Newport Harbor High grad publishes biography of trans community activist

When Newport Beach native Sophia Leveque first saw the name Gwendolyn Ann Smith, she was intrigued.

Leveque, 23, was taking part in a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon held at her alma mater, Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. The event — typically held at universities, museums and cultural institutions — encourages participants to write a Wikipedia page about a person, place or topic that has not been widely covered.

As Leveque scanned through a list of possible topics provided for the Edit-a-thon, she decided on Smith, a transgender woman who began Transgender Day of Remembrance in honor of those who have been killed because of anti-transgender prejudice.

“There wasn’t a lot [of information] about her, but I was inspired by what I did find,” said Leveque, a Newport Harbor High School alumna. “This woman deserved a well-written Wikipedia page.”

After choosing to write a page about Smith, Leveque’s curiosity eventually led her to write “Trans/Active: A Biography of Gwendolyn Ann Smith,” a book now available on Amazon.

This past spring, Leveque amassed multiple interviews with Smith to compose her biography.

“I found that she wrote a column in San Francisco and I emailed the editorial board to see if I could reach her,” said Leveque, who eventually got Smith’s email address.

After sending Smith a message inquiring about interviews for a potential book for future researchers, Leveque got a response 10 minutes later saying: “Sure, I’m game.”

“I figured ‘Why not?’ ” Smith said. “I think [Leveque] did a good job with it. I was very impressed.”

The bulk of the book, told in narrative form and sometimes from Leveque’s first-person perspective, consists of five chapters.

It chronicles pieces of Smith’s childhood such as the day her stash of women’s clothing in her room as a teenager disappeared after her parents discovered it. According to Smith’s biography, after the clothes vanished Smith’s father told her, “We don’t want to know.”

“Trans/Active” also highlights Smith’s work as an activist for the transgender community.

She said she founded Transgender Day of Remembrance in November 1999 in part because of the killings of two African American transgender women in Massachusetts, Chanelle Pickett on November 1995 and Rita Hester on November 1998.

The annual observance is held Nov. 20.

“I was talking to friends in Boston and I was taken aback by the fact that they never heard of the Chanelle Pickett case — that our history was being forgotten,” Smith said.

The Day of Remembrance is now acknowledged nationally and internationally with acts such as marches, candlelight vigils and dignitaries’ speeches, Smith said.

Smith is quoted in the book: “It’s my feelings that make me a woman. It’s my history that makes me transgendered. I opt to celebrate both.”

The end of the book also features a list of available names and information about anti-transgender murders that took place between 1970 and 2017. The list compiled in memory of the victims includes more than 800 names.

“I hope that something like this helps to just inform people about the legitimacy of being trans,” Leveque said. “We can’t truly understand someone else’s experience, but we can be good allies and listen and try to make the world a better place.”

For each copy of “Trans/Active” sold, proceeds will go to the National Center for Transgender Equality based in Washington, D.C., Trans Lifeline, Trans Law Help and the TransActive Gender Center based in Portland. Ore.

“One of the things I’ve often said over the years is that when we [trans people] are discussing our rights, one of those rights for us is to simply exist,” Smith said. “When you look at the fight over bathrooms or serving in the military … what you’re seeing is an attempt at removing our rights from the public sphere. Those who fail to remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Alexandra.Chan@latimes.com

Twitter: @AlexandraChan10