Masha Gessen

Lorena Borjas had a wheelie bag, and in the bag she had the world. The first time Lynly Egyes met her, Borjas pulled a birth certificate out of the bag. Egyes was then a lawyer with the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center and had recently taken the case of a young immigrant transgender woman who was in jail, facing felony assault charges for defending herself against an attacker—an exceedingly common predicament. “Lorena came into my office and said, ‘I hear you need the birth certificate for one of the girls,’ ” Egyes told me on the phone. “I […]