A few years ago I wrote a novella about homeless LGBTQ teenagers. I wrote the novella after I immersed myself in a treasure trove of oral histories taken from real teenagers in programs like Covenant House.

I knew I had oto write from a gay male perspective primarily, if I was going to keep things authentic. So I made the central character a gay white teenager.

But I couldn’t leave things there, because that wouldn’t have reflected the reality of my source documentation. The kids in the programs weren’t all white, and they certainly weren’t all gay and cis.

So I reached back into my past and visualized a young Puerto Rican trans woman I used to be close to. Because I was moving the action up into contemporary times, I studied transgender youth vocabulary pretty carefully.

Then as I wrote, I shared drafts with a young transgender friend of mine and ask them to correct problems I might be injecting into the text.

I ended up with a product that featured a gay kid and substantially included a trans kid, and I think in a pretty three-dimensional way.

I got a lot of praise from trans people for how I portrayed the trans character, and I don’t recall anybody being seriously offended. I believe I made the right decision to be inclusive rather than whitewash my “cast.”

I would not, however, have chosen to write the novella with the Puerto Rican trans character as the principal character. I think that’s something best left to trans writers.