Juliana Moraes, a Brazilian and Colombian transgender woman, discusses femininity, machismo, and colorism in Latin culture through a retelling of her experience migrating to the United States in the mid-1980s. As a young queer person, she ran away from home at 17 and found solace in the QTPOC club community at the Cheetah Lounge, Vinyl’s and SOB’s. Moraes shares her experience transitioning in Bushwick and Chicago and exploring Christopher Street and the Pier with her Trans mother Michelle de’Brazil. She aims to use her experiences with incarceration and transphobic violence to advocate for the transgender community.