Bodies Of Work Magazine: INTERVIEW WITH WRITER/CHEF CEYENNE DOROSHOW
Ceyenne: I was running a trans program in Jersey and I loved it. I would do anything for my clients and I did! I believed their fight was my fight and I was fought hard for them. The cooking came about when one Thanksgiving I was going to a trans clients house and they didn’t have anything and they were depressed and what I decided with my boss is I would cook a big dinner for as many clients as I could get and just have a big party for all the girls. So, I was cooking and realized we didn’t have any stuffing! All the stores were closed and I was thinking ‘We cannot have Thanksgiving without stuffing!’ I gave some money to one of the girls and asked her to go to a corner store and get some Italian bread and I found some cornflakes in my clients house and ended up making stuffing with cornflakes and Italian bread. And, you know what, it was phenomenal! When you’re cooking for people there is nothing like watching their face as they eat what you’ve made for them! Nothing like it. This is what got me started on cooking for people again.
A few years ago I was running an ad for a little fetish site I was doing. In the state of Jersey fetish work was considered illegal and I was arrested. First of all, in jail there is no good food! Oh my God, the food was horrible! It’s just not edible! Some things I couldn’t eat and I was over myself with grief in being locked up for 28 days. After my first day I was just crying all day long. My next door cell mate said to me after hearing me crying for the whole day, “Hey, let’s get you to a place where you’re not wanting to cry all the time, and you’re getting out. Stop feeling like its the end of the world, were going to put your mind somewhere else.” Then he paused and said, “Don’t you cook? You cooked for my uncle…” And I realized this was a guy who was a friend of the person I was seeing! He said don’t worry about anything, lets talk about food. And we started talking, and right there I began to think about recipes. I started to write, and write…and one day turned into 15…and I was using everything I had around me to write on, newspapers, magazines - just everything. By the 15th day I had close to a full cookbook. When my lawyers came to see me they said you know we’re trying to work this out for you and they asked me what I was going to do when I got out. And I said I wanna cook, I wanna do a cookbook. And they thought it was a great idea. I didn’t just want to do a cookbook, I wanted to do something related to my identity. I want other people to see that there is nothing you can’t overcome. Be it gender identity, disability, it doesn’t matter. You can overcome it! I want people to remember to fight to be who they are. From this book I also want people to know that there are trans people who want to live normal lives. Not every one of us strives to be buck-naked on the back of a magazine. Some of us do want normal lives, some of us want family. I have well over 6 gay children. I mean children that I’ve mentored and when I mentor I do it for real. I advocate for them in school, make sure they can get their name changed and get their gender identity respected by their teachers. I know that if you have nobody to advocate for you it’s so easy to give up your dreams. But if you do, you start to think of ways to make your life better. And I strongly believe you can’t do much without a solid education. I think that is so, so important.
Morty: Can you tell me a little more about your advocacy work in Jersey?
Ceyenne: I was working for a place called Jersey City Connection. I wound up in the state of New Jersey as a mistake. I got caught there after the World Trade. I went for a funeral and got trapped between the funeral and the World Trade coming down. While I was in Jersey I was invited to a trans meeting and the person running the meeting was being disrespectful to the kids. I didn’t agree with how she was running the meeting. I got called into the directors office to give them my information and I happened to talk to her about what I saw and she asked me if I had a resume, which I did, and within 5 minutes I was hired. And in the 7 years I worked there I didn’t miss but one day due to sickness. I didn’t take a vacation. Advocacy work means not ever knowing whats going to come up and things came up for my girls all the time. In Jersey there were no resources and I came in a found resources that were never ever there.
We were trying to get the girls in to get tested but found out it was hard to get them in for that but easy for them to come in for hormones. So we killed two birds with one stone. I set up a program which did HIV testing and hormones at the same time. Until then, they were buying hormones on the street from people you really couldn’t trust. Sometimes what they thought was hormones was really vegetable oil. Why do that when you can get your hormones from a trusted place from someone like me who you could put your trust in? We did a lot of good for many years.
We’re still raising funds on Kickstarter to do a photo shoot and print beautiful color photos and hopefully hopefully shoot a few episodes of Ceyenne’s online cooking show. So please pledge if you can, and keep spreading the word about the project!
