D'Lo- He, Him, & His

If we are going to talk about creating a space and explore the idea of community, we must explore every facet of the South Asian experience. That means exploring some of the darker aspects of our culture and our people. We grew up in a generation that has seen an immense change in the way we look at homosexuality. That is why we are always surprised then by the homophobia in the South Asian American community. It does exist, it can’t be denied, and it bothers us greatly. So we wanted to open the space for it to be talked about openly and safely. Enter, with panache, D’ Lo. D’ Lo is a friend of Akaash’s and a Sri Lankan dude who grew up in the states. He is a comedian and a story teller and is currently performing his one man show in LA. Oh yeah: he is also transgender. 

  D’ Lo sat down with us to talk about everything about himself but had to first do a little educating, not without a little mockery of us. He starts by breaking down the difference in the terms between gender and sex, explaining how gender is assigned based on sex at birth. We follow the best as we can being the idiots we are, but soon enough D’ Lo is able to get us up to speed. Conversation naturally evolves to his journey from assigned female to trans-male. He tells us about growing up in the west coast birthplace of the KKK: Lancaster, California; and how the Sri Lankan community came together and formed the protection and safety that he needed, yet not enough safety to be who he really was. Talks about the move to college and how his transition evolved once out of the confines of Lancaster and the community, but doesn’t shy away from sharing that things got incredibly dark at times. Dark enough to where he thought if things didn’t get better by 30 he was going to have to kill himself.     Thankfully they did! And the thing about D’ Lo is that he is so much more than just transgender. We explored his journey to storytelling from hip hop and spoken word. Talk about who his influences and idols are and how he incorporates social justice into his art. All of this happens while having some of the most fun we have had in an interview.