Bitch on Wheels, (2001 June) New York, NY

“Bitch on Wheels,” delivered June 2001, Rivera, Sylvia. (1951-2002)

This copy-text is a typed transcript of the original reel-to-reel audiotape of Rivera’s speech located in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender (LGBT) Community Center Archives in New York City. The speech was donated to the Center by Dr. Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes and made available to RDA with the help of Lou McCarthy, Director of Archives at the Center. Skye de Saint Felix created the copy-text from the audio recording of the speech from the LGBT Community Center Archives.

A few versions of this speech appear online, but the copy provided here was directly transcribed from the audiotape and does not paraphrase, omit, or re-arrange her spoken words.

The transcription remains faithful to Rivera’s words on the audio reel in order to best preserve her voice and diction. The audio begins mid-thought, and we have not been able to recover any other portions of this speech. Verbal pauses, like “uh” or “um” were omitted for ease of reading. The times when Rivera repeated a word or digressed mid-thought are denoted by a double hyphen (—). Punctuation and paragraphing have been chosen based on the editor’s discretion. Paragraph numbers were added in brackets. The text presented here has been thoroughly checked and proofread for accuracy.