Meet the Cast:
The sole freshman of the group is Raci, who was born Roy in the Philippines in 1985 and came to the U.S. with her mother when she was 15. Pretty and vivacious, Raci has identified as female since childhood. She is keenly aware of how people respond to her, an awareness that is compounded by the facts that she is hearing impaired and speaks English as her second language. Bright and driven to succeed, she excelled in high school and received a California State University Presidential Scholarship, which will cover four years' tuition at California State University Los Angeles. But Raci faces tremendous challenges as she begins her first year. For the first time in her life, she will be living apart from her mother, who has moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco for a new job. Money is a big concern. Raci shares a room in an East Los Angeles house with an aunt; the hormones she has been taking for three months come from an illegal street supplier who charges $20, about one-tenth the amount a doctor would charge. Finally, though Raci's family has long and lovingly accepted her as a transgender person, she doesn't want her classmates and her teachers to know. In order for them to first get to know her as an individual, Raci plans to stay closeted on campus.
T.J., born Tamar in Beirut, Lebanon in 1981 and raised in Cyprus, has embraced college as a place for intellectual, political and personal self-discovery. After graduating at the top of his high school class in Cyprus, T.J. received a Fulbright scholarship to study in the U.S. At Michigan State...
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Gabbie is a 19 year old sophomore majoring in computer science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Born Andrew in 1984, Gabbie struggled with her gender identity throughout her high school years in conservative Colorado Springs. She made attempts to come out as a transgender person, but...
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Oklahoma-born Lucas is a study in caution and deliberation. A neuroscience major who was born Leah in 1983, Lucas traces his recognition of his male identity to his early days at Smith College, which is the nation's oldest operating women's university. For three years, Lucas has refrained from...
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