Support Independent Arts Journalism As an independent publication, we rely on readers like you to fund our journalism and keep our reporting and criticism free and accessible to all. If you value our coverage and want to support more of it, consider becoming a member today. Artist and trans woman Jamie Diaz has been granted parole after serving nearly 30 years of a life sentence in a Texas men’s prison.
While incarcerated, Diaz has made waves in recent years through her innumerable paintings and comics depicting the lived experiences and imagined realities of queer existence. Diaz was born in 1958 outside of Chicago to a Mexican-American family and grew up in Houston, Texas. As a child of the ’60s, Diaz recounts being left to her own devices more often than not, finding mischief with her friends alone on the streets at night.
Her mother was very supportive and nurturing of her artistic talent as a child, and accepted Diaz’s queerness as a teenager. Diaz leaned further into her art practice in adolescence and even had a brief stint as a tattoo artist. The artist was sentenced to life in prison over drug possession and robbery connected to her opiate addiction in the mid-1990s, reportedly becoming eligible for parole by 2025 at the earliest.
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