Claudia Rodriguez is a community scholar, educator, creative writer and performer from Compton. Her first collection of poetry “Everybody’s Bread” (2015, Korima Press) was named a Lambda Literary Fest Finalist in poetry. For the past twenty years, she has developed work for/about and with marginalized communities. As a 2016 COLA Fellow, an award from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Claudia  wrote a performance poem entitled “Midnight Steel” that challenges mainstream perceptions of Compton.  As part of the process, she conducted interviews with residents of Compton and wove their voices into her performance.  As a 2014 recipient of an Artists in Residence Grant ($8,0000) from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, she developed the project “Nuestros Cuerpos Nuestras Almas/Our Bodies, Our Souls (OBOS).”  OBOS was a literary project wherein she worked with Transgender Latina immigrants. Through facilitated creative writing exercises, they explored their biographies and produced creative works to be published in a bilingual OBOS anthology (forthcoming 2017). This project addresses the glaring absence of literary work written by transgender Latina immigrants. She is a founding member of Butchlalis de Panochtitlan (BdP) a sketch-driven performance/ installation/video ensemble (now defunked). She performed with BdP from 2002 to 2010 all across the country.

As a doctoral student in the UCLA Cesar Chavez Department of Chicana/o Studies, the purpose of my research is to share the stories of undocumented Trans Latinas who have overcome tremendous obstacles to self-actualize and survive in a country that sees their very existence as a criminal (i.e., illegal) act. What can we learn about these women who have the courage to act to change their present conditions and how can these ways of knowing inform future generations of trans Latinas (i.e. trans Latina epistemology)? Because mainstream representation of Trans Latina lives is not only scarce but also biased and based on stereotype and negativity, I want to correct that representation with the words and voices of Trans Latina women writing about their own lives and how they perceive their relationship to larger cultural contexts.