Cecilia Gentili Biography – Cecilia Gentili Wiki
Cecilia Gentili was an Argentine-American author, actress, and sex worker, and transgender advocate.
Gentili immigrated from Argentina to the United States to live a safer life as an openly transgender woman. She supported herself in New York City through sex work, where she was exposed to drug abuse, and eventually became incarcerated at Rikers in 2009.
All that ultimately led to the creation of Trans Equity Consulting in 2019, an organization she founded dedicated to uplifting transwomen of color and “centering sex workers, immigrants, and incarcerated peoples as experts in creating a more just world.”
She starred as Miss Orlando on Pose and premiered her one-woman show, Red Ink, in 2023. With Trans Equity Consulting, she created TRANSMISSION, NYC’s first transgender music festival.
She documented the first 17 years of her life in Argentina in her memoir, Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn’t My Rapist, filled with eight letters to people who shaped her childhood, winning the Israel Fishman Nonfiction Award.
Gentili was a co-founder of Callen-Lorde Community Health Center “Cecilia’s Occupational Inclusion Network” (COIN) clinic, the first dedicated healthcare center for sex workers on the East Coast, which was created in 2021.
In October 2023, she was among hundreds arrested at a rally calling for a ceasefire in Gaza organized by the anti-Zionist organization Jewish Voice for Peace.
She was a leading voice among the hundreds of New York Times contributors who spoke out against the newspaper’s biased coverage of transgender people.
Gentili starred in Pose, a TV drama following trans women of color amidst the AIDS crisis in 1980s NYC, as Ms. Orlando.
In 2022, she released her debut book, Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn’t My Rapist, which won a Stonewall Book Award for nonfiction. She debuted her autobiographical off-Broadway show loosely based on the book, Red Ink, in 2023. She had planned to reprise the show in April 2024.
In 2023, she created and co-organized “Transmissions Fest”, the first all-trans music festival in NYC, with the proceeds going to LGBTQ+ charities.
Cecilia Gentili Age
Gentili was born in 1972, and raised in the Argentinian city of Gálvez, Santa Fe. She died at the age of 52.
Cecilia Gentili Family
Her parents were Italian and Argentinian. She came out as gay at 12 years old and described her mother as “kind of open-minded”, her father as “in absolute denial”, and said her brother had difficulty accepting her.
Gentili’s grandmother, an Indigenous woman from the countryside, was “the only person who truly was open to a conversation about gender”, and she attended Baptist services with her as a child.
Cecilia Gentili Partner
She came out as gay at 12 years old and described her mother as “kind of open-minded”, her father as “in absolute denial”, and said her brother had difficulty accepting her.
At the time of her death, Gentili divided her time between Brooklyn with her partner, who she had been with since the mid-2010s, and her home in upstate New York.
Cecilia Gentili Death
She died at the age of 52. Gentili’s family announced her death on her Instagram account on the morning of February 6, 2024. She was 52.
Tributes to her were posted by GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis, deputy director for Transgender Justice with the ACLU National LGBT & HIV Project’s Chase Strangio, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, Callen-Lorde’s CEO, Patrick McGovern, New York State Senator Brad Hoylman, and fellow actors on Pose such as Angelica Ross and MJ Rodriguez.
Our beloved Cecilia Gentili passed away this morning to continue watching over us in spirit,” her Instagram page wrote on Tuesday afternoon. “Please be gentle with each other and love one another with ferocity.”
Cecilia Gentili Cause of Death
The exact cause of her death has not yet been disclosed. Gentili’s family announced her death on her Instagram account on the morning of February 6, 2024. She was 52.
Cecilia Gentili Religion
The departed activist attended both Baptist and Catholic services during her life but found the experiences traumatic and came to identify as an atheist.
In November 2023 she said in an interview that she was exploring her relationship to religion.
Cecilia Gentili Nationality
She was of both Argentine and American nationalities.
Her Instagram handle is @ceciliagentili72.
