Lavender Community Pride Award – Xay Yang

Being a community builder takes time, patience, determination, and drive.

In the case of Xay Yang, the Executive Director and the inaugural Queer Justice Director at Transforming Generations, it is about bridging and gathering the LGBTQ+ Hmong community together. In the latter capacity, Yang created programming for this community through mental health services and the Sib Hlub drop-in healing space.

Last year, the Drag Tale Times was created as, Yang explained, “an opportunity for LGBTQ families to come and read and engage with drag artists and the other part of that program is for us to build a pipeline for drag artists to get formal opportunities to do their work and build out their resume and profile, and so we’ve been doing that.”

One of the most serious issues facing many communities has been domestic violence. Transforming Generations offers advocacy services for LGBTQ+ victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, as well as for youth who are experiencing family violence due to homophobia and transphobia.

There’s work ahead for Yang and Transforming Generations. That including building a national network of LGBTQ+ Hmong communities to further explore the intersection of identities and cultures. That’s just scratching the surface for Yang.

While processing being named to this award Yang stated that she thinks that “not everybody who’s doing this work has been formally celebrated and in this way. And, so, I recognize the privilege and really excited to be part of this.”

For being a trailblazer by breaking barriers and stigmas, Lavender Magazine congratulates Xay Yang for her Community Award this year.