Arts & Entertainment
Queer, Crip and Here: Meet blind writer Caitlin Hernandez
Author navigates intersecting identities in life, work
(Editor’s Note: One in four people in America has a disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Queer and disabled people have long been a vital part of the LGBTQ+ community. Take two of the many queer history icons who were disabled: Michelangelo is believed to have been autistic. Marsha P. Johnson, who played a heroic role in the Stonewall Uprising, had physical and psychiatric disabilities. Today, Deaf/Blind fantasy writer Elsa Sjunneson; actor and bilateral amputee Eric Graise who played Marvin in the “Queer as Folk” reboot; and Kathy Martinez, a blind, Latinx lesbian, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Disability Employment Policy for the Obama administration, are only a few of the queer and disabled people in the LGBTQ community. Yet, the stories of this vital segment of the queer community have rarely been told. In its monthly, yearlong series, “Queer, Crip and Here,” the Blade will tell some of these un-heard stories.)
Some creators agonize for years before plunging into their art.
This wasn’t the case with queer, blind writer and teacher Caitlin Hernandez. Hernandez wrote her first “novel,” “Computer Whiz,” she writes in her bio, when she was in the fourth grade. She kept her monitor off so no one would see her “masterpiece.”
Reading and writing have been a part of Hernandez’s life for as long as she can remember. “I was writing, even as a little kid,” Hernandez, who was born in 1990 and grew up in Danville, Calif., said in a telephone interview with the Blade, “In first grade, I wrote stories in braille. They taught me to type. Because people were having to translate.”
As a kid, Hernandez used a tape recorder to tell stories. “That happens so often with blind kids,” said Hernandez, who lives in San Francisco with her partner Martha and Maite their Rottweiler.
Maite was Martha’s dog when the couple got together. “I call her my ‘stepdogter,’” Hernandez said. It’s clear from the get-go that she doesn’t take herself too seriously. Maite, her “stepdogter,” is “currently writing a picture book,” Hernandez jokes in her bio.
It’s commonly thought that disabled people lead sad, tragic lives. But Hernandez busts this myth. Martha, her partner, “reads braille with her eyes,” Hernandez whimsically writes in her bio.
Hernandez is committed to teaching and writing. But, she “loves eating coffee ice cream, watching Star Trek Voyager, singing, skipping and using her rainbow cane – sometimes all at once,” Hernandez writes in her bio.
Queerness is an integral part of Hernandez’s life: from her fiction, which tells stories of LGBTQ people, disabled people, and people of color to her rainbow cane.
“Queerness is considered cool now in many places,” Hernandez said, “it’s normalized.”
But that’s not true with disability, she added. “Generally, there’s more fear and misperceptions around disabled people,” Hernandez said.
Because of their discomfort with disabled people, she’s often left alone at social and literary gatherings.
“Because I’m blind, people frequently won’t talk to me,” Hernandez said, “even if I’ve read at an open mic.”
To make people feel more comfortable with her, Hernandez, totally blind since birth, sometimes uses a rainbow cane. “I designed it,” she said, “it has the colors of the rainbow flag. If you’re queer, you’ll get that.”
But it’s also beautiful because it’s a rainbow, Hernandez said, “It’s a great ice-breaker.”
(Hernandez uses her rainbow cane when she’s out with friends. When traveling by herself, she uses the white cane used by most blind people.)
Once people get to know [disabled people],” Hernandez said, “they’re chill with us.”
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), a landmark civil rights law, despite problems of enforcement and compliance, has done much to change life for disabled people.
The ADA generation (those born when or after the law was passed) has grown up with the expectation that disabled people have rights. They’re not surprised to see curb cuts or braille menus. They expect employers to make accommodations for disabled employees and hospitals to have sign language interpreters for Deaf people.
Yet despite the ADA, ableism persists (even within her own ADA generation), Hernandez said. A key reason why discomfort with and fear of disabled people is still so pervasive is the problem of representation, she said.
Hernandez, a Lambda Literary Emerging Writer Fellow in 2015 and 2018, is acutely aware of how disabled and queer and disabled people are portrayed in fiction and nonfiction.
“Our lives are often represented so badly,” Hernandez said, “often by nondisabled creators. There’s a lot of fear and inaccuracy.”
Thankfully, there are a few fab books with disabled characters by disabled authors, Hernandez said. She loves “The Kiss Quotient” by Helen Hoang, who is autistic. The novel portrays the romance of an autistic econometrician and her biracial male escort.
Hernandez is a fan of “The Silence Between us,” a young adult romance featuring a Deaf character, by hard-of-hearing author Alison Gervais.
“The Chance to Fly,” co-authored by Ali Stroker, the bisexual, Tony-winning actress who uses a wheelchair, and Stacy Davidowitz, is one of Hernandez’s faves. The book, a novel for middle-schoolers, tells the story of a theater-loving, wheelchair using girl, who defies ableist expectations.
Hernandez began to think she was queer when she was in high school. But, she didn’t come out then to anyone except a few of her friends. “They kinda didn’t believe me,” Hernandez said, “because a friend of ours had already come out as queer and they thought I was trying to copy him.”
After she was in college, Hernandez, who earned a bachelor’s degree in literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2012, came out to her parents.
Her folks, now divorced, were fine with her being queer.
Because nondisabled people frequently don’t see disabled people as datable or sexy, some aspects of coming out are more difficult if you have a disability, Hernandez said. “We often miss one of the rites of passage of coming out,” she said, “of saying ‘I am queer – here with my queer date (or partner).’”
Hernandez’s first relationship was with a woman who was closeted. “We couldn’t be out,” she said.
Hernandez got together with her partner Martha in November 2019. Then there was the pandemic and everything was cancelled. “So we didn’t get to go out as an out queer couple,” Hernandez said.
“Everybody knows I’m partnered with Martha,” she added.
But because of ableism, sometimes people don’t see her as Martha’s romantic partner, Hernandez said.
Like many, Hernandez navigates intersecting identities. “I’m thinking more about my being of mixed race,” Hernandez said, “My Mom is white. My Dad is one-half Mexican and one-half German. I can pass as white,” she added.
She’s grappling with what it means to have a Latinx last name, Hernandez said.
She wishes she had taken Spanish. “But I took French,” Hernandez said, “I wanted to do what my friends were doing.”
As a writer, Hernandez hopes to help children who live with intersecting identities.
Her work has appeared in “Aromatica Poetica,” “Wordgathering” and in “Barriers and Belonging,” “Firsts: Coming Of Age Stories by People with Disabilities” and other anthologies.
In 2013, “Dreaming in Color,” a musical written by Hernandez, was produced by CRE Outreach at the Promenade Playhouse in Santa Monica, Calif.
Hernandez’s unpublished young adult novel “Even Touch Has a Tune” is about a queer, blind girl falling in love with another girl and surviving sexual assault, Hernandez said in an email to the Blade. “It’s fiction but has a lot of autobiographical content,” she added.
If you’re disabled, you’re more vulnerable to sexual assault. When she was a freshman, Hernandez became friends with a fully sighted guy who she’d met in her classes. “He seemed nice,” she said, “but then he came over and touched me inappropriately.”
“I froze up,” Hernandez added, “if you’re disabled, you’re vulnerable. You’re taught to be polite – to keep quiet.”
While there’s more representation of disabled people in fiction, Hernandez is still discouraged.
Because of ableism, many literary agents may not want her “disabled and assault novel,” Hernandez said. (Her unpublished YA novel “Even Touch Has a Tune” is represented by Emily Keyes of Keyes Agency.)
Too frequently, representation of disabled people is focused on ableist tropes like “inspiration porn” and “overcoming,” Hernandez said. There isn’t interest in portraying scary, difficult aspects (like sexual assaults) of disabled people’s lives, she added.
But discouragement doesn’t stop Hernandez from writing or from connecting with kids as a teacher.
Hernandez earned a master’s degree in special education and her teaching credentials from San Francisco State University in 2016. Today, she is a resource specialist with the San Francisco Unified School District.
Hernandez enjoys forging a connection with disabled and nondisabled students. “Nondisabled kids come to me for extra help,” she said.
Hernandez has accomplished much. But, “I’ve learned I don’t have to be a role model,” she said, “I don’t have to be perfect.”
a&e features
Guillermo Diaz on his role as a queer, Latino actor in Hollywood
Shattering stereotypes and norms with long resume of roles
Actor Guillermo Diaz has been working hard in the entertainment industry for more than three decades. Proud of his heritage and queer identity, he has broken through many glass ceilings to have a prolific career that includes tentpole moments such as roles in the films Party Girl, Half Baked, and Bros, and in major TV shows like Weeds and Scandal, and even in a Britney Spears music video. This season, he made his feature-length directorial debut with the film Dear Luke, Love Me.
In an intimate sit-down with the Blade, Diaz shares that he attributes a lot of his success to his Cuban upbringing.
“Well, it prepared me to learn how to lie really well and be a good actor because it was a lot of acting like you were straight, back in the eighties and nineties (laugh). Another thing I learned from my Cuban immigrant parents is that they work super hard. They both had two jobs; we were latchkey kids, and I just saw them constantly working and wanting to provide for us by any means. So that was super instilled in me. That was the one thing that really stuck out that I admire and respect.”
Besides Diaz’s recurring roles on TV, his resume includes appearances in just about every genre of programming out there. If there is a major show out there, he was probably on it. Law and Order, Girls, The Closer, Chappelle’s Show, ER, Party of Five, and the list goes on. He’s accomplished more in his career thus far than most actors do in a lifetime. There is no doubt he is a hard worker.
“It’s a sign that I just loved to work, and it’s funny looking back at it now because you see all those things, but at the time it was just the next gig, the next job. I was just wanting to keep working and acting and learning and doing all that stuff. Then it sort of accumulates, and you look back and you’re like, damn! That’s a lot of stuff!”
Acting was never on Diaz’s radar until he was asked to fill in for a friend in a Beastie Boys medley for a talent show when he was a sophomore in high school.
“I did it and fell in love with it. I was teased a lot in high school. Then, when I did that performance, all those people who teased me were like, you were so great! So I looked at it initially as a thing of like, oh, this is where I’m accepted and people like me when I’m on stage. It’s kind of sad, too, because that’s what I latched onto. And then of course, I fell in love with the craft and performing and acting, but that initial rush was because all these people who were messing with me and teasing me all of a sudden liked me. And I was like, this is what I have to do.”
Little did Diaz know that he would break the mold when it came to stereotypical casting. When he first hit the industry, diversity and positive representation were not a thing in Hollywood.
“You just kind of accepted at the time. It was the early nineties. 90% of the time, it was playing a thug or a gun dealer, or a crack head – it was all bad guys, negative characters. But it was either that or not act and not be in anything. So you just kind of accept it, and then you have this sort of vision or hope that in the future it’s going to get better.
Diaz’s management was trepidatious about him playing gay roles for fear of being typecast. But Diaz did play a handful of gay roles early on, although he passed on But I’m A Cheerleader, which went on to become a gay cult classic. Diaz decided early on that he was not going to hide his sexuality. Diaz appeared in the film Stonewall. That was the defining point for him in sharing his identity.
“Being cast in that historical sort of dramatization of the 1969 Stonewall riots – I couldn’t believe I was in the midst that I was in the middle of doing this and playing the lead drag queen on the film. I just felt so honored, and I knew it was important, and I knew I needed to do a really good job. I thought, what a special moment this is. And it kicked my ass shooting that movie.
I remember after doing Stonewall, people saying, well, now you’re either going to have to make a choice if you’re going to lie, or if you’re going to just be honest, and you’re going to have to be out from now on if you’re going to be honest. And I was like, I’m not going to freaking lie. When they’d asked me, I would say I was gay. I think because I never tried to hide it, it didn’t become a thing. So people just kind of ignored it. It didn’t mess with me or my career. I don’t know. Or I just got lucky. I don’t freaking know.”
As a queer, Latin actor, Diaz is all too aware of what is happening politically and socially in the world towards minority communities. Does he think actors have a place in politics?
“For sure. I mean, we’re people first, right? Like, I hate when people sort of are like, oh, you’re an actor, shut up. I’m super political and outspoken, and I’m that guy who will say shit. I’m on the right side of history, at least. I’m not being complicit and silent. So, yeah, I think actors for sure have a place in politics. Absolutely.”
While directing was on Diaz’s radar, it wasn’t something that he was actively searching out. But as life would have it, his friend Mallie McCown sent him her script for Dear Luke, Love Me, a film she would play the lead in. Diaz was hooked.
“It was one of those scripts that I had to keep putting down every like 20 pages. I would put it down because I didn’t want it to end. It was so good. Originally, I was just going to come on as a producer of the film, and then the director dropped out, and then Mallie asked me if I was interested in directing. I was scared as shit. I had never directed a feature film. But I was like, it’s now or never.”
The film covers a decade of the friendship between Penny and Luke, covering themes of platonic love, asexuality, co-dependence, and self-identity. With most of the film focusing on just the two leads, Diaz has crafted an intimate and raw film. What is his message with the film?
“That love is complicated, but it’s beautiful and rewarding and worth all the heartache. I believe that. I don’t want to give away too much in the film either, but I think everyone can relate to it because there’s heartache and there’s pain, and there’s beauty and there’s love.”
And in looking at his past work and in looking toward his future career, what kind of legacy does Diaz want to build?
“That I broke some ground, that I knocked down some walls as an artist; I’m hoping that made a difference. It’s funny because when you’re in it, you’re not thinking about all this stuff that could possibly pave the way for other people. You’re just kind of moving along and living your life. But yeah, I would hope that I broke down some walls as a queer Latino.
I hope that people can sort of get something out of me trying to live as authentically as I can, just being my queer self. Hopefully, that helps someone along who is having some troubles being accepted or being comfortable with who they are.”
Photos
PHOTOS: Cheers to Out Sports!
LGBTQ homeless youth services organization honors local leagues
The Wanda Alston Foundation held a “Cheers to Out Sports!” event at the DC LGBTQ+ Community Center on Monday, Nov. 17. The event was held by the LGBTQ homeless youth services organization to honor local LGBTQ sports leagues for their philanthropic support.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
Theater
Gay, straight men bond over finances, single fatherhood in Mosaic show
‘A Case for the Existence of God’ set in rural Idaho
‘A Case for the Existence of God’
Through Dec. 14
Mosaic Theater Company at Atlas Performing Arts Center
1333 H St,, N.E.
Tickets: $42- $56 (discounts available)
Mosaictheater.org
With each new work, Samuel D. Hunter has become more interested in “big ideas thriving in small containers.” Increasingly, he likes to write plays with very few characters and simple sets.
His 2022 two-person play, “A Case for the Existence of God,” (now running at Mosaic Theater Company) is one of these minimal pieces. “Audiences might come in expecting a theological debate set in the Vatican, but instead it’s two guys sitting in a cubicle discussing terms on a bank loan,” says Hunter (who goes by Sam).
Like many of his plays, this award-winning work unfolds in rural Idaho, where Hunter was raised. Two men, one gay, the other straight (here played by local out actors Jaysen Wright and Lee Osorio, respectively), bond over financial insecurity and the joys and challenges of single fatherhood.
His newest success is similarly reduced. Touted as Hunter’s long-awaited Broadway debut, “Little Bear Ridge Road” features Laurie Metcalf as Sarah and Micah Stock as Ethan, Sarah’s estranged gay nephew who returns to Idaho from Seattle to settle his late father’s estate. At 90 minutes, the play’s cast is small and the setting consists only of a reclining couch in a dark void.
“I was very content to be making theater off-Broadway. It’s where most of my favorite plays live.” However, Hunter, 44, does admit to feeling validated: “Over the years there’s been this notion that my plays are too small or too Idaho for Broadway. I feel that’s misguided, so now with my play at the Booth Theatre, my favorite Broadway house, it kind of proves that.”
With “smaller” plays not necessarily the rage on Broadway, he’s pleased that he made it there without compromising the kind of plays he likes to write.
Hunter first spoke with The Blade in 2011 when his “A Bright Day in Boise” made its area premiere at Woolly Mammoth Theatre. At the time, he was still described as an up-and-coming playwright though he’d already nabbed an Obie for this dark comedy about seeking Rapture in an Idaho Hobby Lobby.
In 2015, his “The Whale,” played at Rep Stage starring out actor Michael Russotto as Charlie, a morbidly obese gay English teacher struggling with depression. Hunter wrote the screenplay for the subsequent 2022 film which garnered an Oscar for actor Brendan Frazier.
The year leading up to the Academy Awards ceremony was filled with travel, press, and festivals. It was a heady time. Because of the success of the film there are a lot of non-English language productions of “The Whale” taking place all over the world.
“I don’t see them all,” says Hunter. “When I was invited to Rio de Janeiro to see the Portuguese language premiere, I went. That wasn’t a hard thing to say yes to.”
And then, in the middle of the film hoopla, says Hunter, director Joe Mantello and Laurie (Metcalf) approached him about writing a play for them to do at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago before it moved to Broadway. He’d never met either of them, and they gave him carte blanche.
Early in his career, Hunter didn’t write gay characters, but after meeting his husband in grad school at the University of Iowa that changed, he began to explore that part of his life in his plays, including splashes of himself in his queer characters without making it autobiographical.
He says, “Whether it’s myself or other people, I’ve never wholesale lifted a character or story from real life and plopped it in a play. I need to breathing room to figure out characters on their own terms. It wouldn’t be fair to ask an actor to play me.”
His queer characters made his plays more artistically successful, adds Hunter. “I started putting something of myself on the line. For whatever reason, and it was probably internalized homophobia, I had been holding back.”
Though his work is personal, once he hands it over for production, it quickly becomes collaborative, which is the reason he prefers plays compared to other forms of writing.
“There’s a certain amount of detachment. I become just another member of the team that’s servicing the story. There’s a joy in that.”
Hunter is married to influential dramaturg John Baker. They live in New York City with their little girl, and two dogs. As a dad, Hunter believes despite what’s happening in the world, it’s your job to be hopeful.
“Hope is the harder choice to make. I do it not only for my daughter but because cynicism masquerades as intelligence which I find lazy. Having hope is the better way to live.”
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