LUCY MUKERJEE:

All right. Well, thank you so much for agreeing to do this. We're really proud and grateful to have you as part of The Outwords Archive. We know your story is going to inspire so many viewers, so we're just really thankful that you agreed to do this. I've led probably upwards of 20 of these now, and it's been actually really

LUCY MUKERJEE:

meaningful to me to be able to be in conversation with community members and hear about the sense of purpose that folks have because it allows me to kind of apply those lessons to my own life. Alright, well, we will get started and we'll be pausing in about an hour, unless you'd like to do that sooner.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Let's start with the easiest one. Can you please say your name and where and when you were born?

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Okay, Well, that seems like a simple question. But actually it's not. I was born Deborah Diane Wood in Orange, California, which is very close to Disneyland and one of the most conservative counties in the country.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

But I was conceived in Kansas City, which is where my parents came from. I was born Deborah Diane Wood, but I changed my name to Del LaGrace because -- Sorry, a long story. My mother was born Della Janine Grace. She changed her name from Del La to Deborah, which was, Oh, Debbie was all the rage in the fifties when she did that. So she became Deborah

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Janine Wood, when she married my father, and she dropped the Del La and she named me Deborah after her. I changed from Deborah to Del LaGrace, which was also the name of my great grandmother, Del LaGrace. And later my mother became Jeanine Del La-Grace. Then Volcano

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

is another part of the story that I'm sure we'll get to at some point.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Okay.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

But I didn't wanna lose because I had some name recognition as Del LaGrace and I have a connection to the name and to my family. I didn't wanna lose the Del LaGrace-ness of it all, even though Del being just Del is kind of boring, especially

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

in Sweden. Anyway, so yeah, I was born in 1957, year of the Fire Rooster, some call it 'Year of the Cock', and that's true too. I have been known to like a bit of cock-a-doodle. I mean, I have a little spiel. I can break out and rhyme at any moment.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

, Yes. I watched the presentation that you did at the Tate

LUCY MUKERJEE:

and as well. So it's amazing that you're able to perform your story. I think that's such a gift to be able to sort of --

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

A gift or a curse over Leo fire facets of my -- I'm so much fire and I can't help it. That's just how it is. So yeah, that's where I was born, but I also

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

grew up part-time in Oklahoma, Tulsa. My father and mother split and my mother moved to California and had another family. Met a man, had my two sisters. My father met a woman who was a Mormon and he converted to being a Mormon and had my two younger brothers, they all live in Oklahoma or Texas.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I have that, even though I only went there for the summers, I spent two years in high school in Tulsa, there that's part of me too.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Thank you for sharing. We'll come back to your coming of age. I'll start by asking when did you first pick up a camera?

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Well, it's interesting because I know I found a photograph of me

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

when I was about 11 or 12 with a little Polaroid camera, and I must have picked up a camera before 1975 because I was hitchhiking around Europe with a friend and she had a black and white, or a roll film camera, a roller flex, and was making photographs. When we came back to the USA and I enrolled in a community college, I took

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

all the photo and film courses I could. I soon started getting jobs with it, so that was -- Yeah, it was 1976, when I was -- how old was I then? 19.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Something about your photographs that I find so powerful is that they create a sense of belonging for those of us who've been pushed to the margins.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

I wondered if you made a conscious decision to center LGBTQIA a folks in your work, or was it just something that happened because you were documenting what was going on around you?

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I've always centered whatever is closest to me, in my early days of making films. I made more films than photographs, but it was documentaries around

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

my sister, for example, who ran for Elk's Rodeo Queen. My father who -- My stepfather actually, who was a kind of working class hero, iron worker, who had dreams like Don Quixote and actually ended up building a windmill house we lived in called La Mancha, which is still there. My cousins live in it now. But yeah,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I picked up a camera, I was good at it and I kept doing it.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

That's now become a part of history. You've documented decades of the LGBTQIA community and you've been encouraging, through your work, radical empathy and a deeper understanding

LUCY MUKERJEE:

of all of the identities that make up the LGBTQ umbrella.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Thank you. That's nice to hear. That's why I do it. I have lived outside of the USA longer than I've lived inside of it now, at this crazy age that I've got, of being 65 just last month.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I feel like it's not documentary practice exclusively, it's like family photographs. I've lived outside of the family context of, you know, so far away from my biologicals. Even though I do keep in touch with them. I needed to create another, you know,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

not just an alternative family, but a whole network and structure that could support me. The more I did it and the more I learned that it was productive on a kind of emotional scale, it was like growing up feeling like you are a freak when your body doesn't conform to gender norms, for example. And you develop a really

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

hideous idea about yourself and how you look. Then when people take photographs of you, they reflect that ugliness and that freakiness. This has happened to me many, many times because I'm also the subject of many other people's work. I realized that especially the straight photojournalists from newspapers and stuff, they had some kind of a vested interest i

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

n making me look monstrous. In other words, I learned how to take photographs of myself to give myself that gift, and then I realized I was doing it with other people. I do think I have a huge capacity to connect with people and a huge curiosity and a love that I have.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

It is radical empathy. Yeah.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

I think that that love comes through, right? I definitely get a sense of compassion from all of your faces, whether they're of yourself or other people. It's a sense of self love and community love that comes through your work.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Yeah. But, recently, this idea of only positive images and visibility narratives, especially when it comes

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

to the 'I", the intersex, the invisible. I've been doing the intersex visibility project for more than 10 years now, and the efficacy, the usefulness, the ways in which I think visual -- I mean these kinds of initiatives that we're doing right now that people can watch, I think those are really, really important. I think movies,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I think all kinds of media that people just consume, we need to be reaching there, as well as policy, and not simply a celebration of how queer we are. I think that there's a lot of things. So yes, I think that the visibility narratives and the strong powerful, like I say, fuck your tolerance, fuck your acceptance,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

we deserve to be admired and respected because we exist, without the safety nets most of you take for granted, right?

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Yes. Well said. That ties in with my next question, which is how your artistry is intertwined with your work as an activist.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Honey, it's not just my work

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

as an activist. It's like there is no way -- I am my art, my life, my work, my parenting, my activism, the research I do, it's all one thing. I am so blessed in a way because, I am free. I get to do and make work exactly

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

how I want. It's a very organic rhizonic process. It's like, I don't know, I don't have a plan. I am in the moment. I don't know. It is like, I saw somewhere along this list of over 50 something questions, which is great, there's something about spirituality, I think, and for me,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

my working, my art practice, my public interventions, my collaborations with other artists and in other forms of media are all part of what I feel I have a calling. I'm privileged, maybe not immensely so, not privileged in the way that people often think of it. I'm white,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

but I'm not middle class. I have a long history of familial trauma and abuse and neglect and all of those things that I think a lot of queer people have experienced, sometimes because of their queerness and sometimes just because their parents never parented the way they should have been, and they

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

never got the help they needed. Basically to be a human in this world is to need therapy, I think. It's a toxic world for everybody, but some more than others. I think that's where I'd developed such a huge, both a need and a capacity to be engaged with people.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

For me, being present in a moment and making an image with the person I'm working with. By the way, I can't work with people commercially that I don't like. I would never be able to photograph ... You couldn't pay me enough to photograph Donald Trump. I have to feel that that person is somebody that I respect and admire.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

When I'm making the photographs, I'm like so utterly in love with them before, during, and after when I'm processing the images. It's so much more than just making art, it has a social purpose and an emotional purpose.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Thank you for sharing that. That makes sense.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

You touched on this a little bit, but I'd love to go deeper if you don't mind. Thinking about your experiences in the queer community, in the intersex community, in the non-binary community over the years, I'm wondering if you could share how you've seen attitudes towards these identities evolve.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Yeah. I mean, it's funny because I've been listening to a few things where people

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

are talking about the nineties and how hard it was for queer people in the nineties, and I'm like, really? Really? I just don't have that experience. It was never hard. I came out to myself as bisexual when I was 12. My mother was part of consciousness raising groups in the seventies, and I was meeting her friends who were lesbian musicians,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

some who became quite famous, some who were her secret lovers. I wanted to grow up and be a lesbian. Yet, there were two things that were a problem with that. One, I was boy crazy too, I liked boys as well, and boys were easier to play with.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Two, what was it? Oh, once I entered puberty at around 14, 15, I was worried that I wasn't really a girl. I was hiding my beard. I was plucking it out hair by hair, which grew more and more every year. I was proud to

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

have underarm hair and leg hair, but the hair on my face, I thought, was going to disqualify me. There were other physical things that weren't what I had expected would happen at puberty, so, yeah, there was that. But then I lived in a small town. I grew up in Santa Maria, California,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

which is famous for two things; where Michael Jackson had his trial and where Miriam Gerber also grew up in Santa Maria, but a few decades after me, she's a Latina writer, which I think is fierce. I love her. Anyway, I grew up in a small town and my mother helped me find the lesbians in the junior college I started going to when I was 15. She pointed them

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

out to me. I had a great time. I fooled around with lots of girls. There were quailers, there were orgies with eight young women when I was a teenager. Oh, there was even, oh my god, this was great. When Mika was a baby, we went to California, that was like almost 11 years ago now,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

10 and a half. I met a woman, a trans woman, in San Luis Obispo, who two trans guys had said -- We said we wanted to go walking, do you know anybody that goes walking in the mountains and stuff? And they said, Oh, go try out Tarya and Rusty. I went to meet Tarya and she was this elder, then even 10 years ago,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

long wavy white hair. I felt really comfortable with her immediately. But she asked me all these questions like, did my name used to be this? And did my mother used to run for mayor and or was she a mayor of Lombok? And I'm like -- And then she said, "Did you ever know a guy named --?" She said this name, and the hairs on my arms just stood up. We had been lovers

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

when she was a he and I was a she. We met like 35, 40. No, it must have been almost 40 years later. Isn't that wild?

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Yeah.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I had all kinds of lovers even before I moved up to San Francisco to go to the SFAI: [San Francisco Art Institute). But I wasn't identifying as a lesbian because

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I was actually having better sex with men than I was with women. Nobody's girlfriend, but great for a shag, as they say in London. So yeah, yeah. You gotta just break in Lucy, because I can just -- You pull my string and I'm chatty Debbie again.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

I love this. And I haven't had the word "shag" since my college years

LUCY MUKERJEE:

in London. That was fun.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Do you see that woman behind me? That picture of black and white? That was a woman I was lovers with. I found it when I was scanning my negatives, the archive. I found this, she's in my bed, I recognize the room. I don't know who she is. If anybody out there watches this recognizes her, I would so like to know. How I could have forgot her.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

It's a beautiful series made in like 1977 or maybe -- No, it must have been 1970. Yeah. 1977. Crazy, right?

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Absolutely.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

For me, there was no real coming out. It was never an issue. My mother got a little bit upset because she thought I didn't need to broadcast it. She was in the closet. I didn't know that at the time.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

She was in the closet as being bisexual. So yeah, it was only when I moved to San Francisco though. If you ask me another question, I'll talk about that too because that's when my dyke identity started to form.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Well, let's go there, let's talk about San Francisco. You were in art school?

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I was in Allan Hancock Community College. I was

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

the theater photographer for -- This is in Santa Maria, still, Sorry. I was the theater photographer for Pacific Conservatory for the Performing Arts: [PCPA), and I had my own little dark room. I thought I wanted to be an actor and I did a tryout. It was like the myth -- No, what was it? Antigone. It's like I spit on your happiness and I spat on the director. I did not get into the company, but I became their

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

photographer, which was much better. I photographed people like Kelly McGillis, probably the most famous one. She was a student there. Lots of people that went on to LA and to be in LA Law and all those kinds of things, I'd always get a kick out of seeing them. I guess there's still some people that I'm still friends with. But I did that. I did

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

film philosophy and photography. I had a gay philosophy teacher, Jim Bostwick. He helped me get this state scholarship, one of the last ones, by saying, "Sign up for every course you can, come to them. You don't have to do the papers. I'll give you an A, it'll help you. All you have to do is keep people talking the way you do."

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Oh, wow. He was asking you to keep the students engaged.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Because I'm a talker and I know how to ask questions. I don't know. I was good. I feel like I was cognitively more clicked in then than I am now. But I was pretty smart back then, so it was a bit of a scam. But it was queer solidarity. I so tried to

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

find him. It was like, the age of AIDS when so many of my close friends and lovers died. But I haven't been able to find Jim Bostwick, Santa Barbara. Anyway, I got a state scholarship, thanks to Jim, I think. I did have good grade point average and SAT and everything, but it helped. I chose the San Francisco Art Institute, which

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

from a class perspective was a shock. A lot of very, very rich privileged European kids, a lot of teachers that were artists, but really not very good teachers. Somehow, they impeached Stanley Greene, who's an amazing African American photographer, sadly, dead now. For some reason they impeached him and elected me as the student body president.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I founded the first LGB organization, is what it was then. This is before Catherine Opie went there. I was photographing people in the Mission district where I lived, and I had this long wavy red hair. I was a babe, but I didn't know it. People thought I was really super edgy, this white girl going into a Hispanic neighborhood and

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

photographing street people, hookers. I felt weirded out. I gave pictures back. I went back. I don't have everybody's names now, of course, because I'm hideously bad at record keeping and stuff. They're great pictures but even then, before this term 'colonialization' was coined, it felt wrong. Then I had my separatist summer.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

You couldn't make this stuff up. I sublet Barbara Hammer, the filmmaker, I sublet her Goddess Film studios in North Oakland, the summer of 1980. She was in Lesbos making the lesbian film. I was being chased around by Barbara Levine, a big Jewish lesbian, on a motorcycle,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

and she did catch me, but it was great. I came back after what I called my separatist summer in North Oakland with a mullet, shaved head, but one little braid down the back, full leathers and a motorcycle. They were shocked, the student body president babe was gone, the dyke was there.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

What a transformation?

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

They hated it. I started making photographs at Scott's Bar, which was kind of like a working class biker bar, was super butches and high femmes that were working at the Mitchell Brothers. I have so much information and history on people that were in the photographs. Some who killed themselves, some who died, some who had accidents, some who became porn stars.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

The film Rebel Dykes, which I'm also in, which is about London in the eighties and nineties. This was even before that, before I went to London and started making work. It's really where I started making work about lesbian culture. That was not politically correct. I remember going to -- I did a workshop

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

with Jeb, Joni Byron, and I was so happy that she didn't reject me for the work I was doing, the queer work I was doing. Even though, at the time, hers was all really like, women in flannel shirts with manual tools, beautiful work. But it was just definitely at that time -- What I can say about that time of the late

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

seventies, early eighties is that it was very prescriptive and there was these ideas you didn't know where came from about having sex. I had finally gotten to San Francisco. I had sex with Charmaine, that was in that picture there, in Scott's bar, that was one of the first ones I took. She's in my leather jacket. She was the first woman I ever had sex with who knew how to

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

have sex. First woman I ever had an orgasm with actually. This isn't too detailed for y'all, is it?

LUCY MUKERJEE:

No, this is great. I should pause and ask you not to lean too far away because your head gets . But that is perfect, so keep going.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Okay. So once I had the big O experience with the woman, I'm like, I'm a dyke. I'm a dyke. I had cut my hair because yeah,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I wasn't getting many dates with the long hair back then. I knew there were a lot of long hair dykes, but I needed to somehow prove myself because I guess I was kind of hyper feminine in a way, which was actually a strategy in a way for both attracting the people I was interested in, which were mostly butcher's or what we would call non-binary today.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

But it was also because I was afraid I would be discovered I wasn't woman enough, or I wasn't only a woman.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

That make sense? Yeah.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

So there you have it. That's how I started making photographs about queer culture because it was what I was doing. It was the culture I was inhabiting.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

I've seen some of those photographs at Scott's Bar, and it is amazing to be able to say

LUCY MUKERJEE:

this is queer women, butch women in this era, living unapologetically, to be able to have those candid photos of them just hanging out, it's joy to see them.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Well, there's some candids, there's photographs that are a bit more than hanging out, too . But yeah. A lot, so much that I've spent the last few years digitizing my black and white archive. I haven't even started on the

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

black and white and medium format and color, but I have just thousands and thousands of things, and things that I discover that I haven't seen. Because when you're in the beginning, when I was working in 35, they're like they're so small and you look at them and you don't blow everyone up. You don't look at every -- And then 20, 30, now 40 years later

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

when I'm looking at this stuff, I'm like, Wow. I'm much more interested in showing what was before and after, not just the perfect one.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

That's really valuable to photographers. Yeah. For budding photographers to see how do you zero in on the shots. Yeah.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Yeah. And also what it shows, it is a treasure trove. I hope I'm in desperate need of somebody

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

who has better organizational skills than me. But I have to say, many have tried to crack the whip and sort me out, but it's just like, I'm still alive, and I think it's such a resource because I really do have 40 years and I've worked with so many amazing people like even like Robert Patrick that gay playwright, I

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

photographed him when he was at PCPA. Now we're in touch again. Kate Bornstein, Leslie Feinberg, Susie Bright, Derek Jarman, Kathy Acker, Rotimi Fani-Kayode. God! So many people that I've been

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

able to not just make a photograph with, but to actually have close relationships with, to have them write about my work, which is very useful. Academics like Jack Albertson and Paul Preciado and Horika Doll and Jay Prosser. It's like, I feel like we're all celestial bodies, where all these stars,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

and I am a super Leo, but what I like to do, just as I did as a theater photographer, is like, I like to shine the light and the spotlight on other people. I get plenty of attention, is like, don't you all worry about me. Economic attention, I could use some more of that. But as far as other attention, I know how to get that. But not everybody is as mouthy.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Sorry. Let's go there. Let's talk about your live shows, because I get the sense that you're very empowered by performance.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Oh, yeah.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

I wondered if that always was the case, or did it come easy to you or was it a challenge?

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I could never have been an actor because

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I could not perform other people's words. I can only perform myself and it's like -- I'm trying to write memoirs right now, but I'm still waiting. It's like statute of limitations with the truth set me free or get me locked up. There's some great stories, but the truth is really,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

really the most fascinating thing. It's still something I'm trying to sort out for myself. I think it's actually a life stage. Apparently, when you're in your sixties, this is, when you think back about your life. Now, I think that I'm proper old enough. I think it's always so crazy when people are in their thirties or forties writing their memoirs. I'm like,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

what? Sorry, what was the question?

LUCY MUKERJEE:

We're talking about the performance of element.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Oh yeah. I like to be on stage. I like to connect with people. I like to share, I like people to laugh at my jokes. I like people to be with me,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

you know? And if I can create a space -- I did an amazing -- I mean, one of the most fun, for me, what are they, lectures, performances? There's something in between, show and tell, I don't know. But I did it and it was at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol earlier this year. Oh my God, they understood my references.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I didn't have to speak really slow English. I could speak a little faster because I'm often speaking for non-English speaking audiences, and they got my references and they got my jokes. Yeah. I'm like, Hey, should I consider standup or something? This is great. I love it.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

You're a natural storyteller.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

It's that, but it's also the politics, it's the

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

human rights issues. It's being able to tell a story that's important in a way that doesn't alienate people. People might think, Oh, how am I gonna feel when I see this weird, herm, intersex, queer person? And really after five minutes, they relax and they forget that I'm a little bit or a lot different than they are.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Because I know I'm a superhero, and they may not know that they have those powers too. I just like being on stage because I have something to say. For somebody like me who talks too much, to have people to either pay or just stay and listen to you talking, Wow, great. Who knew you could make a living out of this? Not that I

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

really make a living, but you know what I mean?

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Yes. I wanted to ask you about one of your books, the one that's dedicated to drag kings. Now of course, drag kings are less present in the public consciousness. Yes. Thank you. You had it ready?

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I have all my books ready.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

I was going to say that drag kings are less the public consciousness than queens at the moment. I wondered if you could talk a little bit about --

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

It's not "at the moment," it's always been like that. I mean, really, what is there to say? Masculinity is something that must be taken seriously. For someone who's assigned female at birth to perform masculinity will make so many, not all, but many men feel emasculated. They will feel that you're making

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

fun of them, it's not serious. A lot of times, that's true. There's a lot to take the piss about in terms of masculinity. But it's not as funny because it's got to be funny. How ludicrous, how hysterical that any man would want to be a woman or look like a woman and go down in status or the opposite.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

These men can do it, these drag queens are the epitome of what all women should be aspiring to. We can out-woman woman in a way. And it's like, sometimes that can be slightly entertaining, but I am so tired of it, the tootsies and all of them,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

RuPaul, not my . I've done drag king workshops where I've given them, but I've also done crisscross workshops where the object of that workshop is to obscure whatever sex you were assigned at birth for people to not be able to work out what you are.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

To have a question mark around you, walk around with that question mark. I ask people to do that sometimes in workshops, like, if you're a man, just put a little lipstick or eyeshadow on and go grocery shopping. Don't make a big production where you're doing a big drag. It's like I do a lot of kind of public interventions. I, sometimes, like to work with straight people and help them escape the kind of

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

small boxes that they have to live in.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

I love hearing about those workshops. Thank you for sharing. Juan, had a question.

Juan Raymundo Ramos:

Yeah. Sorry we rotated the camera. Now we see a little bit more -- There you go. That's great. That's good.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

That's okay. Okay. You just cracked that whip. I forgot you were

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

there watching my every move.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

This has been great though. You're doing fantastic and so engaging, so thank you. Let's see. I think after the break, we'll shift to talking about your parenting and your kids.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I just wanna say one more thing about another public intervention that I've done here in my small middle earth Swedish town,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

called 'Walk the Walk'. This started in 2005 as something where I would ask people, kind of like all questions about, do you think gay people are just as good as you? Do you think that what I do with my work is useful? And then, would you do something like wear lipstick in the supermarket or put some

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

facial hair on if you are female-bodied? It started there. When I came to , I did walk the walk and I was, I'm in a context now in Sweden, which we'll talk to you about more parenting, but where I'm around a lot of straight people, like more than I've ever been in my whole life. I've lived in big cities; I've lived in London, in San Francisco, in New York.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I didn't have to deal with a lot of straight people. In Sweden that changed completely. I get heterosexual men, alpha males, to walk around holding hands. Just that, walk around town holding hands. Walk the walk. See what it's like for us who are always having to be watching who could

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

be watching us, wanting to hurt us. I've done it a couple of times and it's gone down very well. But the alpha males barely notice that people are saying faggot or looking at them. They are so secure in their alpha masculinity. When one of them holds my hand, they think it's care in the community. I'm a person who is cognitively impaired and they are my worker

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

taking care of me. It didn't work in terms of stimulating little homophobia. Those are the kind of things, and I do all kinds of things like that for fun that never get recorded as well. So yeah, that's my life.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

That's incredible. I love that you're doing those things to sort of stimulate conversation in the community and get people thinking outside of their little boxes, as you put it.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Well, there's a lot of

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

queer envy out there. I've been using that knowledge that straight people, you know, they can apologize for being boring. I mean, they have a funny idea about my life, but probably it is more glamorous in some ways than there is more colorful, more interesting

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

because I'm not following the formula.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

So, Del, thinking about the movie trailer of your life, what are some of those milestone moments that you're most proud of that you'd like to share with our viewers today?

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

It was 2019 at About Face. I was part of the big queer exhibition. I think I had the most wall space. About Face: Stonewall,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Revolt and New Queer Art. There were a lot of art shows around the world in 2019 because they had a hook, it was the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, and a friend in Chicago I invited asked if he could bring his partner, and I said, "Sure, give me your name." He gave me her name. I put her on the guest list.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

They came. He's a trans man, she's a trans woman. Later the next day, and it was really nice to meet, but I was really -- The next day, I had lunch with my friend in Chicago. He said that his partner was interested in buying one of my photos and she bought it. It was

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Lilly Wachowski, and I had not even the penny, even though I put her name, and I knew the Wachowski Brothers had become the Wachowski sisters. I had spoken to her and I really liked her, and I thought she was great. I must have been in my own little bubble because the penny did not drop until he spelled out like the Matrix and V is for Vendetta and Bound, and of course,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I know all these things, and she actually paid me more than I asked for. That felt like such a moment of queer solidarity. She Instagrammed the picture when she put it up with her collection and that helped me. I really appreciate that, because that doesn't always happen with other queer artists.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Yeah, there were funny moments. There was a big, at the Hayward Gallery in London, there was an exhibition and I had on these brogues and they dissolved, my shoes dissolved, and the people working there were frantically trying to glue my heel back to my shoe. That was pretty funny. But I didn't like the pink wall. I thought they infantilized both Catherine Opie

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

and Nelle Mahaley, they had us in this really bad room constructed like a first year art school art fair kind of thing. It was horrible. But it's a good line on my CV, I guess.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

And you shared that picture of Lily with the photo

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Yeah. Yeah.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Would you like to share a little bit of your spoken word?

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Oh, sure.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

This is part of a longer one that I do. It's called Bodies that Queer. Goes like this, bodies that queer are bodies we fear to have and to hold and to watch become old as we wrinkle and flake. We must not forsake bodies that queer are bodies that break, but break though we might, queer bodies

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

are strong and like everyone else, we want to belong, but belong to what? I hear queer brain scream. What kind of queer fits into a scheme, Bodies that queer are defiantly strange. Which is not to say that we're never the same. No matter how much we're told to have pride, let's not be reduced

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

and commodified. Queer bodies are bodies that refuse to restrain or retrain our pleasures, our fuckups, our pain. Her bodies are measured, were prodded and poked. We're cut up and sold as a cultural joke. We're told

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

we're disorders that need to be fixed, that doctors can cure us so we're no longer mixed. Queer bodies are bodies that cannot belong to families that hate us or just make us feel wrong. Queer bodies disturb this cannot be denied. Our queerness is sexy and unspecified.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Bodies that queer are a fetishist dream. Some of us here are part of that team. Drag kings and drag queens, night walkers and naves, extremely camp followers and jolly sex slaves. Queer bodies are hot. We will always exist. You might as well give up your attempts to resist. Queer bodies

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

are bodies that queer, we do it in spite of because of our fear. Queer bodies, our bodies, we must not forsake. Queer bodies our bodies are the bodies we make. That's it. It was

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

written 26th of July, on my birthday, 2011, so I guess that was 11 years ago.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Incredible. Thank you so much for sharing. That was beautiful.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Yeah. Well,

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Let's talk about when you left the US and you moved to Sweden. How long ago was that?

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Well, I mean, there were 24 years in London and I moved to Sweden to live here and have lived here

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

since 2006. Which is what? Coming up to 16 years.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

When did you become a parent?

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I became a parent when I was 54, for the first time, and 57

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

for the second time.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

You've mentioned, that being in Sweden has enabled you to be a parent. Can you talk about the rights that Sweden allows that are not accommodated to you in the US?

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

When I immigrated from London, I was a US citizen, but I never wanted to be a subject of Her Majesty the Queen, even though I lived in London 24 years off and on.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

It was easy for me. I'm also a privileged white American immigrant, and 16 years ago it was easier than it is now. I fell in love with a German, Swedish queer person. I was with another, I mean, my ex-partner and my co-parent, who's one of my best friends now,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

they moved here about a couple years before I did. I was with somebody else who was also a psychologist, they're both queer psychologist, and I was having a long distance relationship coming back and forth from Sweden for the last 20 years, since 2002. I met my previous Swedish psychologist

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

partner in Sweden when I was in a film called Venus Boys, and I was going around films and I had exhibitions and stuff. But I was trying to leave that relationship when I met Mat, who's also known as Matilda, also he and she, non-binary transmasculine, Swedish mother, German father, 18 and a half years younger than me. I guess

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

when I was 48, I looked really young. Maybe, yeah, so we kind of fell in love before -- I kind of knew I had issues about not being so young. But in any case, the point about not being young is that Mat is the gestational parent and also has dual Swedish German citizenship. We weren't married at first because

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

it's so cute at the time, I don't know if it's still the case, but you could immigrate to Sweden if you had an emotional attachment to someone. That was actually how it was termed in the law, a significant emotional attachment. I like that. Then we did marry and I think it was 2008

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

and then they changed the laws so that you could get so many treatment. It was easier to get IVF or to get fertility treatment, so we did start talking about it after. I mean, we didn't have our first child intel for six years. It took a long time to have Mika, for various reasons. And

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

you could think of Nico as a bit of an IVF accident, if there's such a thing. We really didn't think it would work. We thought we were throwing our money away. But the reason it worked is, and I was there every step of the way. I had to sign every time. We were the first people to bring a sperm donor of our own. Because of my magic with people

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

and finding people, I was entrusted with finding the person to give us the material we needed, the sperm. I was on, I don't know, Swedish Cruiser, it's kind of like, it was not Tinder, but kind of like that. It was like a meeting place, but you could put your city in, you could put keywords in, and I just googled queer Örebro, and Thomas came up

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

and he was the only person I met. He had this beautiful long black hair, and he's definitely the kind of cis man that all kinds, trans, non-binary and lesbians like to have sex with. He's not gay, but he's queer. He has two children with his female partner that are both three weeks exactly

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

older than ours. They were both assigned female at birth. Ours were both assigned male. Ours are both non-binary and theirs are both girls, as far as I know, so far. It's really beautiful to know as well. I think that's one of the most magical things and important things for me to have a known donor who's not involved but who's a friend

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

of the family. The kids understand how they were made, why they were made, why Thomas was chosen, because he has great politics and he's a great guy, plus his mother is an amazing photographer, was working in one of the first photography schools and his father is from the UK and is an independent filmmaker.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

It's just perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect, and so non problematic. I feel very, very blessed and that it was meant to be.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

This might be a good moment to talk about the fact that Sweden has the gender neutral pronoun 'hen'.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

. I said I can speak Swedish if I want to.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I can say almost anything I want. And yeah, , hi. Just since you mentioned it, we collaborated with this as Vem ar Hen. Who is hen? And this was on language and identity, . And we were in here, even Nico, let's see.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

This was us.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Oh wow. That's a beautiful photo.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Yeah. This was an exhibition and it became a book. It's really great that we have this. Both of the kids are hen in school.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Now that Mika is entering a bit of an early puberty, I'm wondering if there's any stressors I don't know, about being non-binary, but it seems not, it seems like the same very supportive environment. What I think is important about that, Lucy, is that it shows what things can be like for people. It doesn't have to be difficult. Mika does

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

have a special shower in the school now that they have sports. They get to use the teacher's shower and everybody's jealous and thinking, "Wow, this is what being non-binary gets you?" A shower that has warm water and that you can adjust it and has a window . I love that. I love that.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

I'm glad you brought up the gender neutral school system in Sweden, because that's obviously

LUCY MUKERJEE:

something that is unique to the way of life.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

It's not a school system and it's over valorized. It's not this utopian thing. There's still so segregated. I'm gonna be talking on Monday at our meeting with the teacher about what exactly are they doing? The girls are bullying the boys, and some of the teachers just don't care because they don't think girls can be bullies the way boys can.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Anyway, it's better than most places and it's good for our kids. They deal with things in a much different way than in America. In America, I wouldn't even be able to have kids. I mean, maybe we can go on to the parenting part of it a bit because my parenting versus the parenting I was given,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

it's extraordinary that I can be such an amazing MaPa -- that's what they call me a million times a day in public, so I'm always outed as MaPa, which was intentional. But yeah, being raised in America and being born queer, I say I was born queer, born making trouble, not just gender trouble, but all kinds of trouble,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I was never asked when I was gonna get married or have kids ever by anybody. Funny, it's like on the surface I passed really well as a cis woman for some periods of my life. I lived in women's land in New Mexico

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

in arts asylum for rowdy females. There were tribes of kids, kids born in tepees and I felt one with them. I felt really connected to them and they were the first kids I was ever able to get close to really. Yeah. Sisters and brothers and cousins. It was fine in the beginning, but I think

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

especially when my beard started to grow, I was really shunned by my family. Being a lesbian was okay, that was okay, but there was some homophobia there too. But being seen as a gay man, which is what most people, I guess assume about me because they can see some femininity in me. Yeah, coming to Sweden, I was around

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

many more heterosexual people and I found much more interesting than I ever thought they would be. And I'm joking, but only a little bit. They wanted me, they encouraged me to be friends with their kids. To this day, both to Carmen, who in New Mexico was born in a tepi. I'm still connected with the

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

two year old and four year old I met in Stockholm, Olga and Amis. I found out that I have, I guess I'll call it a superpower, but it's really more like I'm neurodiverse, which will surprise practically no one. But I'm kind of high functioning, neurodiverse,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

ADHD and possibly some other things. I'm a lot of symptoms in search of the diagnosis actually. But I don't experience time in the same way. I don't experience age, I don't experience celebrity, hierarchies, power structures. They don't work for me. I've managed to create a life where I don't need to be subjected to them as much as other people.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Does that make sense?

LUCY MUKERJEE:

That does make sense. What have you tried to impart to your children about gender and sexuality?

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Not just about that, about critical thinking skills, about having empathy? In the beginning, we decided we would use 'he' pronouns until they told us otherwise. But in this daycare, they call kids friends, .

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

They don't say boys, girls. They avoid that language, and that was great for us because we avoided it as well. We do not identify, if I was identifying you, I would talk about your skin color, I would talk about your hairstyle, I would talk about your clothes, but I would not say what gender or sex I thought you were. That stuck.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

We pick up trash when we see it. So we talk about how to be good environmental citizens. I would change pronouns in books because there just weren't enough books to -- And sometimes they would be, 'she', because they're so weighted against 'he'.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I'm a great storyteller and they love my bedtime stories, but they often get kind of political and sometimes I'm told to quit giving lectures.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

. Well, what have your kids taught you?

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Oh my God. Well, they're way smarter than me for opening things up. I mean they're both extraordinary.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

They are trilingual. They are so smart, emotionally. I'll give you an example, we started at this Waldorf Steiner school because Mika was hen and the school we were assigned, there was a lot of bullying. We were going around interviewing schools and we asked them and they were welcoming.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

They were the only ones that were welcoming. Mika asked to be called 'hen', so we had the classes. Mika was in first grade, which is like second grade in America, I'm like, okay, so how is everybody doing? I mean, I would check in periodically, but this one time I said, "So how is it going with the students?" "How are the kids doing with you being, 'hen'?" Mika

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

always speaks to me in English, but says, "Well, you know, really good. But there's three kids in the class who they say non-binary doesn't exist and hen doesn't exist." I'm like, "Oh well, how do you feel about that?" And I'm Mika's like, "Well, it's kind of okay. I get mad when the other kids do it, but when Shama and the other two

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

kids say it doesn't exist, it doesn't bother me as much. I don't wanna make them sad. They've been through enough." They were kids from Somalia and Syria who were living in Vivala . We live also in a kind of racially segregated -- I do not their mother, but I do -- in an area that's more immigrant

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

population than the other side of town where their school is actually. They bus some of the kids who want to go to Vivala from Somalia and other places into the school, and Mika was like, I don't wanna make them sad, they've been through enough, They lost their grandmother in the war, and it's okay. And I just burst into tears. Even now, I can be like, Wow ...

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Mika was, I think, eight years old and able to put like the feelings of other kids who have been -- And know that they haven't been through those experiences. I was just blown away.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

It's remarkable emotional maturity.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I also felt very good about myself as a parent.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I have mixed heritage cousins, African American, Mexican American cousins in the USA. I understand what they have to go through. I know in Sweden, they still have a color blind kind of mentality. It's like, if it doesn't affect us, why should we care?

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

So I am extremely proactive, both in terms of race and gender, but gender is like something they have already, like they get three languages for free, you know? They get a free education. They get free healthcare up until the time they're 20. What Americans think is wrong with socialism, I have

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

no idea. I will be getting both a pension. Not that I will take it, that I could take a pension and have my parent money coming in. I get paid, a small amount, but you get paid for extra expenses for the kids. I get paid here. I get pretty free healthcare as well. So anyway, that is what enabled it. It was policies

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

and I think that it's very, very important to walk the walk if you're gonna talk the talk. I live my life according to certain kinds of values. I tell them about them. I have amazing political, philosophical discussions with them. Yeah.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

It's amazing to have kids when you are older as well. It is amazing because I had done my partying. I was happy to leave London. I wasn't taking advantage of it anymore anyway. Now I'm living near the forest. It's beautiful. I have a very affordable two bedroom, airy light, well made, well maintained flat.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

It's good, for now. It's good for now. The kids are adjusting. We split up two and a half years ago and they like the variety and they like that a MaPa screen time hour is nudging towards 90 minutes, not mama's 60 minutes. I'm a little bit more permissive,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

but yeah, I could not have better children. Don't even get me started on the kids because they're part of my work. They have become part of my work. We are in videos and other people's movies and documentaries together. What I'm teaching them, Lucy, is critical thinking. I'm teaching them rhetorical skills. It's like, okay,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I'm saying no, but if you can provide me with a good argument, I've never talked baby talk to them. I'm telling you, in English, at least, and in Swedish, I've heard, German is the more passive one. But their vocabulary and their way of using language is amazing. Of course, that makes me happy. Nico, the younger one, wants to be a photographer like me and is really good so far.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

I'm glad you mentioned that you and your kids have been part of some films. I'd like to draw viewers' attention to a short documentary available on vice.com, which is focused on the gender neutral movement. Could you speak about your decision to let cameras into your home? Was that tough?

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I think it was tough for my partner. In that documentary, my mother-in-law

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

took part, but my partner didn't, partly because she had clients and patients, but is more of a -- I'm an extrovert, I'm a public person. I believe this is kind of like my public service. I can do it. I know how to

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

speak on camera. I don't like watching myself, but I like the process of doing it.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

What would you share with new parents on the topic of what you've learned about letting your children reveal their identities to you, rather than imposing who they are?

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I was giving queer parenting workshops and

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

there were certain kind of things you can do, like choose only gender neutral names, choose not to subconsciously influence your relationship with that child by knowing what sex it will be before it's born. Tell the ultrasound people you do not want to know. You can make different decisions. People have their families. One of the things we were

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

fortunate in a way, and unfortunate in other ways, is to not have any parentals or biologicals around or anyone to judge us or to help us or to kind of go contrary, like their grandparents do gender them, they try. In German, it's very hard, and Swedish, it's not. They try, and as parents go, they're great.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

In-laws and grandparents, wonderful, wonderful. But there are limitations, even though my ex-mother-in-law is only six years older than me. You would think that we would be more on the same wavelength, but not really. I think that, in some ways, there is an idea that even though their child is

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

gender queer, trans, masculine all of that, it's really me that have the greatest influence. I think people, because I'm the one in the films with them, and I know a lot of people have concerns, especially in Germany and Austria, when you use your kids like -- And I think part of that is because they may not have children who

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

know how to communicate very well, who are able to think things through, who are able to hear what consequences could happen, both positive and negative. We're living in a YouTuber age, and this is not the kind of concern that kids today have with being public.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Mika likes it because in a way it's like people already know. They don't have to always go and explain themselves. I find it useful too, being in the local paper, doing my public service interventions, people know who I am. They don't like me, they give me a wide berth and stay out my way. If they like me, they are more likely to come and talk to me.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

You mentioned that you share parenting duties. How do your days differ when you are on duty as a parent versus when you're living solo?

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Very, very different. But we really help each other out. We live just across the forest from each other. The way it usually works here is I have them one week, Mat has them the next.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

But if his electric bike breaks down, I might come and rescue them. I'm always there. I have a car, so I'm less ecologically minded, but it works really well. But my days -- I now know why with ADHD diagnosis, especially when I was doing the kids. I know people would complain

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I was in a baby bubble and stuff, but I was getting all my endorphins, dopamine, everything. It was so fascinating and I was so good at it. Who knew it? People could not believe how patient I was. Then when we broke up, it was kind of like I got my ass kicked. I mean, I literally ripped my quadriceps as well and was disabled for some time.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

It was a big life change. But I got to move back to this building where I lived before with Mat. I worked as an artist. I don't wash the dishes every minute. I'm not the domestic goddess that I was for years as I was, being the one doing most of the child rearing while Mat was getting their PhD in clinical psychology.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I was kind of like the house -- And that was good enough for me. I did as many things as I could, but I couldn't really make new art in this very non queer city. But then I discovered scanning my archives and that was what I've been doing and making a lot of new work and having solo shows in mainstream Swedish exhibitions and things, getting my work bought

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

for too little. But I don't mind selling to the queer community for too little. I do mind when publicly funded institutions pay way, way too little when I've asked for more. But that's another story. I'm not bitter. But I will always be twisted. What can I say?

LUCY MUKERJEE:

You have so many great sound bites. Thank you.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

They just roll off the table.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

That's the Irish part of me, you see. It's the gift of the gab.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

I love it. Yeah. Juan was asking if you could shift just slightly to your left, just slightly.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Is this my left or wait, my left.

JUAN RAYMUNDO RAMOS:

Yes. That's great. Thank you.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Okay. You wanted to talk about parenting?

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Yeah.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Growing up in California and growing up queer in the seventies.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Yeah. Let's talk about that. Can you talk about maybe what were some of the expectations that your parents had of you, and what were some of the attitudes that you were aware of from your family?

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I think there was an expectation my parents had of me that I would take care of myself.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

My mother had my little sister when I was four, and another sister when I was six. I was the first born of two first-borns, so I got a lot of attention, I think, before my parents broke up. I think we lived in Kansas City then, and I don't know what accounts, either it's

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

astrological and all my Leo or whatever, but I always had a lot of independence and confidence. I think I had a pretty easy early childhood, even when my sisters came until a certain point. I'm writing about it right now. I would like to call the title Memoirs of a

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Pussy-Licking Sodomite, but I don't know if that's gonna fly in the USA in the current climate anyway. But I am writing them and when you said a movie of my life, I would so like to have that before I die, because I mean, the stories -- I didn't even know they were, you know, JT LeRoy and all of that, the fake stuff. Oh my God, why am I, you know, the true story of what I did as a teenager.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Because at first it was benign neglect. In the summers, my dad would drive his VW Beetle to California from Tulsa and then drive me back to Tulsa, and I would spend two and a half months there. Then I would go back and I would be going to school in California. By the age of about seven,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

my stepfather's son came to live with us, David. He was four years older. Coincidentally, had been interviewed by the New York Times. He's like a Trumpian guy in Oregon, somewhere. But anyway, aside, my stepbrother. So it was like yours, mine, and ours. When my mother and stepfather started having marital problems, which pretty much happened pretty quickly,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

because I'm pretty sure my youngest sister doesn't have the same biological parent as my other one, the middle sister. Anyway, all kinds of intrigue going on. I don't know, but it became very bad when I entered puberty. That combined with the body growing in

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

unexpected ways and not growing in others, it was a really bad time between the age ... I would say it started at 11 and it ended just before I was 16. Well, it ended when I was 17 and I moved away from home. But I ran away from home at 14 and I was on the streets for a while. I was never reported missing. A lot of

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

a lot of things happened. I could have become like one of Jeffrey -- I ended up in Key West, Florida. The whole Jeffrey Epstein thing triggered awful lot of stuff. I was like one of those girls then, and I did get raped. In the end, to protect the pedophile that raped me, we ended up

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

going back to California where I was expelled from high school. Nobody caring anything, no therapy, no "What happened?" I just had to leave and I went to live with my father in Tulsa and go to high school there.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Who was your safe place at that time? Did you have an ally?

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I did. I think my Aunt Janice, my mother's younger sister,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

was a safe place. My mother was only 17 when she had me. She was done having kids when she was 23. She came from a very difficult -- I call it a working working class background. It wasn't like we lived in trailers, but nobody had ever gone to college and none of my parents had ever even finished high school.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Nobody cared about my education, but I would've been considered a gifted student had anybody ... It was funny, my mother liked to brag about me and would brag about my test scores and SATs and IQ and all of that. I didn't even believe her. I actually broke into my high school records office to find out if she was telling the truth.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

She was amazing. She was beautiful, charismatic, smart, political. I went on civil rights marches with her. I have photographs of her with Julian Bond, Alan Cranston, Jerry Brown both senior and junior. I met Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda. I was like her paparazzi

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

photographer, Geraldine Ferraro, and she was gorgeous as were my sisters. I felt like the ugly duckling Cinder-Della who somehow got to be around these beautiful people. That is kind of like a thing that has continued in my life, I think. My kids are -- I'm surrounded

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

by beauty -- A lot of intersex people feel like that because every message you get growing up is that if you're not able bodied, if you're not cisgendered, feminine enough ... Who wouldn't develop a mental health issue, you know?

LUCY MUKERJEE:

That makes sense. I wonder if you would share one of the first times you experienced feeling judgment or shame about your identity, and what coping mechanisms did you lean on to get through those times?

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I don't think I've had any. I've had shame about my body. I had one breast that grew and one breast that didn't. I had facial hair that I absorbed the messages from the environment that any sign of masculinity on a female was disgusting, which is why I became kind of hyper feminine at some parts of my life.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

But shame about being queer or lesbian or bisexual? No. It's just never happened. I really have no idea. I don't even have, as far as gender dysphoria, I don't have gender dysphoria. I'm quite happy with my body. I wasn't always happy. They put

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

an implant in and made one smaller and put an implant to make the other one bigger and that got rotted and was in my body for 27 years. They never had any follow up on me, Dr. Jorgenson, San Luis Obispo. When I had the implant removed, I said I wanted to keep -- You can't see it, but I have small breasts that are the same size, have sensation,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

and I'm staying true to what is an intersex body. Did I have shame for being intersex? There was a period where I was religious and I was wondering if either it was the fact that I masturbated or why was I being cursed with this

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

facial hair and a body that was -- I did have periods, but very rarely. If I was fasting, which maybe you could call it an eating disorder, but I would go on 40 day juice fast, many times in my life, as a teenager and a young adult. I wouldn't have any period. But I do have, I would say, mostly a female morphology.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

They've recently discovered in the most recent chromosome tests they've done that I have, also, a Y chromosome, which they say is possibly -- Well, the only way it could be is that I had absorbed some tissues from a fraternal twin in the womb. There are fraternal and identical twins on my mother's side of the family. But my cousin, Heidi, which I made the film journey

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Intersex with, which was on channel four in the UK, she was told she had cancer. She was clitorectomized. When I saw her in 1996, in Seattle, I revealed to her that I thought she was intersex and how to get her medical records, which we did. We found out she had two ovo testes, that she had what they considered

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

a clitoris that was perfectly fine, but they considered it too large. She had it completely removed. She was told at 16, when they removed a perfectly functioning ovo testes from her, that she had cancer, which is why they removed these gonads that are mixed because they assume they have cancer. They have really very little evidence that there are, especially the one that worked until

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

she was 16, they removed it at the request of her father who had died six months earlier. Until she met me, I looked her up, she's on the Mormon's side, my father's side of the family. I was actually told not to say anything, not to say that I knew she was called Travis when she was born. Then three or four days later, they said she was Heidi.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

It's a story that's repeated often, but it is a rare variation of intersex. It's possible I'm double intersex. I got it from both sides of my family. But I don't know, I mean, that's one reason why I am interested in having tests and finding out and giving my body to science to find out. But I would like to know why I'm still alive.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

They say my testosterone level is too high when I haven't even had any extra testosterone. Too high for who? What are you measuring me against actually? That is where my activism stems from as far as intersexes, I'm hoping that the non-binary movement, which does have some cultural capital, will be somewhat

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

useful in helping straight parents get over their fear of the queer or being non-binary which to me is very different than trans. Non-binary is the thing in itself. Non-binary, intersex people, not all, some non-binary people take hormones; some do surgery; some do both. But I'm hoping that there are people, you know, I'm hoping my kids

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

will be able to love the body they have and not be pigeonholed as trans because they are gender nonconforming and identify as non-binary. Right now, trans is getting all the issues whereas like, I'm sorry, Juan, sorry. Trans tends to get so much more media attention and political attention. Maybe that's a good thing,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

considering the attention trans is getting in the USA but then intersex, we have been around for just as long and our medical needs and the research being done is just minuscule. There's a lot to be done. And I can tell you that both of my kids, but especially the older one, can tell you the difference between the many different ways you can be non-binary,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

how that can be similar and different from trans. How being intersex can intersect with other things and how each one of us is non-binary and how their mother and I are queer in different ways. They have not declared themselves in terms of who they like yet, but

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

they're 7 and 10, soon to be 8 and 11. That's how old they are.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

So soon to come. Juan, did you want to jump in here?

JUAN RAYMUNDO RAMOS:

Yeah. We rotated it a little too much, so if we can rotate it just a tiny bit back .

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

You wanna shake around?

JUAN RAYMUNDO RAMOS:

That's good. That's good.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Oh, I gotta send you this video of me on the rings, but I wanted to do it better and now I've hurt my back. We have

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

these rings that are these huge tires, old 18 wheeler tires, built up like in a reverse pyramid. You go from one high end to the other and you can go on rings and I go upside down. Nico gets their legs in their rings and then I jump on them and we're working on a few

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

flying trapeze tricks as well. I really wanna show those off because now I'm taking my elder status seriously and I need to show people that this is what 65 and being a queer pensioner can look like, right?

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Yes. Yes. We'll want to share some of those photos and videos when we post this interview. I was wondering what models you had for the kind of parent

LUCY MUKERJEE:

that you wanted to become, in all of your travels and meeting people around the world, had you identified other genderqueer families who you admired?

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

The first models I had for any kind of parenting were on this women's land called Arf in the Hills above San Jose, New Mexico. That was where kids were very unsupervised. They were running around kind of in a pack.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

They were wild kids, and I love that. The older ones looked after the younger ones. Of course, they had their parents to come to, but we were all their parents and the ones who were interested in getting to know the kids did. I was one of the ones who enjoyed that. That was the only one. I mean, I can't

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

really think of maybe there were a couple people I babysat for. I thought they were fairly good parents. My parents were fascinating people. At least, the California branch. I can't really say the Mormons are fascinating, but there's something else, they're nice. But my stepfather was such --

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

He was an actor, set designer. He had a bromance with the director of PCPA, Donovan Marley. Built a house called 'Desire' based on the Eugene O'Neill play called Desire Under the Elms. Even, it was this yes, working class. He was an iron worker at Vandenberg Air Force Base.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

When my mother went back to work when they divorced, because it was a very traditional kind of like, she didn't work, she had three, sometimes five, kids to look after. She was also an artist but never really got to shine. Anyway, he did very ground things. He built windmill houses. I mean, they had amazing parties. I grew up around the most amazing actors

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

and musicians. It was great. My mother grew cannabis. The first joints I ever smoked were hers and got busted because they were in psychedelic pink and green and blue. She knew exactly how many she had. Of course, she did. The civil rights and becoming like really

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

engaged at a very young age, my sisters didn't get that. I am still, unfortunately, addicted to American politics, you know, so sad. And it's coming, it's encroaching, but I've become a bit more activist in my older age and

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

now I also realize what a treasure trove I really do have with the people that I have worked with and who had been so generous with their time and their bodies and letting me -- You know, inspiring all of us. I would like those to be seen more. I would like to have a little economic

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

security for once in my life. Maybe not a bad idea. I don't care about money, but I'm trying to care because I think I should.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Yeah, that's something that I think the generational wealth elements of raising a queer family, we don't necessarily have access to the same means as the straights.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

No, no. It's also the one sister I have that's doing well is the very heterosexual one, the one who was homecoming queen, who was the cheerleader, who had a husband who could lend her the money for her first business, finders keepers, which was like secondhand clothes. I'm like, that's great. You would always go into our closets and find something and then keep it, and now you're bragging about it.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Now she has a B & B that's like in San Luis Obispo called Bee's Knees, fruit farm, beautiful. She works hard, and I don't say she doesn't deserve it, but my mother also knew that Tony and I, the younger one, we would not be getting the advantage of having a male income in our lives.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

That does seem to make a difference. Very much so.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Absolutely. We're coming to the point where usually I ask a set of quick fire around.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Oh good. I'm quick.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Okay. And you can pass on any of these if you don't have an answer. But I have six questions. Let's see how we do.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Do you want me to answer quickly as well?

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

That's the challenge.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

The first one is, if you could tell your 15 year old one thing, what would it be?

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Oh God. Well, it would've been too late to say don't run away.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Gosh. Ooh. You'll be okay. I mean, that was kind of the first thing that came to mind. You'll be okay. You'll always be okay.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Thank you. What do you think is the best quality of queer people?

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Well, if you're going by my

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

definition of queer, then it's the ability to question; to question yourself, to question the norms around you, including queer norms. Think them through. And I think that there can still be a

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

sense of family, if we quit -- I don't know. It's not quit. It's just maybe there can never be, I can only identify with some factions of queer. There's so much of the LGBTQ -- Yes, I have a rainbow in the back. That was the kids putting it there.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I have a beautiful rainbow scarf that was knitted for me. But I'm not uncritical of the ways in which some of the more mainstream white middle class agenda has dominated for so long.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

What was the question? Did I answer it?

LUCY MUKERJEE:

That was perfect, thank you. That was great.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

It's getting late now. It's not past my bedtime. The sun has gone down.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Well, let's close with the last two. Why is it important to you to tell your story?

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Like most people,

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I want to be seen the way I want to be seen, the way I see myself. I want to be able to be the one in charge of telling my story. Maybe, someday, if I manage to get it out in a good form, I'll give other people the opportunity to tell my story in their way.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I think it's a nuanced story. Do you know what I mean, Lucy? It's like, I love my mother. I wish I could have done more for her. I wish I could have rescued her. I wish I could have helped her so she didn't die of lung disease, which was basically self-medication through smoking and everything. She was a healthy

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

67 except for her lungs when she died. I understand so much more, of course, about being a parent. But she apologized to me before she died. She said, "I'm so proud of you." I know you made it in spite of me rather than because of me. That gave me the space to tell her that I thought she had given me a lot of good things. I cannot paint

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

one kind of picture any more than I can make one kind of photograph. My story is I think I'm coming out more now, now that I'm this ripe old age, of not wanting to only present a heroic portrait of myself, you know? But there are certain

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

beings that need to pass, you could say, before I'm gonna be able to feel free to tell everything. None of it I'm ashamed of, but I think that it's a survival, but it's like not one of these kitschy triumph over adversity. It's like triumph, adversity, triumph, adversity. It's messy. It's not linear.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

But I think it's worth telling. I can have the female conditioning to feel like, is my story really worth telling? Who do I think I am anyway? I know I don't come across like that, but I do think that sometimes.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Thank you for sharing that. Well said. Well, our last question is

LUCY MUKERJEE:

really about this organization, this archive. We'd like you to just say a few words, whatever comes to mind on what do you think is the importance of a project like OUTWORDS, an archive for queer stories?

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Is it an archive for all queer stories of all ages, or are you just right now focusing on elders before we die away?

LUCY MUKERJEE:

The organization is focused on elders' stories.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Okay. So it's not just queer stories, it's queer elder stories.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

That's true. Thank you.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I would've so much liked to hear more queer stories when I was growing up. I was fortunate to know queer people and to have that not be strange.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I really like hearing people's stories and the ones I've listened to with OUTWORDS so far have been just beautiful and amazing. Sometimes they can be a little heartbreaking, but you know, like I've said, we do live with the kind of safety net that a lot of other people take for granted.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I'm looking forward to hearing a lot of the other stories and I'm really impressed if anybody has listened. I don't know if you're gonna cut it or what, but if anybody has listened this long, well done. Thank you.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Thank you. That's it. You made it through. You were wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing so, so much. It was really beautiful and I know

LUCY MUKERJEE:

it would be really meaningful to the viewers.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

You were easy to bounce off of, so thank you for that.

LUCY MUKERJEE:

I'm glad.

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

Now it's --

LUCY MUKERJEE:

Is it very late dinner?

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

No, it's not very late, but it's very raining. I think our heat wave is finally over now. See, I should have -- I mean, I didn't get to show you any of my muscles or anything, but

DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO:

I'm gonna make that video. I'm gonna make that video and have to decide what to wear and get back into the gym so I don't injure myself again. I think it's good. I think it's really good to -- I'm so glad, I don't know who all managed it, but it seems like you're a very well-funded, very professional organization. Thank you, Juan, if you're still listening.