his identity, his fight to medically transition, the intersection of his gender experience and sexual identity, activism burnout, and using his career to forge community and support young trans, non-binary and queer people in Canada.

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Shon speaks to New York-based drag artist and DJ, Kevin Aviance.

When Kevin first found himself in Washington D.C.’s nightlife scene during the club kid era, he didn’t expect drag to become his life or to be welcomed into the le-gen-dary ‘House of Aviance’. And he certainly didn’t expect his brief feature in a Madonna music video to catapult him to fame.

If this series is about meeting queer icons, Kevin Aviance is indeed that. His performances epitomise the dance culture of the 1990s and 2000s, when parties lasted all day and night, and dance floors were packed with the cities queer cliques.

His story is also tinged with darkness and is a stark reminder of the threats our community still faces today but, as Kevin shows, you can’t keep a good queen down.

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Shon speaks to British-Nigerian Reverend Jide Macaulay, who founded House of Rainbow, an LGBTQ+ inclusive church and support organisation for queer people of faith. When Jide is excommunicated from his church for being gay, he vows to find a way to reconcile his faith with his sexuality.

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Shon speaks to British performer and artist David Hoyle, who created the anti-drag character The Divine David. Reeling from the impact of the AIDS crisis, David searches for a way to channel his anger and ends up with a surprisingly upbeat take on our mortality.

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Shon speaks to Zsa-Zsa Fisher, a South African campaigner and healthcare worker. Searching for a better sense of herself, Zsa-Zsa visits a Johannesburg club called Simply Blue and meets a drag queen who will change her life.

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Shon speaks to American author Sarah Schulman, who began her career as a reporter for New York’s queer and feminist press before going on to pen over 20 novels, plays and works of non-fiction. Sarah discusses her life and work as an out lesbian writer, and her compulsion to document the queer experience.

For more from Novel visit novel.audio.

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Shon meets Lavinia Co-op, former member of the BLOOLIPS, a British radical drag troupe. After landing a job as a dresser in London’s West End, Lavinia is thrust into a new world of opportunity, and a decades-long performance career.

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Shon speaks to British activist and Stonewall co-founder Lisa Power. When Lisa accidentally finds herself outed in the local newspaper, she chooses to embrace queer life and the myriad experiences that come with it.

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