I was introduced to Ceyenne in February 2011 by the women at the Sex Workers Project - her lawyers and colleagues in the fight for the rights of people in the sex trades. Ceyenne, they told me, is an amazing, funny woman who was piecing her life back together after a stint in prison on a prostitution conviction. And she had this idea - she wanted to write the first cookbook by a sex working transgender woman, a cookbook that would bring people together and make it ok to talk about these tough issues.
I had to meet her.
After more than a year of collaboration on her book, which she’s calling Cooking in Heels, we launched a Kickstarter campaign Monday to raise the funds for Red Umbrella Project to publish it.
The response so far has been amazing - we are 85% of the way to the $6000 minimum we need to make the book a reality. Ceyenne and I have been blown away by the support and have started scheming about the ways we can make the book even more amazing than what we had planned. To be honest, we thought the combined forces of racism and transmisogyny (let’s face it, Kickstarter campaigns aren’t the most diverse of pursuits) would mean that we would be hustling hard to raise that six grand by our deadline, May 9.
Watch the video of her making paella on Kickstarter because me talking about her just isn’t anywhere near as awesome as watching Ceyenne in action. If you can spare a few dollars, please support the project and help us make this book bigger and better. $1 gets you access to backer-only updates, $10 gets you a personalized postcard from Ceyenne, $30 gets you a hard copy of the book when its available in August. If its within your means to donate more, there are rewards above and beyond what I’ve listed here. The more we raise, the more amazing this book is going to be.
I love listening to people talk about cooking food. And Ceyenne is right—food brings people together.
They’ve raised over 90% of their goal in just three days! That’s incredible and so good to see.
Love everything about this.
(via sexgenderbody)
