The City of San Francisco has named Per Shea, one of the first performers to read at the Drag Queen Story Hour event, as the city’s new drag award recipient.
Mr. Per Shea, 44, was appointed by Mayor Daniel Lurie on Oct. 29, making him the second person to hold that title and the first transgender person.
Darcy Drollinger, owner of the Oasis nightclub, was San Francisco’s first drag award winner. The position, one of only two in the country (along with West Hollywood), comes with a stipend of $35,000 per year for a three-year term. The San Francisco Public Library also supports the city’s Poet Laureate and Youth Poet Laureate programs.
Mr. Dollinger served on a diverse selection committee that included Sister Sharita Corndog and Sister Roma of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Carolina Osoria and Breonna McCree in the Transgender District. drag artists Kumera Rouge and Grace Towers; Alexandre Fels of the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District. Christina Mitra of the Hormel LGBTQIA Center at the San Francisco Public Library. and Shane Zaldivar of the city’s Office of Transgender Initiatives.
The committee submitted recommendations, and Mayor Lurie made the final decision.
Dollinger said the choice of a transgender woman of color sends a “bold message” at a time when drag, transgender and the broader LGBTQ community are under attack.
“All of this is scary to the right, but this shows that San Francisco is not responding to the needs of those people,” Dollinger said. San Francisco Chronicle.
The presentation was held at the rooftop school. Per Thea has worked there for 12 years as the Children’s After School Arts (CASA) first grade principal.
Per Shea, a UC Santa Cruz graduate with degrees in art and education and a master’s degree in photography, said it’s meaningful to hold recitals where students and colleagues can share in the moment.
“I’ve been working at CASA since my mid-20s. They’ve seen me go from being a young queer person to the person I am today,” she said.
Before the announcement, Per Shea said: chronicle Being called a drag award winner would be symbolic, as every part of her identity is under scrutiny, from president to conservative activist.
“I am clearly transgender, brown, Mexican, and the child of immigrant parents,” she said. “I’m both an educator who works with kids and a drag performer. It’s all about who I am.”
As a drag award recipient, Per Thea will participate in San Francisco Pride to foster stronger ties between the drag world and the LGBTQ community and city government, create new drag events, serve as a spokesperson for the LGBTQ community, and help preserve and promote San Francisco’s drag heritage.
“Our city is known around the world as a place where people can be who they want to be, love who they want to love, and live the life they choose without fear of persecution,” Lurie said in a prepared statement. “We look forward to working with Persia to support and celebrate the LGBTQ+ community.”
In 2015, Per Thea introduced Drag Queen Story Hour at the Eureka Valley/Harvey Milk Memorial Branch Library in San Francisco, which she calls her first experience combining life in drag with life in the classroom.
“I felt so exposed and vulnerable, but when I left the Eureka branch library, I remember feeling a sense of relief that I was no longer hiding and that everything I was doing was happening in the same room,” she said. Chronicle. “It was like coming out.”
Since then, she has been reading stories at senior centers and hopes to continue holding Story Hour events for audiences of all ages. She also plans to use her official platform to promote literacy and protest censorship.
“At a time when there was a lot of anti-drug sentiment, I realized that you don’t know at what age you forget that you love being read to,” Per Thea said. “Children’s books are so simple, but so important because they teach us about self-acceptance, love and empathy, and that’s universal.”
Source: Metro Weekly – www.metroweekly.com
