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For Letta J, navigating the world of gaming as a woman of color was no simple feat. Growing up in Texas, she had to hide being a gamer because it wasn’t socially accepted. “I didn’t know if we lived in a world that would accept me—a woman…a black Dominican Mexican woman—who played video games.”
Letta started competing in gaming when she moved to New York. There, she found people who shared her interest in gaming, but she still felt alienated being a woman of color in a world dominated by men. She knew something had to change. “I felt like, I want to fix this. Because I don’t want to be the only girl. I feel like there are some more girls that like playing games too.”
She created Coexist Gaming to provide that safe space she was longing for. “It’s really my dream company. I started this company in my apartment. I turned my entire duplex into a game house.” The game house was equipped with two floors of every kind of game console and even a music studio.
Letta created a space where people could come and play competitively, or sit back and watch. “People were coming from the Bronx, an hour and a half to Bushwick, three days a week to this game house to be around people they had things in common with, to vibe out, to chill, to have great food, and to just coexist. And I learned that was a need for us.”
She realized the impact that she was making through the amazing community response to Coexist Gaming. It affirmed her decision to carve her own space in a world in which she felt she didn’t belong. “The greatest thing that I could tell young black gamers is, if you don’t like or feel like you fit into the world you exist in, it’s probably because you’re meant to build a new one.”
Letta J is a gamer and founder of Coexist Gaming.
