Our Work Is Everywhere: An Illustrated Oral History of Queer and Trans Resistance

Over the past ten years, we have witnessed the rise of queer and trans communities that have defied and challenged those who have historically opposed them. Through bold, symbolic imagery and surrealist, overlapping landscapes, queer illustrator and curator Syan Rose shines a light on the faces and voices of these diverse, amorphous, messy, real and imagined queer and trans communities.

In their own words, queer and trans organizers, artists, healers, comrades, and leaders speak honestly and authentically about their own experiences with power, love, pain, and magic to create a textured and nuanced portrait of queer and trans realities in America. The many themes include Black femme mental health, Pacific Islander authorship, fat queer performance art, disability and healthcare practice, sex worker activism, and much more. Accompanying the narratives are Rose’s startling and sinuous images that brings these leaders’ words to visual life.

Our Work Is Everywhere is a graphic nonfiction book that underscores the brilliance and passion of queer and trans resistance.

Includes a foreword by Lambda Literary Award-winning author and activist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, author of Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice.

Syan Rose is an illustrator and comic artist whose work plays with both surrealist and representational imagery to approach topics of personal history, politics, accountability, and healing. She’s been published in Bitch, Slate, Gay Magazine, Truthout, and Autostraddle, and has self-produced many comics and zines.

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a queer disabled femme writer and performer of Burgher/Tamil Sri Lankan and Irish/Roma ascent. Her most recent titles are the nonfiction book Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice and the poetry book Tonguebreaker. She is also co-editor of Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement. Her memoir Dirty River was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and a Publishing Triangle Award.