Faviano Rodriguez's work as an interdisciplinary artist, cultural strategists, and social justice activist, is both profoundly political and deeply personal.

We could have an entire conversation

about migration or climate change

or her embrace of pleasure

as a queer woman of color.

We will touch on all of it.

But the core of this conversation

is as much about the future

she envisions for all of us

as it is about the now she is building for

herself.

Fabian, I've heard you talk a lot about how your parents' early experience in the United States

shaped a lot of your worldview and your ethos. What do you

remember about those early experiences? Yes, well, I grew up in the 80s during the era of the

War on Drugs in Oakland. And both of my parents are immigrants from Peru. My father was Afro-Peruvian. So what I remember is just being in a country,

I was born in the United States, but being in a country that really didn't reflect me, not in the

English world and not in the Spanish world. Growing up in a mixed race family, my family was really

non-traditional. So my mother didn't have a college degree, and yet she was an entrepreneur

opening multiple businesses. And my father was very much a caretaker and is the person who taught me

how to read and write in Spanish, how to express myself.

So what I remember is that they did their best effort to keep me safe at a time when so many

communities of color were suffering because of the war on drugs.

...