Following in the footsteps of Laverne Cox, who was on the cover of "Time" earlier this year, CeCe McDonald is featured in the latest issue of "Rolling Stone." In a feature written by Sabrina Rubin Erderly, McDonald recounts the the years she spent as a homeless teen, the deadly altercation that led to her highly publicized prison sentence, and reflects on her new role as what Erderly calls a "trans folk hero."
"I wasn’t born a boy," she says heatedly. "I was born a baby." Like many trans women, CeCe disputes her basic narrative as that of a boy who grew up to be a woman. Rather, hers is a story of mistaken identity, of a person assigned the wrong gender at birth. She doesn’t know why she was created with a boy’s anatomy but with the mind and soul of a girl; all she could do was work with the mixed-up results. "If the Creator, whoever He-She-They are, wanted me to be a certain way, that’s how They would’ve made me," CeCe declares at the bohemian Minneapolis coffee shop Cafe SouthSide, which serves as a local LGBT hub. "But until then, until all this shit is figured out? I’m-a rock this. Till the wheels fall off," she says, one balletic hand in the air testifying, flashing electric-yellow fingernails. Across the table a friend, a lesbian poet in Buddy Holly glasses, laughs with appreciation, as does the proprietress behind the cash register. "Till the wheels?.?.?.?fall?.?.?.?off! Mmmph!" CeCe exclaims with a flourish. "Crop tops and all, trust and believe that!"