YOSEÑIO VICENTE LEWIS writer/activist Yoseñio V. Lewis, born on October 25, 1959 in Newport, Rhode Island Interviewed on January 15, 2005 by Ana-Maurine Lara Can you tell me about where you were born? I was born October 25, 1959 in Newport, Rhode Island, on an actual island. On Aquidneck Island. Aquidneck? The Aquidneck Indians of New England. I was born, actually, I was born in the naval hospital. I thought I was born in Newport Hospital, but I was born in the naval hospital. At the time my mother was not married. But her father or her step-father had rights to be on the military base, so I was able to be born there. I’m the first born in my immediate family and the first born in my whole family to be born in this country. My family’s from Panama. On your dad and your mom’s side? 016 Um-hmm. Everybody’s from over der, except me and my sister and brothers and subsequent cousins. What do I remember from my childhood? Mmm, mmm, mmm. Well, I remember a lot of evil, nasty, horrible things. But I also remember a few really wonderful things which I choose to dwell on at this particular moment. One of those good things was a friend of mine, bobby, who lived across the street from my grandmother, who just adored me and I adored him. And we played together all the time. And then he had a little brother, Carl, and I was just so jealous of him cause you know, Bobby wanted to spend time with him, and I was like [little noises], ‘What about me? I’m your bestest friend.’ But we had a good time together and I always enjoyed him. And now that I think back, all of my close friends were men, boys. A little hint for the future. Cause after that it was Bruce. And he was…Bobby was white. Well, he was Portuguese. He was dark enough that there was no conflict between his family and mine. But Bruce was white, white, white, white, snow white. And his family did not did not like me, and did not like my family. My family loved him. We used to, when school was over we’d walk from school and we’d get to my grandmother’s house before we’d get to his house. So if we’d get to my grandmothers’ house, my great-grandmother was there. She’d say ‘Come on in’ and she’d make us sandwiches. She’d make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and cornmeal. Or chicken soup or something. But it was always a sandwich and something warm. And we’d eat eat eat and we’d watch some of her stories with her. She’d watch the stores on CBS. The stories? Guiding Light and…Guiding Light is the one that sticks out in my head. I’m sure there were others that were on CBS. What’s the one that everybody watches on CBS now? Young and Restless? That wasn’t on. That wasn’t in existence yet. General Hospital? 041 Naw, but that’s ABC. Sacrilege! ABC. But Guiding Light I remember us watching. I didn’t have a clue as to what was going on, I just waited for that to be over, case the next thing on that came on was Dark Shadows and Bruce and I would sit and watch Dark Shadows and then it was time for him to go home. So then I’d walk him to his house and it was a whole different story. I never got invited in. His family just wanted nothing to do with me. And I don’t know why he liked me, but he did. And he made a point of always finding me so that we could walk home together and we could go to my grandmother’s and my great-grandmother would feed us and then we’d watch Guiding Light and Dark Shadows and then go to his place. And I don’t think either of us ever were thinking about, ‘well, we’re not supposed to be hanging out with each other.’ There’s a boy and a girl, there’s black and white. We’re not supposed to have anything to do with each other, and we just did. We enjoyed each other’s company quite a lot. Cause this is during the Civil Rights era, right? 052 This was in the ‘60’s, yeah. We just…none of that stuff was having an impact on us. All we cared about was, we liked each other and we spent a lot of time together. What other nice things? Did your family ever talk about what was going on with the Civil Rights struggle? 056 It was never directly discussed with me. Except with one uncle and that was only in between his bipolar rages. When he had a moment when he’d agree to take the lithium and it would balance him out and then we’d have a discussion. But most of the time, he was too sick. And I couldn’t really trust what he was saying cause it was so off the wall. Or he wasn’t saying anything at all cause he was in that depressive phase and he just didn’t want to have anything to do with anyone. So when was it that you first started coming out? And what does that mean to you? Oh it means so many tings. The very first thought I had around coming out is 13, when I guess I was working in a, not working, going to an after-school kind of thing ‘teenagers, keep them off the streets, we’re gonna have them go into the community center’ Yeah – like Kiwanis Club or somethin’ 069 Yeah – something that allows you to not be on the street and acting up and getting in trouble. And I remember there was a group and I was sitting on the floor and a lot of people were sitting on the couch and we were talking about drugs. And everybody admitted ‘oh you know, I’ve had a beer.’ Or ‘I’ve smoked pot’ or ‘I’ve done this or I’ve done that.’ And when it came to me I said ‘I haven’t done any of that.’ And everyone looked at me like ‘Come on. We’re being honest now. You can go ahead and you can tell us.’ ‘But no, I really haven’t done any of that.’ And it got to the point where people refused to believe me. ‘No, really, I just haven’t done this.’ ‘Yes you have! Everybody does it. Everyone’s done it!’ ‘Well, no, not me.’ They couldn’t believe it. 078 Exactly and I felt well, I’ve always felt a little different. But now, I feel it in a group setting and it’s very clear I am different from everybody in this room. There was something unbelievably different that is setting me so far apart from people. Because from that day on I was treated differently. Like there was something wrong with me that I couldn’t really be trusted and I wasn’t allowed to associate with people as I had been previously, because I revealed this big secret about myself. I imagine you hadn’t thought of it as a secret. 084 Exactly. Well, okay, I don’t judge you because you have had beer or you still drink beer or whatever. That’s your choice. You’re 13 and you’re not supposed to, but hey, whatever. But for me, being someone who didn’t do that made me an outsider. Even more of an outsider because I was dark. And nine times out of ten I was the darkest one in whatever room I walked into and I was intelligent and I chose to revel in that intelligence. I didn’t play in school. I learned and I enjoyed that learning and I felt it was my way to get out of all the unhappiness I was experiencing with my family. So that was really a way for you to survive, was to be in school. 095 Exactly and I revered absolutely all of my teachers. It didn’t matter how crazy there were, it didn’t matter the ones who were drinking in class and had their little bottle in the drawer. I didn’t care about any of that stuff, like ‘you’re a teacher? You’re so cool. I love you. You’re perfect.’ That’s how I revered them. So they could o no wrong and I couldn’t wait to go to school. I loved it. It was my refuge from all of my craziness at home. So 13 was my first coming out. And that same year was also the same year I started my activism because I got frustrated, well I moved from frustrated to angry and pissed off seeing how – with what we now call developmental disabilities or mentally delayed, but back then we said people who were mentally retarded – how they were being treated. I was just frustrated and angry and I just couldn’t understand it. And it didn’t occur to me…I don’t even remember what the actual incident was. I just remember the anger that I had and it didn’t occur to me that I needed to speak to someone at the center, the community center that we were at, maybe a case manager or a counselor or the person running the show.