Emma Garrett Nelson

*Author’s Note: Some members of the LGBTQ community use gender-neutral pronouns. Common examples include “ze/zie,” “hir,” and “x.” Noel uses “zig” and “ziger.”

There’s been a lot of talk about LGBTQ youth in the Options office lately. How do we reach them? What do they need from the older generation? We know they’re doing great things — how can we share their story? Kim Stowell and I discussed featuring GSAs, or interviewing young leaders, and time and again, I kept repeating the same thing: “I need to sit down with Noel Puello, the youth Board member at YPI.”

I’d met Noel more than a year ago at YPI, and have run into zig repeatedly since then. Noel has always impressed me, and who can resist zig’s infectious smile? And as I thought about the young leaders in our community, I knew Noel was someone we needed to recognize. I had the pleasure of spending some time with Noel on a Saturday afternoon. My story was originally about the challenges of starting a high school GSA, but as we talked, it became clear that Noel was the story: a how-to on becoming a young leader and giving back to your community.

Noel Puello is a high school senior at Providence Career and Technical Academy (PCTA) studying culinary arts, and has been a YPI board member for two years. Noel is active with a number of other organizations, and serves on the Studio Team Advisory Board at New Urban Arts. “When I started school, I was just like every other teenage high school boy, which was boring. I wanted to be loud, outspoken, I wanted to be amazing, and I wanted to be myself.”  After coming out during sophomore year, Noel immediately became active with YPI. “I volunteered for everything,” zig says. One day, James Robinson (then Executive Director of YPI) asked Noel to apply for Board membership. “He saw something in me.” I asked Noel how it felt to be on the Board of such an important organization, “Being a voice there is amazing — it’s pretty damn cool.”

In the 2010-2011 school year, Noel started PCTA’s first GSA because “I felt really uncomfortable at school. I couldn’t find a safe place to be.” I asked Noel about the process of starting a GSA. “It was hard,” zig said, noting that although it was easy to secure an advisor and meeting space at the school, getting permission from the principal proved challenging. Aside from scheduling conflicts, the principal was concerned about the GSA addressing topics like sex, suicide, and bullying, and they had to agree not to use any of these terms in their promotional materials, or to discuss them at meetings. By the time the GSA was approved, it was April and there were just two months left in the school year and little time to make an impact, but their participation in the Day of Silence met with a lot of support from both students and teachers. Now in its second year, the GSA has largely functioned as a support group, although Noel hopes that more PCTA students will attend YPI’s GSA Coalition meetings, and the group will participate in the Transgender Day of Remembrance and the Day of Silence.

I was curious about the issues that impact LGBTQ youth and asked Noel about the challenges that they face from day to day. “We’ve had such a different experience, and our voices aren’t heard as much.” Noel also notes that the older generation had a much harder experience that today’s youth might not truly understand, and notes that very few of zig’s peers “are actually involved in activism, or they do it maybe once a year.” Noel, a queer person of color, is also concerned with the lack of public leadership for LGBTQ people of color, and mentioned that while queer history is full of stories of brave men and women who have moved the community forward, it is also largely based on the Caucasian experience. LGBTQ youth also have the unique experience of being “cyber-bullied.” The use of the Internet to bully youth “makes it a lot worse; you can be bullied at any time. You’re being emotionally abused and you can’t get away from it.”

So how does it get better? “You find a family if the family you have is not the one you want,” says Noel, “These places — YPI, New Urban Arts, The HUB, Youth in Action — they’re everything to me. They make you feel like you’re one in a million. And I have really amazing friends.” I asked how it was possible that zig had done so much and gained so much perspective so early in life, and Noel responded quite simply, “I just wanted to be heard, I was tired of just doing what I was told to do, I wanted to take my life in my own hands and be an individual.”