Documentary ‘Jack & Yaya’ Looks At The Tight-Knit Bond Between Two Transgender Friends
“Jack & Yaya,” a documentary film about a transgender woman and man, follows best friends from early childhood through their parallel journeys of radical self-discovery. Meeting as neighbors across a backyard fence in South Jersey, then instantly inseparable, Jack and Yaya are in their thirties now and remain devoted friends, knowing more than anyone about each other’s true natures and processes of transitioning. Inspired to capture this unique alliance, partners Jennifer Bagley and Mary Hewey directed and produced the documentary that follows Jack and Yaya through reunions with their families and communities. “City Lights” producer Summer Evans spoke with Hewey, along with Yaya, to talk about their story and the experience of documenting them.
“They tell stories of souls, and having a soulmate, that you’ll find throughout your life… and that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a romantic soulmate. I feel like our souls just kind of knew that we were supposed to be with each other,” said Yaya. “We’ve had this connection before we knew the adventure we were about to go on, it just was there.” The two friends say they always knew they were different from how their families saw them, that Yaya was a girl and Jack was a boy, from the beginning.
“It’s just so incredible that we were able to access that footage and I have to really give a shout out to Jack’s mom,” said Hewey, of the original home videos that bring the story of young Jack and Yaya to life. “It was so fun to be able to look back on those videos and just see how much Jack and Yaya are exactly the same people they were at six and seven, as they are now.”
“There’s just this charisma and this connection between the two of them that is unrivaled by any kind of bond I’ve ever seen. And really, also the group of people that surrounds them – friends, family, their community – is also really special. It’s very different than any feeling I’ve ever had stepping into that community. There’s just so much love and acceptance and humor, and so we knew this had to be captured,” said Hewey.
Yaya’s identification as a trans woman began with experimentation in drag as a teen, at first using Halloween as an excuse. “I even went into Jack’s mom’s closet at two years old, and I kind of always found myself gravitating towards this aspect, and when I found drag, I realized that it could happen on a daily basis.” Only later discovering what it meant to be trans, Yaya described how the world of drag opened up for her. “I found this whole world of these beautiful trans women, performing in drag, and I was shocked, kind of nervous – it was like I stumbled onto myself, on the internet. And I was like, ‘This is me.’”
Yaya’s brother is gay. When he found out about her being trans, he took her to a gay club in Atlantic City, known for its drag performances. Immediately after that experience, Yaya joined the next open competition and performed. “My brother started to get nervous, and he had said to me, ‘I don’t want you to be one of those girls on the street.’ ‘Cause that’s all we knew. That’s all that was told to us, is that once you’re trans, your family kicks you out, and you have to sell your body to make a living, and you’re stuck on the street.”
“That’s the biggest part of why I was excited to do the documentary… People hear and see certain things, and they automatically assume, ‘That’s it, that’s all it is. There’s no other way around it.’ And there’s more to it… There’s more to being authentic to yourself,” said Yaya.
The film is available to stream on the WORLD Channel as part of the series “America ReFramed.” It will also be available on the PBS app.
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