Gabriella N. Báez

Alejandra Rosa, House of Grace and I have been working on a really beautiful project about identity, community, and family for almost 6 months now and a tiny excerpt of it published this week in TIME

Stay tuned for the publication of the full project in the coming weeks! 

Thank you to Magnum Foundation for supporting this project, Paul Moakley for guiding us through the process, and Kara Milstein and Kat Moon for this piece titled “How Communities of Color Have Found Strength, Joy and Comfort in a Year Like No Other”

You can find this spread in Visions of Equity, the magazine’s first ever BIPOC-led issue.

“In 2018, trans activist and poet María José started House of Grace to create a community where trans and nonbinary people of color in Puerto Rico could safely explore their identities. The need for spaces like these has only become more urgent: the Human Rights Campaign reports that at least 12 LGBTQ people have been killed in Puerto Rico since the start of 2019, and the island’s governor declared a state of emergency over gender violence on Jan. 24. “This is such a cruel world to us,” says Coqueta, a 25-year-old trans dancer, one of 12 members in the House of Grace collective, who meet and live in locations including Guaynabo, Río Piedras and Toa Baja. “All the members of the house have chosen this as their family because they know they don’t have the same support elsewhere,” she says. Beibijavi, 23, had left their biological family’s house—“It wasn’t a safe space for me,” they say—and lived intermittently with different members of House of Grace during the pandemic. Among the collective, self-care, collaboration and mutual support are key. “That’s our foundation: we got each other,” Coqueta says.”

Reporting by Alejandra Rosa 

Photo by Gabriella N. Báez and María José