More Lou: An interview with Susan Stryker
Hi all,
Last week I posted excerpts from my conversation with Lou’s older brother Flame. Today I’ll post my email interview with trans historian Susan Stryker. Both of these are part of the research I did for the “Overlooked” obituary of Lou Sullivan I wrote for The New York Times.
Susan Stryker is Professor Emerita of Gender and Women’s Studies at University of Arizona; founder and executive editor of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly; and co-editor of the Duke University Press book series ASTERISK: gender, trans-, and all that comes after. She is the author of Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution (2008, 2017) as well as co-editor of the two-volume Transgender Studies Reader (2006, 2013) and The Transgender Studies Reader Remix (2022). She has a number of exciting new projects in the works—see Susan’s website for more.
After Lou died in 1991, Susan took on the responsibility of processing Lou’s materials for San Francisco’s GLBT Historical Society (then the Gay and Lesbian Historical Society). Lou was a founding member of the Society and helped edit and publish its newsletter; he was also responsible for first cataloguing its periodicals collection. Lou’s archives consist of nine linear feet: seven cartons and two oversized folders. His journals, of which there are twenty-four, fill one of the cartons. Some of this material has been digitized and is available online.
Susan spoke with me over email in late June 2022.
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Megan Milks: When did you first become aware of Lou’s life and work?
Susan Stryker: I first became aware of Lou in the late 1980s—I remember seeing a copy of his Information for the Female to Male Cross-Dresser and Transsexual at Modern Times Bookstore in San Francisco. I was just on the cusp of transitioning, and remember thinking "Oh. cool, something for somebody going in the other direction." I appreciated all the historical vignettes of transmasc people in that little booklet. Later I found his biography of Jack Garland, From Female to Male.
Sometime after that, around 1990 or 1991, early in my transition, I remember chatting up some trans guy at a party, and he mentioned he was part of a group of trans men taking care of Lou. I said "Oh, I'd love to meet him," and the guy said "Well, he's pretty sick, and isn't really meeting new people now." I understood that as code for "He's dying of AIDS," which was a pretty common thing in queer San Francisco right about then.
Not long thereafter, I'd shown up at what was then known as the Gay and Lesbian Historical Society of Northern California, saying hey, I'm trans, I'm a historian, I'm looking to get plugged in to the community, and the regulars there said great, one of our founders, a trans guy named Lou Sullivan, recently died, and you can process his papers for deposit on the archives.
MM: What were the most exciting or surprising discoveries when you are going through his archival materials?
SS: I loved his journals. They really revealed a deep, old soul. You can find things I've written about them if you noodle around on the interwebs. But as I said in the intro to Zach and Ellis's We Both Laughed in Pleasure, my absolute favorite passage, something that's stayed with me over the decades: "I want to look like what I am, but I don't know what somebody like me looks like. When people look at me, I want them to think, ‘There's one of those people who have their own interpretation of happiness. That's what I am.’" Whoa. So trans.
More generally, I was super impressed with how hard-working Lou was: corresponding with doctors and trans folks, peer counseling, writing for community publications, being involved with organizations, conducting historical research, starting a business, participating in clinical trials...he seemed indefatigable.
MM: Lou’s contributions to trans history and community have been immense, and only in the past decade or so (arguably) have they started to gain recognition as such -- in large part due to your work as archivist and historian. What have been the biggest barriers, in your view, to the preservation of Lou’s work and legacy?
SS: That's a hard one for me to answer, because I feel like Lou has had a Legendary Father status for decades in my world. Even when I was first publicizing the availability of his materials in the early 90s, he was revered in the transmasc community, as well as the broader trans scene I was part of.
I do remember in the early 90s when I tried to publish a selection of Lou's journals, and I couldn't sell it. I think it was just ahead of market. I think the biggest barrier was simply that the time wasn't ripe for the wider world to give enough of a shit about trans lives to publicize and honor his life. I really give credit to Zach and Ellis for seizing the moment, having success in helping Lou get his posthumous doe.
MM: Do you have anything else to add on what Lou’s life and work have meant to you, or on what we can learn from his life and work thirty-plus years after his passing?
SS: Lou was my posthumous transition-buddy. I really loved having his journals for companionship on my own journey during my early transition. It felt great to know, at such an intimate level, that another person had done what I was doing, had had a life, had found love, and done work he cared about, and was honored and remembered by those whose lives he touched.
It's a cliche, but I do think of that saying "never underestimate the power of a small group of dedicated individuals to change the world." Lou was a "small group" unto himself.
I never knew him in the flesh, but I feel like I learned him so well, tending to his effects. It's been one of the great honors of my life to care for him in his afterlife.