Queer Photographer Challenges the Idea That QPOC Don't Exist

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<p>Yezmin always has a coffee in her hand. She's a writer from Phoenix, AZ, who is interested in the intersection of race, sex, and gender in pop culture.</p>

Sayvon/Jessica, 20, Black/Irish, Central Phoenix

Beatrice Velázquez, a youth center program coordinator at One n Ten, a nonprofit in Phoenix that serves LGBT youth, created Veme: Queering Phoenix, a photography project that seeks to lift up positive representations of young LGBT people of color in Phoenix. Read 16 of their stories here:

“I guess I could say I enjoyed elementary. I was happy to go to school and get away from the house, cause you know, the house was so hectic. I was living with my auntie cause my mom couldn’t take care of me because she’s on drugs. But even my auntie was rough and she treated her kids better than she did me and I didn’t understand. I guess for me not being loved, basically most of my life, I would say it’s made me the person who wants to love people and give back to people. I understand and I know where it comes from to be hurt by so many people."