A Letter to Pawtone invites you to step into Arlina’s world: from barrio childhood to postal-service pioneer, from clandestine dreams to public triumph. Scroll down to discover her journey, explore her memoir, and learn how one woman’s voice reshaped a community—and a nation’s understanding of itself.
Arlina A. was born Arnold in 1942 into a large, close-knit family in Phoenix’s Golden Gate Barrio, where the warmth of loved ones and a shared passion for music, theater, and film helped counteract the poverty and prejudice of the era. From a young age, Arnold sensed she didn’t fit the role expected of boys, and after serving in the U.S. Army in 1960s Germany, she discovered the possibility of becoming the woman she had always felt inside. In 1972, Arnold underwent gender-affirming surgery and returned to the Los Angeles Postal Service as Arlina—an audacious move met with applause from more than two thousand colleagues. Fulfilling a lifelong dream, she soon relocated to Monterey, California—living in a house once visited by her literary hero, John Steinbeck—and, in 2025, began publishing her memoir, drawn from diary entries she kept since age seven, celebrating her love of culture, history, and the unyielding pursuit of authenticity.
A Letter to Pawtone tells the uncompromising story of Arlina A., born Arnold in Phoenix’s Golden Gate Barrio in 1934, who grew up immersed in mid-century pop culture yet struggled with an undeniable truth: Arnold was never meant to be Arnold. Drafted into the Army in the 1960s, she risked everything to become one of the first Americans to undergo gender-affirming surgery in 1972, a pioneering act that challenged societal norms and paved the way for future transgender visibility. Grounded in raw, intimate diary entries—from childhood through her quieter life at the Monterey Postal Service—this memoir is more than an account of transition; it’s a cinematic journey of identity, courage, love, and the unyielding pursuit of authenticity.