Empire’s Jussie Smollett Beaten in Racist, Homophobic Attack by Trump Supporters
It’s being reported that singer-songwriter and Empire star Jussie Smolett was beaten early this morning in a racist, homophobic attack by two individuals chanting “This is MAGA country.” The Chicago Police Department has confirmed that a cast member of Empire matching Smollett’s description was admitted to Northwestern Hospital and later released.
The actor was walking down the street when two unknown individuals approached him yelling racial and homophobic slurs (TMZ independently reports these slurs as “Aren’t you that f***** ‘Empire’ n****?” and similar taunts). These individuals then brutally attacked Smollett, physically assaulting him in the face and body while supposedly chanting “this is MAGA Country.” During the attack, a rope was put around Smollet’s neck and what Chicago PD reports as an “unknown chemical substance” was poured on him. TMZ reports this substance was bleach.
Surviving the attack, Smollett then transported himself to the hospital. He was released hours later, and is resting at home in stable condition.
In a statement given to Buzzfeed news, Anthony Gugliemi, a spokesperson for the Chicago PD noted that “given the severity of the allegations, we are taking this investigation very seriously and treating it as a possible hate crime. Detectives are currently working to gather video, identify potential witnesses and establish an investigation timeline…. We ask anyone with information about this incident to contact Area Central Detectives at 312-747-8382 or report it anonymously to www.cpdtip.com”
News of the attack is spreading quickly across social media. I first heard of it from two friends, both black and gay, one of whom is an Autostraddle writer, within 10 minutes of each other. The first time I read TMZ’s report it became hard to breathe. Everything felt upside down. It’s not just that Jussie Smollett is a celebrity, though he is one of the most prominent gay black men in the country and portrays the most widely known gay black character on television. It’s yet another reminder that this is happening to our communities every day. Every day we are beaten, left most vulnerable to street violence for anything as simple as walking home after grabbing a late-night snack. For living in our skin. Every day another one of us is called a faggot, a dyke. Those of us who are black are called niggers. No, I’m not bleeping those words. The reported violence against Jussie Smollett is intimate to me, to us. I refuse to censor the open wounds of that pain.
In the last hour I have felt ill, nauseous, heartbroken, and enraged. Smollett’s attackers knew exactly what they were doing when they placed a noose around his neck. They knew what it meant to smother his beautiful black skin in bleach. They wanted to strip him of his humanity. They wanted to remind him, to remind us, that there is no safety from their hate that can be cloaked or bought.
An attack on a black gay celebrity like Jussie Smollet is also a message sent to his black and gay fans. It’s an attack on his body, on our emotional wellbeing, and our mental health. That too is intentional. The hate that fuels white supremacy also fuels homophobia. That won’t be reported in other mainstream media takes because it is hard to face such hatred with clear eyes. But we must. We must look at hatred for what it is because that is the only way to fight against it.
I want to wrap this report up in some way that we can all feel a little safer again. I wish I could use this platform to restore, even a little bit, what was taken from Jussie Smollett this morning, what is stolen from us every day. I can’t. What we can do is hold space for each other. So today, for all our queer fam out there, but especially for my black queer family, feel the strength of our community. Our kinship is a gift. It was bought and paid for in the tears, sweat and joy of our ancestors. Those who were beaten and bruised, but got back up and somehow loved again. Please, fortify yourself in that gift today.
Autostraddle sends our love to Jussie Smollett and his family. We also send our love to each of you. It’s a long fight, but one that I know we are going to win.
How Coretta Scott King Leveraged MLK’s Legacy to Fight for Gay Rights
“I once told Martin that although I loved being his wife and a mother, if that was all I did I would have gone crazy. I felt a calling on my life from an early age. I knew I had something to contribute to the world.” Coretta Scott King, quietly known as the First Lady of the Civil Rights Movement, is most famous for being her husband’s wife. She’s seen in photos more than she’s ever heard in video. She’s remembered as elegant, demure, classy, perhaps even stoic in her strength.
Despite, as King biographer Clayborne Carson once put it, being “more politically active at the time they met than Martin was,” she’s often more discussed for her iconic Jackie Kennedy level wardrobe than for leading more than 50,000 marchers through the streets of Memphis just four days after her husband’s assassination. Three of her four children were by her side.
On the most famous day of Dr. King’s legacy, the 1963 March on Washington, Coretta Scott King sat silently in the second row. According to the Smithsonian’s oral history of the march, she was mentioned only once that day, in passing, despite a lifetime of investment in racial justice dating back to her teens. As a college student she was a member of the NAACP and the Race Relations and Civil Liberties Committees. In his early letters to her, Martin noted that his first attraction to Coretta was her political mind. He thought of their love as a partnership.
That partnership wasn’t always equal. Much like the other women who were, by Scott King’s own estimation, the “backbone of the whole civil rights movement,” she was expected to work in shadows. Ella Baker, Diane Nash, Fannie Lou Hamer and so many more have only recently begun to be given their proper due in history. For Scott King, the process of coming to the public light began in the days after her husband died.
Coretta Scott King with her children at the funeral service of Martin Luther King, Jr.
On April 8, 1968, four days after Dr. King’s death in Memphis, Coretta Scott King flew to the place of his murder and lead a protest memorial in a black lace headscarf. She’s reported to have said, “I need to go finish his work. I’ve been with him as a partner on all these other marches and confrontations. I feel like I need to go.” Her eulogy at his funeral was televised to more than 120 million people. Three weeks later, she delivered his planned speech at a protest against the Vietnam War in New York’s Central Park. Two months after that, she led the Poor People’s March to Washington in her husbands name. King had originally conceived the march in hopes of forcing the US government to confront the realities of American poverty. Coretta’s analysis highlighted intersections of class, race, and gender that often kept black women poor and undervalued.
She went on to become the first woman to preach at Great Britain’s St. Paul’s Cathedral and the first woman to deliver the class day address at Harvard University. She created the Full Employment Action Council and the Coalition of Conscience, two governing bodies that brought religious organizations, businesses, and human rights groups together to work in favor of national policies on access and equality. She founded the Martin Luther King Jr Center for Nonviolent Social Change, a cornerstone of her and her husband’s lasting legacy. For Scott King, an key part of that legacy was carrying King’s name into the fight for LGBT equality.
In 1983, on the 20th anniversary of her husband’s March on Washington, Scott King pledged her support for the Gay and Civil Rights Act that was then before congress. The groundbreaking bill would have prohibited discrimination against gays and lesbians in housing, employment, and other public accommodations protected by federal policy. When questioned about this turn in her activism, Scott King reminded naysayers that many gays and lesbians had given their all to the civil rights movement (including perhaps most famously Bayard Rustin, an openly gay black man and lead organizer of the 1963 March on Washington). She felt it was her duty to offer support in return. Later that year, Scott King purposefully made space for black lesbian poet Audre Lorde at the march’s anniversary rally. The good Lorde spoke:
Today’s march openly joins the black civil rights movement and the gay civil rights movement in the struggles we have always shared, the struggle for jobs, for health, for peace and for freedom. We marched in 1963 with Dr. Martin Luther King and dared to dream that freedom would include us, because not one of us is free to choose the terms of our living until all of us are free to choose the terms of our living.
In the mid-1980s, when President Ronald Reagan wouldn’t even acknowledge the disease, Scott King – with the help of her assistant Lynn Cothren, an openly gay man — used the King Center to create a welcoming environment for the LGBT community, especially queer black people who were suffering in the middle of a generational genocide from HIV/AIDS. After the death of a close gay friend, she hosted a day of memorial at the Center and encouraged participants to sew stitches on a panel that would become part of the AIDS memorial quilt.
In 1986, in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Bowers v. Hardwick that there was no constitutional right to engage in homosexual sex, Scott King accepted an invitation to be a featured speaker at the September 27, 1986 New York Gala for the Human Rights Campaign Fund. In 1993, she held a press conference urging President Clinton to end the ban on gays serving in the military. In 1994, she stood with Senator Ted Kennedy and Representative Barney Frank as they introduced the Employment Non-Discrimation Act (ENDA), which among other things would have prohibited workplace discrimination on the the basis of sexual orientation.
On March 31st 1998, at the 25th Anniversary luncheon for the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, King spoke out against strands of conservatism in black communities that had kept some members reluctant to join the gay rights movement. She stated, “I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice… but I hasten to remind that Martin Luther King, Jr. said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream to make room at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.”
The next day, April 1st 1998, at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago, she added: “Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood.” She echoed these sentiments time and again until her passing.
In 2004, during the middle of a heated national debate on same-sex marriage and a proposed constitutional amendment endorsed by President George W Bush that would have defined marriage as between a man and a woman, Coretta Scott King spoke out again. She called the proposed amendment tantamount to “gay bashing.”
While her eldest daughter, Yolanda King, took up Coretta’s mantle of activism for gay rights, her youngest daughter, Bernice King chose a different path. In the middle of the same 2004 debate for marriage rights, the younger King besmirched that her father “did not take a bullet for same-sex marriage.”
In part these comments fueled a fire between the King siblings, pitting Yolanda and Dexter against the more conservative Martin Luther King III and Bernice. After their mother’s passing in 2006, the siblings fought over the sale of the King Center in Atlanta. The dispute was ultimately settled by Yolanda’s untimely passing due to complications from a chronic heart condition in 2007. Currently, Bernice King remains the CEO of the Center.
Still, the legacy of Coretta Scott King’s lifetime commitment to the hard work of social justice cannot be overturned. Last year on Martin Luther King Day, I reflected that the work of justice never ends. The only way forward is for everyone to roll up their sleeves and fight another day. It’s uncomfortable, off-putting, and absolutely necessary. No one better embodied that message than Coretta Scott King, who spent the 40 years after her husband’s passing not laying back and honoring him peacefully. Instead, she fought every day. And for those last 20 years? She fought for US.
Coretta Scott King understood how she was best remembered, that many were satisfied to consider her a relic of the past. She then turned that legacy on its head, “I am made to sound like an attachment to a vacuum cleaner, the wife of Martin, then the widow of Martin, all of which I was proud to be. But I was never just a wife, nor a widow. I was always more than a label.” She leveraged the weight of her husbands name and, in the true spirit of an ally, never asked for a thank you or a spotlight as she hefted that name in our corner so that we could build on his good work.
I cannot think of a better memorial for her husband than to honor her today.
Latinx Butches Lit Up Television in 2018
As Autostraddle’s TV Team started to gather up statistics and critic’s opinions for our 2018 End of The Year posts, I realized a trend that I didn’t want us to lose track of: across almost every platform, some of the best and most beloved performances of the year came from queer Latinx characters. In particular, butch or masculine-of-center Latinxs were finally stepping into the TV spotlight. This isn’t a small blip. Before summer 2017 there had only been three Latinx butches in all of television history. In the last 18 months alone, that number has more than doubled to eight! They are being found everywhere from prestige dramas and critical darlings like The Deuce or Vida, to summer cult favorites like Claws, or Sunday evening comfort television like Madam Secretary.
I became curious about what new trends were popping up with these characters. What could we gleam or learn from their representation on television? That interest lead me to creating this – a brief, but hopefully satisfying, deep dive into the ways that gender, sexuality, and race have been playing out on television screens. Our Editor-in-Chief Riese is currently hard at work writing Autostraddle’s annual big, overarching end of the year analysis about queer women on television. Please consider what you’re reading a supplementary introduction.
(For a while I considered titling this article “Latinx Butches 2018: Welcome To The Thirst Trap,” but that didn’t seem very professional, you know?)
Nuestras Raíces: We Can’t Get Anywhere Without Knowing Where We Come From
As I mentioned, according to Autostraddle’s research, before summer 2017 there had been just three Latinx Butches on Television: The L Word’s Eva “Papí” Torres (Janina Gavankar), East Los High’s Daysi Cantu (Ser Anzoategui), and I Love Dick‘s Devon (Roberta Colindrez).
Probably in no small part due to the The L Word’s indelible effect on generations of queer women, Papí has become an iconic character in her own right, despite airing as a reoccurring character for less than a single season. After all, she’s slept with more women that Shane! However, her history is not without complications. In many ways, Papí is a poorly drawn caricature based in the centuries old “Latin Lover” stereotype designed by white storytellers to exoticize, sexualize and ultimately belittle Latinx people.
To add insult to injury, Janina Gavankar – the actress playing Papí – wasn’t even Latina. To quote Autostraddle’s former Senior Editor Yvonne Marquez, L Word showrunner “Ilene fucking Chaiken could not find [any] Latinas to be in her show. If you’re filming a show based on a group of lesbians who live in LA — which half of its population is Latino — there is absolutely no excuse not to incorporate Latinas into the show!” I couldn’t have said it better myself. This doesn’t even get into the badly portrayed aspects of Chola culture written into Papí’s character, all of which read more like an offensive Halloween costume than any genuine form of authenticity.
It was seven years before another Latinx masculine-of-center character found their way to television, Daysi Cantu in Hulu’s East Los High. A welcome respite and breath of fresh air! Written, produced by, and starring Latinxs, Remezcla called the little known East Los High “a vanguard show when it comes to Latino representation.” Teen pregnancy, domestic violence, peer pressure, immigration – they really went there. Unfortunately, even though they were on a show that was a stand out in its class, Daysi was not used to their full potential on-screen. Beyond a brief flirtation with Jocelyn Reyes, the show’s other resident lesbian, Daysi was never given a full backstory or centrally incorporated into the cast. However, Daysi remains the only “teen character” on this list, helping to combat the starved representation for queer Latinx youth.
Daysi’s appearance on television overlapped with I Love Dick’s Devon. Riese described Devon as “a dreamy romantic, a dedicated artist with a compelling backstory and a unique perspective on the world. Also, she takes her shirt off a lot and I love her.” Unlike Papí, Devon’s sexuality was purposeful and delightfully subversive, as opposed to a punch line. They were also crafted by Roberta Colindrez as non-binary: Colindrez referred to Devon with “she” and “they” pronouns interchangeably.
Devon served as the necessary bridge in the history of butch Latinxs on TV. I Love Dick premiered just five weeks before Claws gave viewing audiences Quiet Ann and just five months before Madam Secretary premiered Kat Sandoval. While Devon was a well-fleshed out character, they were ultimately still a character conceived and written by white people (Transparent’s Jill Solloway produced the show). Really, Devon’s biggest problem was that we don’t get enough of them! The character didn’t remain central throughout the series’ eight episodes.
Recognizing the very real risk of oversimplifying, this is the starting block of our history: stereotyped, sidelined, or marginalized! Not great!
It’s noteworthy that Ser Anzoategui and Roberta Colindrez, both talented queer actors, each found second roles continuing to play Latinx masculine-of-center characters in the “new class” listed below.
What’s Changing
There’s a lot of new energy afoot in queer Latinx television over the last two years, even more so when it comes to butch representation. I don’t want to paint an overly optimistic picture, because let’s be real with each other – an increase from 10 to 23 Latinx television characters (or 16 to 24 butches) isn’t ideal. The trend is on the right track; the raw numbers themselves unfortunately leave a lot to be desired.
According to our database, this year there were 226 regular or reoccurring lesbian, bisexual, pansexual or queer women characters on English-language television accessible in the United States. There were an additional five non-binary or gender fluid characters, bringing the grand total to 231. Out of those numbers, only 23 characters were Latinx (including two straight Latina trans women characters, Blanca and Angel Evangelista, on F/X’s Pose). These characters are overwhelmingly represented on cable or streaming platforms, as opposed to broadcast network television, which further limits their access and audience. Latinxs are the largest people of color population in the United States, but our representation on television barely reflects a sliver of that reality.
Still, the amount of butch Latinx representation on television has more than doubled in just the last 18 months and the year-to-year increase of queer Latinxs on TV jumped an enormous 130%! Granted, it’s easy to make such large gains when you are starting with low numbers to begin with. It’s also about more than the numbers; the quality and depth of representation in the last few years is unparalleled. Just taking a quick look at Autostraddle’s team of lesbian, bisexual and queer television critics – despite their comparatively small size in number, queer Latinx characters topped our Best Episodes, Best Television Shows, and Best Characters lists by a significant margin in 2018 (including multiple rankings in the top 10 for both episodes and television shows). They also made up 8 out of the 18 of the winners in our critics’ (and fan-based) Gay Emmys, that’s roughly 45% of all winners! These highlighted examples point to the evocative, thought-provoking, and resonant writing and performances for queer Latinxs on TV. I’m going to talk more about that in a little bit.
A full size of the infographic can be found here.
A New Day
The quality of stories currently being given to butch Latinxs is unlike anything that’s come before. They’re brimming with richness and intricacy. Actors are not being asked to play a one note character who is never seen again. Each is internal to their show’s respective plots and/or given significant screen time. The majority of them are being conceived by — or at least in consultation with — queer Latinx people. While we are zeroing in on Latinx butches for the purpose of this short study, the quality of representation has risen across the board for LGBT Latinxs on television over the last two years — ranging from Brooklyn 99′s Rosa Diaz, to One Day at a Time’s Elena Alvarez, to Angel Evangelista on Pose.
Latinx butches are no longer being forced into a narrow and thinly veiled “Latin Lothario” trope. Though Orange is the New Black’s Daddy uses her sexuality for manipulation, even she is not without pathos. Daddy, along with Claws’ Quiet Ann, has a history of crime. Meanwhile Daddy and The Deuce’s Irene are both involved in the sex work industry. This tracks with Autostraddle’s previous findings that butches on television are more likely to be involved in either illegal activities or criminal justice than other queer women on television. While there’s an obviously uncomfortable (to put it mildly) association being created on TV by correlating gender non-conformity or “butchness” with criminality, this trend is especially troubling for Latinxs. In 2017,The Hollywood Reporter found that half of all Latinxs and Latinx immigrants on television were portrayed as criminals. It nearly goes without saying, but this type of fear mongering in American storytelling has harmful real life consequences.
Madam Secretary’s Kat Sandoval bucks these trends as a highly educated White House policy official. She exists in the upper echelons of U.S. government in ways that we have yet to see reflected in our real life en masse. Vida’s Eddy is a local business owner and community leader. She’s an empathetic soft soul like so many butches that we personally know and love.
This is not meant to simplify Latinx butch stories into categories of “good” or “bad” representation; very few of these characters are that clear cut or easy. What makes this new class so effective is that, taken collectively, they largely eschew the didactic and instead push for three-dimensional storytelling. Every one of them is allowed space to be vulnerable, experience sensitivity or fear or doubt, to display their humanity. We get to know their families and learn their histories. Adding to that intimacy, four out of the five of these characters are played by out queer Latinx actors. There’s a danger that being masculine-of-center in Hollywood might result in typecasting, especially for folks of color, but these actors are mining their own experiences to add much needed layers to the characters their portraying.
Perhaps the greatest feat is that none of these characters exist in a vacuum or by themselves. By belonging to a cohort of five, no single character is burdened with the unnecessary (and unfair) pressure of being “the only one.” Daddy is incarcerated, Kat is in the White House. Both are standing in their truth.
We are everywhere.
Welcome to the New Class:
We’ve certainly come a long way.
Hippie Pants Make Me Feel Pretty — and Guilty
As a freshman in high school, I became friends with the group of popular girls. I was not one of them, but I wanted to be. They lived in birkenstocks and Patagonia, and hiked in their spare time. I adored them. (I also most definitely had a crush on at least two of the girls). I wanted to be a part of their group, to be one of the pretty girls that got invited everywhere and that boys liked, because getting a boyfriend would prove that liking girls was really just a phase. As a result, I ignored certain things that now discomfit me.
The girls I was friends with wore mehndi (henna) tattoos to school, and wore Spiritual Awakening Pants, the hippie pants that you find at farmer’s market stalls, or that one place in the mall that reeks of patchouli, and that almost certainly have come from a South Asian country for cheap and have been marked up an insane amount. Nearly every white female tourist I’ve seen in India has a pair of Spiritual Awakening Pants. My mum was bemused when I decided to buy pants not only for my friends but for myself on one of our India trips. “Are you sure? They’re so ugly! So cheap!” When you’re Indian and you wear tacky Indian things, you’re a stereotype. When the popular white girls do it, they’re cool. In my warped 14-year-old logic, it made sense to me that if I wore the pants with them, then I’d be cool too. It wasn’t until I started learning more about intersectional feminism that the guilt kicked in.
What exactly are they appropriating? It appears as if they themselves are unsure.
I personally don’t believe that wearing hippie pants is a form of cultural appropriation. Yet I always feel a little uncomfortable with them, because their whole vibe just seems generically ethnic. They look like an amalgamation of what some white guy in the 80’s would consider to be Indian, commodified for the eat love pray experience. Which, incidentally, is why I don’t consider it to be cultural appropriation. What exactly are they appropriating? It appears as if they themselves are unsure.
Instead, I’m bothered by the way that it implies that this is all India is. A land of incense, elephant patterned pants, and curry. India is chaos, a country that works despite, a country of profanity and profundity. When I see Spiritual Awakening Pants, I cannot help but think of the colonial mindset that drives their production and popularity, that of taking what is good and leaving the rest to rot, that of never really understanding what is good but pretending to anyways.
I cannot, in good conscience, suggest that people stop wearing them. That would be extremely hypocritical of me, because I own a pair of Spiritual Awakening Pants. I like to think that it is an act of reclamation, but I fear that it comes across instead as an implicit endorsement. So much of the guilt I associate with wearing them comes from not just what the pants symbolise, but that I should know better, and yet I still do it. That I should’ve known better in high school, too. I should’ve tried to show my friends how I saw India instead of staying silent and making them believe that what they saw was all there was. Yet despite purchasing the pants in a misguided attempt to fit in, despite the gnawing sense of guilt I feel when I wear them, despite knowing that saris and salwar kameezes make the pants look like cloth someone dug out of the trash, I love them. They’re so comfortable, and they make me feel pretty. There’s a certain power in that, that I crave, after years and years of feeling otherwise.
I faced the brunt of the colourism when we visited India, as most of the white people I knew thought all South Asian people looked the same.
I can’t remember the age I started believing I wasn’t pretty. Maybe 10? Even now, liking the way I look can be a struggle. I thought I was too hairy, for one, but most of all I thought I was too dark. I faced the brunt of the colourism when we visited India, as most of the white people I knew thought all South Asian people looked the same. Small blessings, I guess. My buas used to whisper about how hard it was going to be for me to get married, not knowing that I could hear them. When I was 16, I went to get a passport photo taken, mine was photoshopped several shades lighter. The photographers had thought they were doing me a favour.
My mother and I went to get a facial. They had given us different facials, which I thought nothing of, at the time. Halfway through, something seemed wrong. My face was burning. I dug my nails into my palms and stayed quiet until it was finished, desperately wondering why anyone would want a facial if it felt like this. It wasn’t until it was over, and I opened my eyes to read the label of the box of the chemicals she had used, that I realised what had happened. It was called “tan-clear,” and I had just received my first (and last) skin bleaching treatment. I was furious, but I stayed silent until we left, because God forbid I make a scene. All the while, I wanted to point out that I didn’t have a tan, it was just the colour of my skin. When I later told my mum about it, she expressed her disappointment that no matter how much progress feminism in India had made, these kinds of things lingered. Yet it wasn’t as if it was isolated to Indians living in India. I had friends tell me stories about how their mums would bathe them in milk or tell them to stay indoors so that they would be lighter. It’s everywhere.
What can I do to fight the colourism I see, but love my dark skin and the self it contains?
I searched for an explanation of why a nation that in ancient times had celebrated dark heroes was raising its children on Fair and Lovely, and found colonialism. Specifically, the maddening subconscious tendency to want to emulate our oppressors, because historically, it made it easier to survive. I’m sure there are other complex factors which have led to colourism still being so rampant, even now, but colonialism has played an undeniable role. For me, a lot of the problems that I have with India boil down to the same thing. But thinking about the pervasiveness of it always ends up making me so helplessly outraged that I feel like I’m going to explode with all of my useless emotion. What can I do to fight the colourism I see, but love my dark skin and the self it contains? Sometimes that feels too hard, and other times it feels woefully insufficient.
I can’t remember the age I started believing I was beautiful again. There were big things that happened along the way that helped me feel confident in my body, like accepting my sexuality. I had such a limited understanding of sexuality when I was younger that being bisexual made me feel like a fraud. I did things slightly backwards, in that I came out as a lesbian first, in middle school, because I was impatient and had no sense of self-preservation, and repressed the hell out of liking boys. When I got to high school, where I hardly knew anyone, I seized the opportunity for reinvention by shoving myself back into the closet and repressing the hell out of liking girls.
I stopped lying to myself during my junior year. Even though I had learned more about bisexuality since middle school, I still held myself to a ridiculous double standard that it was okay for other people to be bisexual, because they were actually bisexual, unlike me, who was obviously just being indecisive. I had those double standards for everything, including colourism. The more I learned about intersectional feminism, the more I began to understand that if I wanted to fight against injustice, I had to start being fair to myself. Though I struggle with this, it has recently included allowing myself not to feel as if I have to be perfect all the time.
I wear Spiritual Awakening Pants, because I look good in them and sometimes I crave that feeling.
Now, I love my dark brown skin as an act of defiance, as a way to heal the small everyday wounds colonialism causes me. I wear Spiritual Awakening Pants, because I look good in them and sometimes I crave that feeling. I feel guilty while I do it, like I’m legitimising the remnants of colonialism that I see in the patterns of elephants. I get angry at myself for feeling guilty, because they’re just a pair of pants and my mind says that no one is overthinking it like I am. I feel guilty all over again, because clothes are never just clothes. Then I say fuck it and I wear them anyways, because there’s only so much history you can carry on your back before it breaks. 
edited by Yvonne.
Stories About Beyoncé That Are Really About the First Girl I Ever Loved
I talk a lot about how much I love Beyoncé. It is one of the first things anyone knows about me. This year, for my birthday, I received no less than five separate Queen Bey-themed presents.
Bey has long been a keeper of my secrets, even though it was someone else who first taught me how to do that.
No, No, No (Yes, Yes, Yes)
The first time we bonded, it was over the middle school sleepovers we had nearly a decade earlier and on opposite sides of the country.
We met freshman year, our very first night on campus, me finding myself cross-legged on Addison’s dorm room floor because I knew someone – who knew someone – who knew someone – who knew her roommate. Unpacked brown boxes and scratchy packing tape surrounded us. I kept picking at it with my toes. The flickering dorm lighting made everything yellow.
We hadn’t made friends with anyone old enough to buy alcohol, so that first night we were sober (she was sober all the time, really). Four of us stayed up until it was far too late, walking around our new home arm-in-arm, giggling with sleep that we weren’t ready to succumb to. Addison said it reminded her of the giggles she used to get in middle school. That’s what set it off. Someone, I have no idea who, started singing old Destiny’s Child. Addison jumped on a half-wall and balanced herself, recreating the choreography. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Her almond brown skin shinning golden under the bright lights. It was pitch black out. I only remember her and those overhead beams. She turned that half-wall into a stage. I was her captive audience.
We fell asleep still giggling, limbs intertwined in a twin bed. We slept like that, warm skin laying on top of each other, faces exhausted from laughter, every weekend for months. Re-creating middle school sleepovers, we said.
Lose My Breath
Destiny’s Child turned out to be the soundtrack of that year. They announced their goodbye album just as the tie-dyed orange and red Minnesota leaves fell to the ground and got covered by snow. We’d wear the absolute skimpiest clothes we could find underneath our parkas. Every Friday night was the same – a group of us strolling as a pack in our too thin and too short clothes, too heavy make up, looking for whatever house party had the oldest kids and the cutest boys. We’d let Addison go first. Let her bat her lashes and ask if we could come in. They always said yes. You couldn’t say no to her. Flirting for our awkward, gangly, underage group’s benefit became her speciality.
We’d get inside and find the most dry and least booze smelling corner to pile our coats in. It felt almost without fail that that’s when the “bdarrum-bum-dum-dum-dum-dum” drumline from “Lose My Breath” would come on, as if whatever upperclassmen DJ who got paid in Malibu rum had been waiting for us. As if anyone knew who were were at all. Addison’s nose squinched up tight as she smiled, THAT’S MY SONG.
It was always her song.
She’d gather us all together, clearing a space on the makeshift dance-floor. Sometimes a sturdy staircase was enough. We danced as a group, but she brought me in closest. I was Kelly. She was Beyoncé. It was our routine.
I could never explain why my heart pounded when her soft hands reached out for mine. Why it felt like I was the only girl in the world, singing along with her at the top of my lungs. The way my eyes would nervously glance at her chest in that purple lace bra and white tank top.
Until I could.
Ring The Alarm
Junior year I studied abroad, so I missed the release of B’Day by a few months. Addison would send me novel length emails that I’d read in cramped internet cafes next to Caribbean mothers caressing photos on computer screens with their fingertips. She transcribed all the important lyrics and wrote paragraphs about what she thought of them. Bey was our language. By that point, it felt as if it had always been that way. We spoke in third person about her to avoid talking about ourselves.
When I came home, I bolted immediately to see her. School wasn’t out yet, and anyway, campus already felt more like home. Well, she felt more like home. She’d been busy practicing a dance routine to “Ring The Alarm.” It involved high heels and a steel backed chair. I absolutely had to see it, she said. She’d worked so hard on it!
She sat me down on that lumpy green couch and bit her lip before pressing play on her iPod. All I can remember are her calves in those heels that were a half size too big for her. That night was the first time I noticed her lips were shaped like a heart.
Flaws And All
More than anything else, “Flaws And All” was our song.
It’s a deep cut, not easily found. It only exists in the special re-release of B’Day that came out exclusively at Wal-Mart and I refused to buy. The first time we actually heard it was the video’s surprise YouTube release. We scrambled out of our living room and reached for the nearest laptop hooked up to the “good speakers” we could find – our roommate’s bedroom. Addison cried without any noise, biting her nails. I took her hands out of her mouth and kissed her. The bedroom walls were so tight that you could touch both of them together if you reached your arms out. We toppled onto our roommate’s bed. It sounds hot, but it was clumsy.
Addison laughed. I was so happy to have stopped her from crying. We played the song again. She whispered to me not to tell. We played the song again. I watched her fall for some boy whose name I can’t even remember anymore. We played the song again. We’d come home tipsy and warm and reach for each other’s bodies. We kissed like it was everyday. We crept into each other’s room, hushed murmurs and quiet moans, until it became routine. She’d go out with him and I’d help pick out her outfit. She’d call me her Kelly. She’d always come back to me at night. We played the song again. We’d press our lips to bare skin sticky from the radiators, barely lifting them to quote the song to each other. A promise: “I don’t know why you love me.” “I’ll catch you when you fall.” “I’ll love you, flaws and all.” Beyoncé wanted someone who would catch her. I cried because I didn’t think anyone would ever love me that way. She watched me cry. She didn’t make me laugh or kiss me or do anything to try and stop it.
I haven’t listened to “Flaws And All” – not once – since the Spring of 2007. A decade and three computers later, it’s still the most played song on my iTunes.
Halo
We broke up after graduation. Can you break up if your girlfriend wasn’t your girlfriend, but a secret that no one knew about? Whatever. We broke up.
I wasn’t good at break ups. I may had been Addison’s secret, but she had been my world. I knew which leg twitch on the 21 bus meant she was nervous, and which one meant that she forgot to eat lunch. Our inside jokes gave birth to their own inside jokes. If it was the crack of dawn and her eyes were crusted and that was last week’s dirty t-shirt that she was wearing to breakfast – to me her skin still shined like gold. I had loved her. I think, for a while at least, she loved me too. We were inseparable after all. I guess I’ll never be completely sure.
Because I wasn’t good at break ups, we broke up a few times. The first real one was two weeks after graduation. She left me a goodbye letter tucked into a pack of Oreo’s. The second break up was over the phone a few weeks later. By the third break up, Beyoncé had already released Sasha Fierce and Barack Obama was about to become our first black President. Everything felt alive with possibility. Except us. We were dead.
I cried every day that fall, even the morning after the election. It felt selfish. I had just moved to New York. Instead of enjoying whatever you’re supposed to enjoy when you’re 22 and living in the one of the greatest cities in the world and your President Is Black – I would pad around alone in my kitchen barefoot. The cold fall air on cracked tile turned the bottoms of my feet numb. That’s how I remember Sasha Fierce, playing it on a loop and with my numb toenails as I cut up vegetables to turn into cheap pasta dinners. The entire time, my mind was somewhere else, thinking about shared Minnesota twin beds and the way Addison never wore a bra on Saturdays.
Grown Woman
I somehow survived 4 without thinking of Addison even once. I played “Party” and “Countdown” and only remembered blurry city nights and makeup staining my pillowcase when I was too tired to clean my face before bed.
Something about the self-titled album was different. Something about “Grown Woman” was different. Maybe it was the Fela Kuti inspired backbeat, which reminded me of her dancing. Maybe it was that Bey shared this song with Kelly. It had been a long time since I had considered myself the “Kelly” in any version of my own story. Maybe it was the song’s playfulness. It begged to be played while running between bedrooms, swapping accessories and hair tips in a dorm suite. Hell, maybe I just wanted her to see me as the supposedly “grown woman” I grew up to be without her.
Five years. This was the song that finally made me want to call her. I itched for it. But, I couldn’t. A younger, more vulnerable (and probably, wiser) me deleted the number.
Sandcastles
When I was 13, Beyoncé was 18 and came equipped a girl gang that pre-teen me envied. When I was 18 and found my first real crew, Bey was 23 and falling in love. When I was almost 23 and nursing the wounds of my first love, she was nearly a mother. Our lives diverged. By the time Lemonade came out, her music, which I’ll always love, somehow stopped feeling personal. I’ve never been on the brink of a divorce. I’m probably never going to be the mother of three. It’s funny that this was the moment Addison reached out to me. I didn’t recognize her phone number; before it was the only one I’d memorized besides the house I grew up in.
“Sandcastles” made her cry, she said. It made her cry in a way that she hadn’t cried since “Flaws And All.” She hadn’t cried from feeling unseen since that night we were pressed together in that too small dorm bedroom with the peeling teal walls. Since the first night I kissed her. Since the night she told me that my first love was always going to be a secret.
Except she didn’t say any of that. She texted, without introducing herself, “Hey! Did you watch Lemonade? Did you see ‘Sandcastles?’ It made me cry.”
Holigay Gift Guide: Support These Indie POC Designers 2k18!
Say what!?!? It’s that time of the year again! You just filled your belly full of your favorite foods, slept it off for 48 hours, and now it’s time to set our sights on one of the biggest beasts of the year: holiday shopping.
I get it! Shopping can be a hassle. But hey, you’re going to have to spend anyway, so might as well spread some of that coin towards communities of color! Independent designers, artists, and makers of color are creating some of the best merchandise out there and I’m excited to highlight even a small sliver of that ingenuity with this Holigay Shopping List! When I started this gift guide last year, I had no idea it would take off so well; we had a great time oohing and ahhhing, but also putting our money where our mouth is. That’s what it’s all about.
So here I am, back again, gathering up even more beautiful items for you to enjoy! To set the mood, here’s 2000s-era Destiny’s Child in claymation, singing an R&B rendition of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” from their Christmas album that only 50 of us even remember happened!
Never forget, black Santa doesn’t mind if you were naughty or nice, just that you did your part to help dismantle systemic racism this year ?
An * before an item or shop name indicates the the shop is queer-owned, in addition to being POC-owned
These Bags are Cute, All Your Stuff is Going to Look Cute in Them
1 / *Nina Simone “Strange Fruit” Ankara Backpack ($55)
2 / Crown Clutch ($45)
3 / Feminist Authors Tote Bag ($20)
4 / Blue Tote Bag ($24)
I’m particularly excited about this year’s roundup of bags and totes and (gasp!) a backpack made of West African Ankara print and NINA SIMONE’S FACE!! I want that bag so badly that I went to bed the night I picked it out for this gift and quite literally dreamed of it! Someone out there is going to rock the hell out of that Crown Clutch, I just know it. And what about this tote bag filled to the brim with black and and Latina feminist authors? Don’t you just want to stuff it full of books and take it with you on Saturday errands? I bet you do.
Sabrina Khadija, the designer of the Blue Tote Bag, has an entire store dedicated to graphic art featuring black women on bags, tapestries, cell phone covers and tech accessories, you name it – everything is so beautiful and honestly I’d buy it all if I could.
T-Shirts and Sweatshirts That Lead with Their Message First!
1 / *Radical Indigenous Queer Feminist T-Shirt ($30)
2 / *Fem Boi Crop Top ($30)
3 / Black Girls Are The Purest Form Of Art ($25)
4 / Bruja Sweatshirt ($21.25)
A t-shirt reppin’ Radical Indigenous Queer Feminists? F*CK YES. How about one celebrating the beauty of black girls as the “purest form of art”? Or a sweatshirt holding it down for all the brujas in your life? I bet you know at least one babe who’s going to look hot in a FemBoi crop top. Just saying.
I didn’t get to fit it into the collage, but I bought one of Be Studio’s “I Am My Ancestors Wildest Dreams” shirts this year and I love it to pieces (it’s also a favorite of director Ava DuVernay and comes in yellow, if you’re interested). I’ve never worn it without getting tons of compliments. In last year’s gift guide, I featured this sweatshirt from Philadelphia Printworks that has all the drag houses from the iconic documentary Paris is Burning emblazoned across the front, but in the year that Pose made it to our television screens, it’s definitely worth re-upping again.
Makeup That’s Bold and Skincare That’s Bright
1 / Thickums Nail Polish ($12)
2 / *Dianthus Lipstick ($27)
3 / Overkill Lip Gloss ($16)
4 / UNICONCHA Body Butter ($24)
Did I pick out the Thickums nail polish because its name made me laugh? Probably. But listen, I am a thickum and I’m proud of it! I deserve to have that pride down to the very tips of my fingers if I want to! (Also that pastel orange shade is such a hard color to find for nails! Selenia Beauty really knows what they’re doing! Want to see more of their gorgeous offerings? Check here.) I always want to be brave enough to wear a brilliant, dark purple like Melt Cosmetics’ Overkill lip gloss, but I can never work up the gumption. Still, you probably know someone in your life who’s never afraid to go there and if so, that gloss is perfect for them! It’s so rich and deep and gorgeous.
Equally rich, and more within my makeup range, is the Dianthus lipstick from Hi Wildflower! Tanaïs, the owner of the shop, is self-described as a “queer, femme, Muslim, Hindu, Bengali, American diasporic being.” In addition to creating makeup, they also design candle scents and is a kickass writer. There’s so much to love going on here. Also here to love? Loquita Bath’s Uniconcha body butter which smells like a unicorn went into a panadería and that’s literally all I ever want to smell like! Their line of body care items are mostly organic and all cruelty free. They also come in a variety of gender-neutral scents (like cafecito! YUM!).
Jewelry & Accessories Ready to Shine With All Their Might
1 / Single Baby Skull Earring in Gold Plate ($19.20)
2 / Ankara Earrings ($25.60)
3 / Power Fist Enamel Pin ($10)
4 / *Decolonize Earrings ($16.50)
Michelle Chang has been making a real name for herself with her emphasis on small, impactful jewelry. This miniature skull earring (sold one at a time) is no different, and I can imagine a butch cutie looking positively dapper with one of Chang’s designs in their ears. If you couldn’t tell from my mouth watering over that Nina Simone backpack earlier in the gift guide, I have a real thing for Ankara fabric this year. Those double drop earrings would look gorgeous dressed up or dressed down, and they want to come home with me.
I featured the Filipina owned Native Sol last year, and this year the shop had so much beautiful jewelry that I couldn’t decide! Check it out for some major gift inspiration. By the way, wouldn’t your lapel or backpack look great with Grl Trbl’s triple power fist enamel pin? I think so. In addition to their Etsy store, you can find their full website here. Want a piece of jewelry that’s going to keep it real? I say go with the Decolonize earrings, and let everyone know where you stand.
And Don’t Forget to Set Up The House!
1 / Brown Sugar Mug ($15)
2 / *La Bandera Lotería-style Poster ($60)
3 / Freedom Throw Pillow ($30)
4 / What Would Beyoncé Do? Magnet ($12)
I don’t know what exactly it is about the Brown Sugar mug that I find so charming. Maybe it’s the font? Maybe it’s the delicate detail work of the twists and turns and flowers forming a circle around the central graphic? I can’t put my finger on it, but my eyes keep coming back for more. If someone you know grew up playing lotería as a kid, then trust me they are going to love this poster! It reimagines the classic “bingo” style game from a queer point of view. I didn’t grow up playing the iconic game, and I still want one for my bedroom wall! There is nothing more true than “Nobody’s Free Until Everybody’s Free” – it’s a phrase I repeat to myself often. Let’s get it etched on a pillow, so that we can always remember!
Speaking of little reminders that will never go out of style, I present you with: “What Would Beyoncé Do?” Because really, using Bey as a guiding light has yet to steer me wrong.
“Widows” Review: Viola Davis Kicks Ass, Takes Back What the Patriarchy Stole
It was never about the heist.
That might surprise you about Widows, which from every trailer sets itself up to be a classic robbery film. Veronica Rawlins (Academy Award Winner and Autostraddle favorite Viola Davis) has been living the high life in wealthy Chicago, full of meticulously selected art on her apartment walls and the cutest white fluff ball of a dog as her companion. This life isn’t all it first appears, but it’s been paid for by her husband, Harry (Liam Neeson), who doubles as a criminal mastermind. When a major robbery goes awry, Harry loses his life along with the rest of his crew. The problem? They owe a debt to the man that they robbed. With her life on the line, Veronica teams up with the other widowed women of the crew to pull off one last robbery job and finish what their husbands failed to complete.
The movie’s directed by Steve McQueen, whom you may remember helmed 12 Years a Slave, the first motion picture by a black director to ever win a Best Picture Oscar. The screenplay is co-written by Gillian Flynn, whom you may remember from Gone Girl. The movie’s adapted from the 1983 British television series of the same name. That’s all well and good and important, but look, all of these incredibly impressive bonafides aside – my favorite genre of popcorn films are “kickass, smart-ass women with guns.” My favorite ’00s action hero is Angelina Jolie by a significant mile. I was always going to be an easy sell. They told me Viola Davis and Michelle Rodriguez were going to shoot up some shit, steal some shit, and I was there.
Usually, these kind of team ups involve a lot of men. The tech or gun specialist? A man. The safecracker? A man. The driver? Definitely a man. The brains of the operation? Do you even have to ask? Even on a surface reading, it’s not hard to figure out what sets Widows apart.
Still, I didn’t quite get the movie I was expecting. Widows is as much a brooding meditation on gender as it is a heart-thumping, tension ridden action-suspense thriller. While there are certainly moments purposefully designed to elicit gasps and applause from the audience, I’d hardly call it a mindless romp. If glamorous gal pals whom you can enjoy without much thought is what your looking for, I suggest you fire up Ocean’s 8 again (No shade! I’ve seen it three times already. Cate Blanchett on a bike forever and ever Amen.) The widows have real shit to deal with.
This isn’t a film where the diversity on screen is just for self-congratulatory pats on the back. Every woman on the team is dealing with her own race and class intersections that impact her life, and the movie doesn’t shy away from them. These women check in with each other about childcare before their planning meetings; they are forced to live with the consequences of terrifying run-ins with police; they light candles when they pray; they are survivors and sex workers. In some instances, they have to train twice, if not three times, as hard as their husbands once did. Even when not the central focus, Widows quietly and elegantly weaves all of these elements into the their narrative.
Widows leaves room for fun, but never loses track of the fact that this is not a game for these women. They aren’t in it for the diamonds or a girl power sing-a-long; they are trying to survive. They’re trying to make it another day, to protect their kids, to stretch their means for a little while longer. Each woman’s life was harmed by their partners, whose actions continue to haunt even after their deaths. The stakes of their heist are clear: to take back what they lost and finally put their fate in their own hands.
One of the oldest truths of patriarchy that when a husband makes a mess, his wife is expected to clean it up. Widows takes that unjust expectation and unravels it to its most heightened conclusion.
I must include every photo of Viola Davis looking badass in a suit. I don’t make the rules. (Just kidding, yes I do!)
It’s knotty and tense to watch as all the pieces fall into place, but nonetheless electrifying. Cynthia Erivo steals the screen as Belle, the single mom balancing multiple jobs who gets recruited as the team’s driver. Wait until you watch her run! I bet you’ll never forget it. If you enjoy playing the time-honored game of “which of these characters could be gay?”, she’s absolutely my pick (my second choice would be Michelle Rodriguez – she’s always a wee bit gay even when she’s not). Elizabeth Debicki finds an unexpected soulfulness in Alice, who starts the movie perhaps in the greatest peril, only to triumphantly find her strength. Finally there is Viola Davis, whose talent at this point exhausts any compliment I could give her. What is there left to say? She’s absolutely superb in this, as in all things.
I suppose Widows is about the heist after all. There are elaborate plans to puzzle together, menacing and sadistic villains to conquer (Get Out’s Daniel Kaluuya and Atlanta’s Brian Tyree Henry are absolute STAND OUTS in this regard), and mountains of money to collect. But, the women aren’t ultimately just stealing the money. They’re stealing back the ability to control their own lives. To get in at least one solid kick against the rancid, putrid system that forced their backs against the wall in the first place.
A few things specific things that I think Autostraddle readers are going to want to know and straight media won’t tell you! First up, there’s a very brief and not bloody few minutes of dog distress roughly a third of the way into the film. Second, when I got out of the movie on Saturday the first thing our very serious Senior Editor Heather Hogan wanted to know was if Viola Davis’ perfect biceps got to shine. My dear reader, they have an entire scene to themselves! Look for them in the film’s final act, and you can thank me later.
Your Girlfriend’s Family Is Racist and You Should Probably Get the Hell Out of There
Welcome to You Need Help! Where you’ve got a problem and yo, we solve it. Or we at least try.
Q:
How much do I need to engage with my serious girlfriend’s racist immediate family members? She is close with them, and I’ve spent time with them in the past (big holidays, etc.) since my own parents are lowkey, but put simply I no longer have the energy or inclination to do so, even though I love my gf. I chose her, not them. I have no love for them! She knows how I feel about this but it seems to weigh much more heavily on me than her. I’m also a queer POC whereas she & her whole family are very white.
A:
Friend, I am going to say something to you that is hard, but I’m going to say it with love. And I don’t mean love in an artificial way, I mean love like bell hooks defines in Teaching Community: “as a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust.” So I want you to read what I say knowing that even though I don’t know you, I care about you, I am committed to your well being, and to you knowing yourself and your worth. I feel responsible for you because as queer people of color, one of us is not free until we all are free. I respect you. And I trust you to do what you need to do with this advice. Maybe it will be helpful, maybe you will toss it out and ignore it. Both are totally fine actions, I just want you to know that it’s coming from love and not meant to hurt you.
You have to break up with her. Shorty, you’ve got to break up with her! You write, “She knows how I feel about this but it seems to weigh much more heavily on me than her.” If you’ve told her that her family’s racism bothers you so much that you “no longer have the energy or inclination” to spend time with them, and it’s still not a big deal to her, that should be a red flag. It’s not like this is her racist grandma who she only writes birthday cards to, this is her immediate family, and clearly they matter to her more than you. Get her out of your life NOW!
This is hard to take in! This is so so so so so hard to take in. Because she has pretty hair, or she smells good, or she’s got great goals and aspirations, or the sex is good, but she’s got to fucking go. You chose her, but in some very important ways, she did not choose you. I’m not going to say that a person who has close relationships with racists is a racist, but I will say that her family’s racist ideology played a formative role in her life. In some way, she is okay with that, if she doesn’t think it’s worth it to confront their racism. She is choosing them, and when things get hard, can you trust that the racism she grew up around won’t enter into your relationship? Even if she says she’ll never use [insert racial slur here], are you always going to be anxious when you get into disagreements that she might? What does that do to a relationship? Is that honestly a relationship you want to be in?
Listen pal, you and I know both know that a large part of what makes whiteness so insidious is that white people don’t see whiteness. When people of color call out racial oppression, we’re making a big deal out of nothing because whiteness isn’t seen as something used oppressively, it’s just seen as normal, no big deal. And because we live in a society where whiteness is the norm, sometimes, if we’re not being mindful, we can forget that whiteness is there. Like, of course, you’re not always going to think about how whiteness makes your girlfriend access wider privileges than you all the time, you’re in love! You shouldn’t have to think about it all the time.
But whiteness becomes glaringly visible when it’s used against you, and I don’t want that to happen to you. You don’t deserve to be partly loved by someone who thinks its okay to be in community with racists. You deserve to be wholly loved by a girl who loves you and your brownness and your badass hair and all the other great things about you. I believe you will find that girl or non-binary babe or whoever you want it to be, but my good, good, friend, this girl is not her. You need to break up with her. She’s gotta go. You’re worth 100 of her. Take that knowledge, and make this brave step for yourself. You deserve it.
Tanya Saracho Made “Vida” With, For and About Latinxs — And She’s Not Apologizing
Your new favorite TV show, Vida, premieres this Sunday, May 6th, wherever you have Starz!
We’ve done this dance a few times now, so you may already know the backstory of Vida. You may remember that the half hour drama is about two Chicana sisters, one of whom is queer, grappling with her mother’s death and the knowledge she was secretly married to a woman. You maybe already heard that the show boasts an all-Latinx, mostly queer, writers room. That it was directed entirely by people of color. That it stars out non-binary actor Ser Anzoategui as the sensitive brown butch heartthrob your late spring is severely lacking.
Today I want to focus our attention on the badass Latina who has made all of that happen: Tanya Saracho.
Tanya Saracho with the cast of “Vida”, via the show’s official instagram account.
The out queer writer/producer/showrunner, to paraphrase her own Twitter bio, was born in Sinaloa, México, raised on the border, and nurtured in the Chicago theatre scene before moving to Los Angeles and conquering television. As a playwright, Saracho’s won numerous awards — including being named “Best New Playwright” by Chicago Magazine in 2010, one of nine national Latino “Luminarios” by Café Magazine, and receiving the first “Revolucionario” Award in Theater by the National Museum of Mexican Art. While in Chicago, she also co-founded Teatro Luna, an all Latina theatre group. In TV, she’s an alum of the writers rooms for HBO’s Looking and ABC’s How To Get Away with Murder. With Vida, Saracho becomes one of only two Latinas to currently run a half hour television show in the United States, the other being Gloria Calderón Kellet from Autostraddle fan favorite One Day at a Time.
To put it plainly, Tanya Saracho is a boss. She’s brazenly changing the landscape of television for queer women and for Latinx folks. She’s finding new, inventive ways for us to see ourselves and succeed.
Tanya talked with me one on one about being a Latina showrunner in Hollywood, the nitty gritty of how the television sausage gets made, and the ways that having an all-Latinx writers room molded Vida into the best show it could be.
Carmen: Autostraddle’s been trying to help build buzz around Vida —
Tanya: I know! I’ve been following it and forwarding it and reposting it.
Carmen: — Hahaha, yeah, we’re really excited. Now that we are so close to the show’s premiere, what would you like our audience of queer feminists and non-binary folks to know about their next new obsession, Vida?
Tanya: That it’s HERE! And that we exist. And that we’re portraying it the way we are. That’s really important to me. That it’s — I hate the word authentic, because it’s like “authentic Mexican food” or whatever — but it’s as close to true life as you can get on TV. You know?
And you guys get to take in the big tapestry, but we cared about even the littlest threads. You know, like the way the altar was set. I literally dressed that altar myself. Or, what they wear. Or, the way that the house is decorated — the fact that you have to have a Last Supper clock on the wall. Because, you just do! And I don’t even think you get to see it (from the audience), but, it was important that it was there! It’s important that there were doilies and lace curtains, all the small things that make up of our world. I tried to do it right.
I also think that the pedigree of it is right, too. By that I mean, the way that it was built. We have an all-Latinx writers room, most of it queer women. A Latina was the casting director; a Latina was the cinematographer; a Latina was the composer; a Latina was the editor. And that matters. I mean — we really tried to make it right.
Carmen: As a Latina who keeps an altar in my house — I have kept one by my bed since I was 16 — I want to thank you for those details.
Tanya: ¡Claro!
Carmen: When you say that you dressed the altar yourself, I understand completely. I tried to catch as many of those small details as I could, and I think that they make a difference. That leads to my next question. One of the things that’s really excited us about Vida is the production team behind it. Could you describe the process of assembling your team? Did you have specific ways of looking for such dynamic writers and directors?
As you mentioned earlier, it’s a Latinx writers room that’s mostly queer women. You also had all people of color directors. There’s a common adage of, “oh that can’t be done.” And yet, I see women out there making it happen. I see you out there doing it.
Tanya: Yes! And that is some bullshit. [Chuckles] I’m sorry for the language, but that is just some bullshit. Because I did it! And we did it so fast. We had two weeks to find writers, and that included closing their deals. So essentially, we had one week.
Now, I started reading people ahead of time. I read 152 people. But, in earnest we roughly had only a week. I reached out. I was keeping my eye out. I got in contact with a Latina TV writers’ group. I read all of them.
Also? I have some friends that are Latina TV writers, and they are brilliant.
I told them, “Let me consider your stuff.” At first they were like, “Oh no! You don’t have to hire me!” But, why not? I come from a theatre background, and in theatre we always work with our friends. Not out of nepotism or anything, but because they’re good. And anyway, Hollywood is built on networks and “who you know.” We don’t have that. We don’t have those structures.
Starz still had to approve anyone I hire. I couldn’t just say “oh this is my dear friend.” [The network] not only had to react well to the reading material, but also to the in-person meeting. All of the people we hired for the first season were the right people for that season. I could have picked a ton more! I only had a limited number of spots. So, when people say that “they can’t find anyone” — I don’t know what they are talking about.
I will say — the pool is wide, not deep. And that is systemic, right? Because we haven’t had access and opportunity in this industry. But, we’re here.
Carmen: We’re on the phone — so you can’t see me right now — but I am nodding so hard, I think my head is going to fall off. I agree one thousand percent! There was this tweet that went viral after Beyoncé’s Coachella concert. I’m paraphrasing, but it basically said, “Whenever somebody tells you that they can’t find people of color to do jobs, remember that Beyoncé found —
Both finish in unison: —10 black women violinists!”
Carmen: You’ve spoken briefly about your time in the theatre world, and I wanted to talk you about your writing. In doing research for this interview, I came across a quote of yours that I absolutely love! You once said, “We need to keep writing because our stories are worth it.” I put it on a post-it next to my computer. Thank you.
In addition to your award winning work as a playwright, you have been in a few writers rooms that our readers will immediately recognize — including Looking and How To Get Away With Murder. Did having a queer and Latinx writing room for Vida make the difference you hoped for in crafting the scripts?
Tanya: Yes! No other writers room could have written as intimate a season as we did. I just don’t buy it. Early on, a couple of people from the “dominant culture” who work in the industry — you know, who I’m talking about, white people — they said, “Oh, don’t do that. Don’t limit yourself. Get the best writers.”
And I was like, “Wait no — motherfucker, why can’t the best writers also happen to be Latinx!”
That said, Starz never wavered in their support. When we all came together, we were the right group. You know? Some people had some core damage with their parents; some people had step parents; for some people, when they came out — their parents had sworn them off. And all of that works together to create the season.
Carmen: Before we wrap up the interview, let’s talk more about the central, delicate relationship of Vida’s two queer protagonists.
During Vida’s South by Southwest panel, you rhetorically asked “Where are the brown butches?” I love that you answered it by writing a brown butch into your show. I wondered if you could talk with me about Eddy, who I know our readers are going to fall in love with. And also Emma! She’s also going to capture interests and hearts. She starts off icy, but over the course of season one we get to pull back her layers.
Tanya: Absolutely! To start — we are only getting to know them over 12 days. The first season is just 12 days in timeline.
At first you see an Emma who’s completely resistant to the wife of her mother. It’s not about homophobia — because, you know, Emma’s queer herself. It’s not that. It’s about the fact that her mother left her out of another big part of her life. So, by proxy Eddy sort of becomes Vidalia, the mother, for Emma.
Over the course of the season, Emma has a few revelations. She realizes that, “Hold on. It was so brave of my mother to walk hand-in-hand with her wife.” She’s still mad at her mom, but she comes to see Eddy in a different light. Everything she had against her mother, she laid on Eddy. Eventually, that falls away.
It’s about Emma not having her mother. And needing to — what’s the phrase in English for reclamar? She needs to ask Vidalia, “Why? Why did you do these things?” She needs to rail at her. But her mom’s not there. She only has Eddy — who is such a sweetheart.
Eddy… she’s the heart of the show.
And, you know what? We’re just getting started! 12 days is nothing.
Vida premieres this Sunday, May 6th, on Starz. We also ran an interview with Ser Anzoategui (Eddy) earlier this week. Check out the trailer for Vida below, and follow Tanya Saracho on Twitter and Instagram to keep up with her throughout season one!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0ttPSaqhF0
Vida’s Non-Binary Latinx Actor Ser Anzoategui Already Knows Their Show Will Be Your New Favorite
Starz’s new half hour drama Vida premieres this Sunday, May 6th. If you haven’t caught up with buzz yet, now is the time! We feel pretty confident that you’re going to love it.
Writer/Producer Tanya Saracho (Looking, How To Get Away with Murder) has crafted the kind of show that I’ve been waiting for years to come to us. She wanted an all-Latinx writers room — so, she made it happen. She wanted the writers to be heavily queer — so, she made it happen (50% of the writers identify as LGBTQ+). She wanted every director on the show to be either a woman of color or Latinx — so, she made it happen. From the bottom up, in every nook and cranny, this show was built with queer folks, Latinxs, and people of color in mind.
Eddy played by Ser Anzoategui. Photo courtesy of Starz.
On top of all of that already amazing production news, Vida is just some really great television! It is moody, sultry, thoughtful, political, funny as hell, and addictive in all the best ways. It’s the exact kind of show you want going into your summer.
Vida explores the journey of two estranged Chicana sisters, Lyn and Emma, as they return home to their old neighborhood in East LA following their mother’s death. One of the sisters, Emma, is queer, but has a complicated relationship to her sexuality. Both sisters get a major surprise when they find out that for the last years of her life, their mother was married to a woman. Her widow is Eddy, the sensitive butch bar owner, a handyman stud with soft eyes and a big heart who is going to wrap you all around her pinkie finger.
Eddy’s portrayed by out non-binary actor Ser Anzoategui. They’re a theatre and screen actor with over a decade in the business, and an activist invested in Latinx and Chicanx communities, trans and queer folks, and fighting against the gentrification of East LA.
Emma and Eddy. Photo courtesy of Starz.
Starz is very invested in Autostraddle’s community finding this show, so they’ve given our team a lot of access to Vida ahead of its premiere. We’ll have an interview with Tanya Saracho later this week and a full review of Vida, but let’s get started with an awesome one-on-one interview with Ser!
Carmen Phillips: Let’s get to it!
Autostraddle’s readers are primarily feminist, queer women and non-binary folks. As a writing staff, we’ve been hyping up Vida for months! Now that we are so close to the show’s premiere: If you had a magic microphone that could reach out to all the queer people in the land, what would you want them to know about their new favorite TV show Vida?
Ser Anzoategui: It’s everything they ever wanted, plus new fantasies! It’s amazing, and addictive. You’re going to want more and more. It’s something that finally feels real.
It’s unapologetic in the way that it’s told. It’s told through a femme — I prefer femme to female — gaze. It’s also very queer-centric. You see them hanging out with friends and they’re all of different identities. And they talk like my real life friends. More than once I got lost in the background conversation, and found myself answering back. I would just go there for a second.
Also, the way it’s shot is so exciting! It’s great to see someone like Rose Troche (a lesbian Puerto Rican filmmaker) direct episodes four and six, and make such great creative choices on how to best tell a queer story.
And THE SEX! The way that they shot the sex! It’s very queer.
Carmen: YES! And I have to say, the sex in Vida is unlike anything that I’ve ever seen. I had the opportunity to watch the screeners and I was just… mind blown might be an understatement.
Ser: Hearing that coming from you means a lot. You know, we have different stories than The L Word. When you see those shows, you don’t see Latinas. I mean there’s Carmen —
Carmen: Yeah, there’s Carmen. And there’s Papi. And honestly, neither of them were even played by Latinas.
Ser: Oh, woooooow. They’re not… wow… I hadn’t even thought about that.
Carmen: That’s a whole other conversation. I’m so sorry to drop that on you —
Ser: Well, you know what? Now I’ll say it. They were both non-Latinas playing Latinas. And I love Janina Gavankar. I love her. Back then I was all like, “Whew! Papi!”
So back to Vida. It’s real, and raw. It’s sexy. It lets you behind the velvet rope in the room. It’s multilayered, especially if you watch it more than once. When you watch the series, you’re going to want to watch it again.
Carmen: Your depiction of Eddy stood out for me right away. It’s going to be one of the most memorable performances of the year. What was the process of crafting her character like for you?
Ser: Thank you for that. Tanya Saracho is also an actress, so she just laid Eddy all out for me.
When I was on set, I got a taste of what it would mean to sustain that level of performance for twelve hours at a time. I had to continue to be in the world of grief and love — at the drop of the dime, I had to be able to cry my eyes out. So, I needed to keep focus. I did that by using a lot of background improv.
For one scene, I asked Adelina Anthony, who’s also a wonderful Latinx, queer, two-spirit playwright and performer, “Yo, please! Help me out!” and together we just started improving around set — with the bartender, the extras. We just kept connecting for hours! After a while, you start to let go! You just start to transcend into your character. I didn’t even know we were filming at some points. I was in the zone. I was allowed to just go places. I was told, “Just keep going! Just be.”
I feel like I can take on anything, after doing Vida.
Carmen: I love that Eddy is really rooted in her neighborhood. Often when we’re told stories about queer Latinidad, it’s about of strife and isolation. Vida gets into those themes, but Eddy’s clearly at home in her building — and with her gente. She has a great relationship con las doñas (a Spanish term of respect for older Latina women). That’s so real to the Latinx community that I know and love.
You don’t often see a younger queer character embraced by community elders on screen. How was it for you to play out those relationship dynamics?
Ser: In my own life, I have so many relationships with older people. We just find an instant love with each other — we find a tender, loving relationship. It’s not something that gets clouded or judged or torn apart by gender identity.
It’s a beautiful thing to bring to life on screen! A character who has these relationships. Eddy brings people together. She’s trusted by people you wouldn’t think would trust her, you know? Like Doña Tita (a character on the show).
Doña Tita is the best! And did you know that Renee Victor also voiced the grandmother in Coco? I loved acting with her. She has such experience. I’ve known her work, and to actually get to do scenes with her? It was really huge. She kept cracking me up! Eddy needs Doña Tita. The doñas — they’re there to help, to heal you, to cook food.
Carmen: You’ve talked a bit about your relationship with others in the cast. Something that’s really excited us about Vida is that the production team behind it — the directors, producers, writers — were purposefully designed with queer Latinxs in mind. I wondered if, as an actor, that atmosphere made a difference for you?
Ser: You can feel it. When you walk on set you can feel the warmth, the electricity, the vibe. It’s almost in the air! I think when you get the freedom of, “Yeah you can do it! You can go for it!” — now you can see the possibilities. We don’t know the possibilities until they happen.
The space that Vida is cultivating allows for more understanding and conversations than you otherwise would have with producers. After years and years of Hollywood being run a certain way, now we are seeing things being made the way they should be. The network is saying, “Let’s trust our showrunner. Let’s trust the people who know our audience best.”
And [Tanya Saracho] is very detailed. She’s very particular. But, she’s also very loving as she decides, “Okay — who is going to be on our team? What is the right energy?”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BgKSVCLDZw8/?taken-by=ser_anzoategui
Carmen: That leads into my next question! A lot of our readers are going to remember you as the gender non-confirming, queer character Daysi Cantu from East Los High. It’s been riveting to watch your growth as an actor. I feel like queer Latinx representation in Hollywood is still not seen or heard enough. As a television critic, I’m hopeful this is changing. I wondered how your experience in Hollywood has been in these last few years as an out, non binary, Latinx actor?
Ser: Well, I feel like it’s a progression. It’s working on many levels — on producing, on storytelling, the arts of cinema and camera work, the writing, the casting. [As it relates to Vida], Tanya is spearheading a lot.
That leadership made a difference when filming on location. And it’s something that we talked about! Because I know my community in Los Angeles. I wondered, how are we going to film this? But [Tanya] was open. She wanted to embrace community building; listening and tuning in without becoming invasive or intrusive to the neighborhood.
We listened to the activists. We avoided shooting on the Eastside whenever possible. We shot on set. It’s not only about the story. It’s about the respect of how you tell the story. It’s how you treat your neighbors. It’s understanding that if the activists or the community are saying, “we don’t want you there” — then you don’t go there.
I also think it’s important to show that queer and trans folks are the heads of these movements!
I think it’s really important that we’re brown, and that we’re different identities, multiple identities. It’s important to show that there’s undocuqueers, that there’s fat positivity, there’s Chingona Power. That we’re reclaiming Chingona back from being a being a bad word. It’s a powerful word. And we’re going to own it.
Carmen: Absolutely! Yaaaas! Absolutely. I love it. You’re giving me real strong Sandra Cisneros vibes.
Ser: Right!?!?
Carmen: Ok, so I know our time is limited. I’m going to end with something fun. When doing research for this interview, I came across a recent Instagram post you made honoring the anniversary of the Selena’s passing (the Tejana Latinx icon passed away on March 31st, 1995 — a date often honored by her fans online).
Ser: Oooh! She’s in it, too! She’s in Vida.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BhAnbbyjVyZ/?taken-by=ser_anzoategui
Carmen: Yes! Selena’s in Vida. I was thinking about how it’s crazy we lost her so long ago. In your post, the way you described connecting to Selena as a young person really caught my attention. When I was a kid, I would play Selena’s “Dreaming of You” in my room for hours. And I definitely felt her spirit in the room with me.
I was curious, what is your favorite Selena song? And why?
Ser: [A thoughtful breath before breaking out in impromptu song] — ?? “Si una vez dije que te amaba, hoy me arrepiento/ Si una vez dije que te amaba/ No sé lo que pensé, estaba loca…”? ?
Carmen: Oh my god! Okay… Wow. That was PERFECT!! I only wish I could include the live recording of you singing for our readers.
Thank you so much for taking this space with us. We really appreciate it. I cannot tell you how excited I am to keep banging the drums about Vida. You guys are doing great!
Ser: Yes! Let’s keep it going! I’m excited that you’re excited. Thank you to Autostraddle. I really appreciate all the support, and the love. I’ll never forget it!
Vida debuts this Sunday, May 6th, on Starz. We also spoke with its queer showrunner Tanya Saracho ahead of the show’s premiere. Check out the trailer below for Vida and follow Ser on Twitter and Instagram to keep up with them through season one.
https://youtu.be/c0ttPSaqhF0
Lena Waithe’s “Vanity Fair” Cover Is a Watershed Moment for Black Lesbian Visibility
Feature image and images throughout article via Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair
Do you ever have one of those moments where your world suddenly spins sideways? That’s what happened to me this morning when I saw Lena Waithe’s cover on the new edition of Vanity Fair.
There’s a lot happening. It’s still incredibly rare to see a lesbian, bisexual, or queer woman on the cover of a major media publication. It’s bordering on unheard of for the cover subject to be a queer woman of color. More than anything, what took my breath away was seeing a butch heartthrob like Lena Waithe get to be fully herself — bare faced, locks hanging, fresh side cut, and in a white tee. With the faintest gold chain around her neck.
Here she is. She looks like the women I’ve loved, women who I’ve shared a morning coffee with over scratchy voices and bare legs, women I’ve kissed under streetlights. For just that moment, looking at this cover, it felt like the rest of the world gets to see our beauty in all of its black, queer glory.
The joy of this Vanity Fair piece continues. Lena is not only the featured model, photographed by the iconic lesbian photographer Annie Leibovitz, who did the Kate McKinnon Vanity Fair photos last fall that made us collectively swoon — but also the article and interview with Lena was completed by Jacqueline Woodson. Woodson, an award winning black lesbian writer perhaps best known for her works Brown Girl Dreaming and Another Brooklyn, described Lena’s current rise succinctly, “For so many of us who have not seen an out Black lesbian front and center this way, her arrival is a small, long-awaited revelation. Her arrival is our arrival.”
That feeling — “our arrival” — perfectly describes this interview as a whole. A black lesbian media star, being interviewed by a black lesbian writer, in one of the world’s most famous and lauded publications. It’s a watershed moment. Black queer women being given open space to be warm, and smart, and loving with each other — that’s the world we should all get to live in.
In the interview, Lena Waithe talks about her influences ranging from black sitcom classic A Different World to literary great James Baldwin; the love she has for her fiancée, producer Alana Mayo; and the love she has for black women like her mother and grandmother, who raised her; the community of black women mentors and peers she’s building in Hollywood. She never says the word “feminist,” but that revolutionary kind of love bleeds through every word. She’s bringing all of herself to the table, just as she has every step of the way thus far. Watching her shine feels like cheering for a member of the greatest home team — because it is. In her editor’s letter, Vanity Fair Editor-in-Chief Radhika Jones correctly names 2018 as Lena’s year. Given the way she loves on us, I’m ready for it to be Lena Waithe’s decade.
I could talk about Lena Waithe forever. Instead, I leave you with this quote from the interview, which comes directly from Waithe herself, “We gotta tell our shit. Can’t no one tell a black story, particularly a queer story, the way I can, because I see the God in us.”
Go out there and make some magic today.
Black History Month Roundtable: Imagining Our Bright, Bold Black Queer Futures
This is the second and final installment of Autostraddle’s Black History Month Roundtable series, where some of black writers on staff have gotten together to explore what this month means to us as queer and trans black people.
In part one of the series, we discussed how we were taught black history as children, along with brainstorming new ways that approaches to the study of black history and the celebration of Black History Month could be more inclusive of QTPOC black people.
Now we are ready to look forward. We’re asking ourselves, what are our hopes for black queer futures? What steps can we and our allies take in helping those hopes and dreams become reality?
Neesha, Staff Writer
I want Black trans, non-binary, and queer folks to have the freedom and resources to do what the hell we want with our futures. My ancestors labored for white people in this country for free. My wife’s ancestors’ land in Rwanda was colonized by both Belgium and Germany. Our ancestors have already paid our debts with their blood, sweat, and tears—we shouldn’t have to work as hard as we do just to survive. Both of us have struggled for jobs and housing because we live in a white supremacist heteropatriarchal society. Both of us have been unjustly impacted by the Prison Industrial Complex, and our communities are facing unprecedented violence. Instead of these circumstances, we deserve futures that include reparations and abundance. This is the vision I’m constantly working towards in both my community organizing and my writing.
For Black trans, non-binary, and queer futures to be bright, we need our cisgender and heterosexual Black peers to treat us more humanely. No more making us the butt of your jokes. We need them to know that being trans and/or queer has never been just “a white thing.” Furthermore, the lives of Marsha, Audre, and Bayard prove that we’ve been leading Black liberation movements in the United States for at least a century. I want my people to recognize that ALL Black lives matter, not just cishet ones.
We need non-Black people of color to actively challenge anti-Blackness within their communities and to refrain from co-opting our struggles. The same goes for white people, but in addition, we also need them to redistribute their unearned positions and resources. Black trans and queer futures depend on white people recognizing that white privilege is real and then actually doing something about it.
Alexis, Staff Writer
At some point, as a community, we will look at each other and say, “We are enough.”
We will be invited to the white tables and we won’t settle for them. We won’t rejoice with a “Finally!” that we never needed. We will let the invitation get lost in the mail because we have moved beyond whatever scraps they tell us is a banquet. There will still be a hatred towards us, of course, if they don’t do the work to unlearn it, but we won’t have to worry or crumble under the weight of their ignorance.
We will defend one another and keep each other safe and if this world refuses to rise to the occasion, we will build a new one and rise to the occasion ourselves. We will be able to tell our children the stories of how we were stolen, on the receiving end of the worst of human cruelty. Then our children will look at their present — with the safety and knowledge that they are worthy, that we have always been worthy of good things, and they will be able to tell themselves the story of our people, of how we survived and made ourselves stronger, even when so many were against us living as ourselves, when so many were against us even making it this far.
They’ll hear of the days we were terrified to leave our houses, but we did it anyway. Not every day, but enough to make sure we did not turn ourselves ghost, turn ourselves invisible, turn ourselves into fear walking. They will know that we fought and that it was not always enough. They will hear how the only thing that sustained us was that which was in us all along, that the only way we were able to move forward was together, to make sure no one was left behind.
The problem with small steps is that sometimes I just want to already be at the destination. I want to already be at the place where we don’t fear for our lives and we’re able to live and that be enough. But, I know that just saying that it out loud doesn’t move us any closer towards our freedom. So. This is for white people: Listen. Learn to be a guest. Instead of forcing yourselves into our community, wait for an invitation. If no invitation comes, accept that gracefully, and live your own life in a way that doesn’t harm others, that doesn’t harm us, and isn’t solely focused on revenge. Listen. Listen. Listen. If we don’t ask for your opinion, do not offer it up. Learn that the world is big enough for all of us and that you do not need to be the center of ours just for us to see you. Don’t just speak about it, be about it. Do the work.
For non-black people of color, stop kicking us down to put yourselves ahead. Remember that we are not each other’s enemy. That fighting for ourselves absolutely doesn’t mean we’re fighting against you. That we all have things we need to learn and unlearn. We cannot hate each other for that.
For black (cis/ straight) people, stop trying to make us “black enough”. Queer black people are black enough even if we exist in a way you refuse to understand. Learn that we are fully cognizant of what it means to be black and queer, we don’t need your lessons in how to make ourselves smaller to survive. We’ve lived that life long enough and don’t need the people who are supposed to love us, hurting us instead. If you cannot love us, do not pretend that you can “someday”. To quote Toni Morrison, “Love is or isn’t. Thin love ain’t love at all”. If you cannot love us, do some work and figure out why and fix it. We all have work to do, and black queer people are doing our part, don’t leave us to suffer because you refuse to do your own. If you cannot love us, let us go find the ones who can and will.
Queer black people, please stay with us. Please learn to leave the table when love is no longer being served. Please know you are allowed to be full and loved in a way that does not destroy you. Please grow and continue to be your best selves. Please reach out and understand that you are worth every good thing. You deserve to be here and you deserve community that loves you, especially in a ways that help you become a better person. You deserve to live. You deserve good love. We are here and we are waiting to love you full if you are ready.
I don’t remember this every day and that is okay. I learn to let the good love leak in a little more as much as I can. It’s okay if you cannot do this all at once. We are not meant to do this all at once. But if you have space to let yourself love a little more, be loved a little more, stay present a little longer, please do it. The steps are small but they keep you growing, they keep you going and any movement forward is better than none at all. I love you very much.
Reneice, Staff Writer
My hope and dream is simply that our existence and right to live and love stop being challenged, ignored, and taken away. How sad that my wildest hope is something others already enjoy.
Abeni, Staff Writer
I just want Black people to be able to be Black people. Not Black in relation to a context of whiteness and white supremacy. Not Black in relation to the stereotypes and tropes and media portrayals of us. Not in relation to colonization and slavery. Mainstream global understandings of Blackness have always been comparative— we’ve always been defined in relation to others. In America, we’ve always been the most non-white of all the non-white people. Black men have been told that they’re the most savage, compared to the white gentleman. Black women are described as the most licentious, compared to the white pure chaste feminine ideal. What I’m saying is Black people have always been queer; we’ve always been outsiders. But, so often we fight for assimilation, saying “we’re just like white people.” We aren’t and we don’t have to be. Let us be Black!
Carmen, Staff Writer
First thing out of the way, I want us to live. That’s my baseline hope and dream for the future, that we are here to see it. This Black History Month alone, we have already lost two black trans sisters to violence, and black trans women and trans women of color remain the largest targeted group of anti-LGBT hate crimes in this country. If my sisters can’t walk home at night without feeling safe in this world, we are not free. Recent studies find that roughly 43% of black LGBT youth have thought about suicide. So my first dream is that we keep surviving; it’s cliché, but I do believe in Martin Luther King’s axiom that as long as we keep working towards it, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but bends toward justice”. I want us here to see it. We deserve to be here to see it.
I also want for us to have financial security, social and legal equality. I want for us to no longer be subjected to a second-class citizenship in this country. Ok, so those necessities out of the way (because I’m just getting started). What’s my next, biggest, wildest dream?
I want a black lesbian pop star. I want a bisexual Serena Williams. A black, queer, feminist Supreme Court Justice. I want to see us reflected in at every level, in every color of the sun. You know the scene in The Lion King where Mufasa tells Simba that everything the light touches will be his? I want THAT. I want everything that has ever been given to a mediocre straight white man for just waking up in the morning. I’m here for taking it all.
Maybe that all sounds over the top, but I’m ready to dream past our survival. I’m ready to imaging our thriving. I’m ready for our unbridled joy, for our laughter, for our love. While we’re at it, I’m here for black queer and trans folks to have some really, really good sex. And delicious food! Finger-licking good food. Everyday. I want for us to have the best of what life has to offer.
When it comes to people who aren’t QTPOC black folks, and how they can help us turn our dreams into reality, I think that starts with recognizing our everyday humanity. It’s a much bigger deal than it seems. If you aren’t black, you shouldn’t only think about black people during February, or when a police officer shoots someone unarmed. If you’re a cis or heterosexual black person, even one who considers yourself our ally, you shouldn’t only think about queer or trans black people when Laverne Cox gets a magazine cover. We don’t have to exceptional to be seen. We don’t just exist on specially marked calendar days or only to be honored after our death. We are just here on a random Tuesday, living our lives. We are funny and sexy and a lot of times we are just average. We’re boring. Seeing us for the full, mundane picture— I think that’s where understanding and acceptance starts. That’s where we can build allyship from.
Last thing, for my black, queer, trans and non-binary family, I love you. I love you without seeing you. I’m rooting for you, and for us. Take solace in my love. Imagine I just gave you a hug— if that’s your thing— or offered you a chocolate chip cookie. Your hair looks awesome today. I love that outfit you put together! It’s hard out there, I know. But that’s OK. Take care of yourself. Tomorrow I want you to wake up, go out there, and shine some more.
Natalie, Staff Writer
What are my hopes for our black queer futures? Simply, that the history we learn every Black History Month be just that— history— and for our present selves to be busy engaged in fashioning a future that showcases the full splendor of black and queer people.
I just want for us to have gotten to Dr. King’s mountaintop and have that be the end of it. The fight to be finished, consigned to the history books. But instead, so much of our energy is consumed having to fight battles that should’ve already been won.
I want to spend my time deciding between which candidate would create the best world for me and my family, without jumping over a dozen hurdles to cast my ballot or having that ballot weakened by political and racial gerrymandering. That was supposed to be history.
I want to spend my time finding a career that I love that allows me to be my whole self without fear of discrimination. That was supposed to be history.
I want to build a home in a great community without fear that I’ll be tossed out by my landlord or have the neighbors call the cops on me for entering my own home. That was supposed to be history.
I want black children— perhaps, one day, my own— to have access to fully funded, quality schools without having to leave our own communities. That was supposed to be history.
It was all supposed to be history. It was supposed to be this thing we talked about once a year, in February— a reflection of how far we’d come. But, as William Faulkner once wrote, “the past isn’t dead, it isn’t even past.”
Back in 2015, following the murders of nine black people in Charleston, SC by a white supremacist, Bree Newsome and a group of activists gathered in Charlotte, NC to talk about protest actions. The group, compromised of “both black and white, who represented various walks of life, spiritual beliefs, gender identities and sexual orientations,” had already toyed with the idea of taking down the Confederate flag that flew over the South Carolina capital. On that day, they started to develop a more concrete plan. Bree would be the person to scale the pole and take it down, but Jason Tyson helped her get there— from practicing with her on the light post at his farm, to acting as her safety as she climbed on the day of the action.
Jason Tyson could’ve scaled that pole just as easily, but he didn’t. Instead, he empowered a black woman to bring down this symbol “of systemic oppression and racial subjugation.” He used his privilege to support her voice, not supplant it. At that moment, he was the perfect embodiment of the type of allyship we should all model ourselves after.
Be the person who is not content to be woke on the sidelines. Be the person that shares their knowledge and empowers others with it. Be the person who gives up their space so that others get a seat at the table. Be the person that recognizes the difference between being silenced and choosing to be silent. Be the person who uses their privilege to ensure the safety of those who lack both. Help us all get free.
Raising Baby T-Rex: My Mom Says We’re Exactly The Same
By the time I got around to having my own kid, I’d spent over three decades imagining and actualizing myself as a writer, an activist, a queer feminist, but never as a “mom.” As queer people do, once Waffle and I decided we were going to have a baby, I spent two full years overprocessing everything I could imagine or predict about joining the mommy cult before I even got knocked up.
I kept processing it all during the pregnancy as a queer feminist pregnant hard femme. I documented a lot of that here, on Autostraddle, with all of you. Still, I wasn’t at all prepared for first time parenting. No one is. Some things you just can’t prepare for. The hardcore sleep deprivation, the zero-sum-game of trying to maintain a sense of dignity postpartum, the ritualistic hazing that is trying to force an overtired baby to take a nap, the constant feeding-changing-sleeping-crying routine.
Literally just humble-bragging about how cute we are. Like, we’re really cute. (via our first birthday shoot with Jessica Stringer Photography)
What I wasn’t even remotely prepared for was how parenting would affect me as an adoptee.
I spent some time processing pregnancy as an adoptee, but I didn’t anticipate the feelings I’d have about being adopted and raising a toddler who still isn’t as old as I was when I came to the United States on an airplane. I thought I’d banished those ghosts a long time ago, the questions that I used to ask my mom over breakfast when I was little: “Where am I from?” “Why did they give me up?”
Me annoying one of our family dogs, Molson (named after the Canadian beer, yes, my parents were cool)
Recently, my 16-month-old baby has started to call for me by name in the morning: “Ma! Ma!” I always get up with her, something I resented in those early months but cherish now that we’re both sleeping through the night. (Parenting, like most things in a relationship, is so much playing to each others’ strengths. Waffle is a grouchy bear in the early morning. I can survive on less sleep and I was breastfeeding for the first six months, so I do my part on the wake-up shift. Waffle does his part in many other ways, like doing all the meal planning and grocery shopping.) Remi wakes up every morning knowing I’ll be there because I’ve been there every morning for the past 16 months, almost every single day of her life.
When I was a little over 17-months-old, I was delivered off a plane and placed into my parents’ arms and into my whole existence. Everything before that moment is gone, is vapor, a few translated sentences in my adoption papers. The loss of my history has never struck me the way it does now that I have a baby. I guess I’d always thought of babies as little, nonsensical, silly things. I didn’t know the difference between a one-week-old and a one-year-old until I carried my baby through that first year, from learning to latch to fighting over eating her vegetables.
Remi as a newborn (left) and at 6 months old, learning to sit up (right).
I didn’t comprehend that Little KaeLyn or, rather, Little Eun Jeong, had a whole 17 months of development and language and culture and food and exploration and family in another country halfway around the globe. Who I am was split in two at the moment I got on that plane to meet my new family. It might as well be a different person in a different world who lived my life before I came to the U.S. When I imagine it, it’s like imagining a foreign movie with subtitles or the plot of a book about Korean children, written by a visiting Western author. I will never get it back; even if I go to Korea now, as an adult, I’ll be a visitor. I can never go home to Korea, but Korea was my home. For 17 months, I was someone else. Home was somewhere else.
At 16 months, Remi knows the sound a cow makes (“Muh!”). She can bring me a book or a stuffed animal on request. She signs “more” fervently when she’s hungry and she loves cats (“Kah-Tah” as she says). She’s started sorting objects by type and loves to stomp her feet to music. She expects applause when she puts a ball through her Fisher Price basketball hoop. At 16 months, she knows a dozen baby words and understands more than that. Her favorite movie is Moana and she giggles or shrieks at her favorite parts. When she hears one of us in the bathroom, she runs in and drags her stool up to the bathroom sink to wash her hands. Right now, she’s double-fisting saucy strands of spaghetti and emphatically grunting, “Mmmmm,” between bites. At 16 months, she shows her love for us when she runs to meet Waffle at the door with a “Da! Da!” or when she grabs my neck in a big hug and gives firm, little pats on my arm (pat-pat-pat).
At 16 months, I knew…
At 16 months, I played with…
At 16 months, I said…
At 16 months, I loved…
At 16 months, I woke up and asked for…
Who Remi is, is so clear already. She’s cunning and likes to play little tricks on us. She’s a fearless adventurer who takes calculated risks and hard falls and gets up ready to try again. She is already insistently independent and wants to do everything herself. She’s a fast learner and a fast runner. She’s truly extra in every way and I love that about her.
My mom says we’re “exactly the same.” As she gets older, I definitely agree. Our pictures are almost identical to the untrained eye. But I wonder what I was like before my mom knew me. I wonder what words I said that no one in my American family could understand. I wonder how I interpreted getting on a plane in one world and popping out in another one, a new place where I couldn’t understand a single word and where no one could understand me. Surely, I was talking. Remi talks all day. Where did I think my biological parents went? How did I process moving to a home where nothing was familiar and where no one looked like me?
My adoption photo and my first picture of myself.
My mom and dad say I adapted quickly to my life in the U.S. and wasn’t afraid at all. I went right to them or to any stranger. I didn’t cry. I was a happy baby. I see that tenacity in Remi. She fears nothing. She adjusts quickly when traveling or going to the babysitter’s house or spending the night at Gramma and Grandpa’s house. She never seems to worry that we aren’t coming back. She’s so sure of herself.
Was I ever “just like” someone else? Are personality traits hereditary or chance? It’s hard to say, but I like to think that I’m getting a peek into who I might have been by knowing who Remi is. Her life story will be different than mine, a little more filled out, but it will still have gaps. Gaps in my history, that I can’t pass down to her. Gaps in the donor’s history (though we actually know way more about the donor’s biological family than we do about mine). And gaps where the complexity of being a Korean person in a mostly white family become painfully clear.
I went into parenting ready to reclaim “mommy” and ready to queer momminess. I didn’t expect to reclaim my need to explore my lost ancestry or my identity as Korean-American. I didn’t know that it would open something I thought I’d sealed up inside me a long time ago, the whispers of ancestors I can’t quite hear.
For now, I see parts of myself in my baby and it makes me feel simultaneously a little more empty and a little more whole. When I think about Remi growing up, I think about learning about Korean culture together, learning to cook Korean food for her, and ultimately about going back to Korea together. I just recently let myself say out loud that I’d like to do a birth family search, though I know how improbable is it that I’ll find anything. Anyone.
Remi’s dol-bok (Korean traditional 1st birthday garment) and cake smash, Korean and American first birthday traditions captured by Jessica Stringer Photography
In a couple weeks, she’ll be the same age I was when my plane touched down at JFK airport. I’ll finally be able to put pictures of her and me side-by-side to compare.
Me (left column), first year in the U.S. ages 17 months to 24 months. Remi (right column), first year of life ages 9 months to 12 months.
Black History Month Roundtable: What Does Queering Black History Mean To You?
Black History Month 2018 is in full swing! Some of black writers on staff at Autostraddle decided to get together and ask, what does this month mean to us as queer and trans black people?
Our resulting conversation was incredibly fruitful, so we turned it into a special edition roundtable series that we are very excited to share with you! For Part One, we focused on the ways we were taught black history as children, how we interact with that history now as adults, and overall asking ourselves, “What does it mean to ‘queer Black History Month’ and our engagement with it”? The second installment of the series, looking at our hopes for black queer futures, will be published later in February.
Neesha, Staff Writer
While I celebrate Black History 24-7/ 365 now, I had much less Black Pride as a child. I was surrounded by white kids in my gifted classes, so I became extremely whitewashed. Since I didn’t see myself reflected in these classes, I thought perhaps Blackness didn’t measure up to whiteness. As an adult, I learned that this Black erasure was because of the pervasive institutional racism in my Coastal Georgia hometown, where the Old South was glorified. My white best friend’s dad had an entire room dedicated to the Confederacy, complete with Gone with the Wind paraphernalia.
Today, most people would describe me as Blackity Black Black because I’m vocal about being Black and proud as a longtime community organizer and activist for racial justice. On my left forearm, I bear a Red, Black, and Green tattoo that I rarely get to show off because I live in forever rainy Seattle.
I’m blessed to celebrate Black History Month with my partner, who’s an awe-inspiring Rwandese immigrant femme. Our cultures are the same but different, which I find really beautiful. Black History Month is a chance for me to investigate my own anti-Blackness because, yes, Black folks can still perpetuate anti-Blackness. I’m reminded during this month to actively mitigate the privileges that I have within Black spaces, such as being college-educated and lighter-skinned.
I’m ⅓ of High Femme Podcast, and our January episode, recorded on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, is dedicated to three amazing Black LGBTQ ancestors: Marsha P. Johnson, Audre Lorde, and Bayard Rustin. We lifted them up during our regular “Black Queerstory” segment. In the past, I’ve shared the stories of Pauli Murray and the Combahee River Collective on this segment. As a bonafide history nerd, I shout out Black trans and queer history whenever I can. This is what queering Black History Month looks like for me.
We should at least have a holiday to honor Black LGBTQ heroes specifically. We deserve this type of representation. We need more trans, non-binary, and queer Black archivists documenting our past and present. I’d love to see even more efforts to ensure that our histories are being preserved online and offline for future generations. Black trans and queer kids often grow up feeling alone and unseen with so few historical figures to model themselves after. Uncovering Black LGBTQ history saves lives.
Alexis, Staff Writer
Every time I think of Black History Month, I think of that one episode of The Proud Family where Oscar Proud is in the kitchen wearing kente cloth, trying to get his family hyped for the month:
before doing an aside to the audience:
Celebrating black history feels like existing in the only community that can really understand me and taking pride in them. It’s like when Black Twitter does the Thanksgiving hashtag — I understand all the jokes and remember my childhood in a way I couldn’t in high school, a predominantly white girls’ school. It’s an extended feeling of livetweeting Black Lightning and screaming about Black Panther months before it even comes out. It feels like when I go see a black movie at midnight with an all black audience and the feeling of “this is right” I get. It feels like home.
Queering Black History Month means being more public and more intentional about our history. Growing up, I knew of like one or two famous queer black people, and even that information was nothing more than a footnote or a caption under a little photograph. Now I know how to better look for the information about our history that people have tried to bury. The internet is amazing for this; it makes our history more accessible. Spaces like Twitter allow me to find other people, people who know more about the information I lack and are generously willing to teach others. Queering black history also means elevating those voices who are making queer black history now. We must keep that mantra of “if I get over, we all gettin’ over” at the forefront of our work.
My hopes for queer black lives is that we’re safe, we’re no longer forced to live in fear, and we’re able to live our lives so fully that it continues to burst at the seams nearly every moment. I want us to be able to focus on our community, instead of walking around on eggshells knowing white people are looking at us.
I want for us to live by what Toni Morrison said years ago:
“The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”
We will fight ’til we are free and we will find freedom and we will stay in its good graces.
Abeni, Staff Writer
My relationship with Black History Month changed a lot once I became a middle school teacher.
I grew up in a town with no black people other than my father. So the only knowledge of Black history came from him or from school, which had one or two other mixed black kids and that was it. And my dad wasn’t like, super into it — I remember when I learned about Kwanzaa, he scoffed. I used to think he was kind of an Uncle Tom.
I learned later that, because he was born in 1951 and grew up during the civil rights era, he had a very nuanced perspective on the movement. His uncle was Eldridge Cleaver. The increasing “militancy” of certain extended family members created still-unresolved rifts in the family. For my father, success on his own terms meant being self-sufficient, and having the freedom to be himself. That underpinned his understanding of civil rights and liberation — so I guess I understand his perspective a lot more now.
I remember as a student learning about slavery, then that Abraham Lincoln was our savior. Those lessons were followed by Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, and not much else. According to school, my people emerged on the world stage with slavery, and then we were emancipated and basically immediately integrated into American society. It was much later before I learned what chattel slavery actually entailed, or about Reconstruction and Jim Crow, or that “miscegenation” (interracial relationships) was illegal in most of this country until 1979, the same year my dad married his first wife.
When I became a teacher, I realized I wanted to expand my students’ understandings of Black history. I always did a lesson called “We Didn’t Start with Slavery.” I went deeper into our precolonial history — highlighting many of the African inventions that we now take for granted, like math, or “modern” medicine techniques such as surgery and vaccination. I discussed the major accomplishments of all of the pre-colonial African civilizations. All the stuff I never learned in school. I also collaborated on a lesson with a Latinx co-worker. We went in-depth about the connections between Black folks and Latinx folks. These lessons were particularly important as the majority of my students were Black and Latinx.
One thing about studying pre-colonial Africa, and including that in Black history, is exploring how queer it is. Looking at African politics today, it’s easy for folks to claim that we’re “more homophobic” than white people. However, if you do like five seconds of research, white Western values such as homophobia and transphobia were largely forced upon Africa from their colonizers. I love reading studies that make this plain. Black people have always been “queer” under the white gaze!
As a teacher, I also highlighted a wider variety of civil rights era leaders. I wanted my students to move beyond MLK, but also re-contextualize him, as he’s been completely sanitized, to focus on groups like the Black Panthers (especially since I was teaching in Oakland). I wanted my students to know about people like Kwame Ture, along with queer folks like Bayard Rustin, Marsha P. Johnson, and according to a lot of the latest research, maybe even Malcolm X.
I feel like in school we learned about 10% of Black history during Black history month. The whole reason I became a teacher was to “correct the record,” so to speak — to shift the narrative, to provide more context. Through this, I ended up learning so much Black history that I would have never known if I hadn’t done all of the research and work on my own. Black history will always be relevant in schools as long as we’re still a white supremacist culture. Schools are never going to voluntarily teach us our own history. It’s too empowering.
Carmen, Staff Writer
I have always loved Black History Month. I deeply love my blackness and I deeply love black people. I’m not saying that as a unique badge of honor; it’s not like I was given a choice. My parents prioritized that I grow up in environments where blackness was highlighted and reinforced. I was taught to see the beauty in our perseverance, in our shared struggle. I was still a black girl in America, so I received my fair share of subtle (and not-so-subtle) messaging that being black made me inferior. But, in my little pocket of the world I was beautiful, smart, strong, and safe. I was raised to be purposefully, happily, unapologetically black.
Those feelings always become amplified for me in February. It’s trendy in the last few years to write about black accomplishments as “magic” — I mean, hello #blackgirlmagic, right? One secret we don’t share is that our magic was paid for by our ancestors. It came at the price of their blood, their sweat. I think of Black History Month as calling them back into our space. It’s a meditation that because of them, we can. February reminds me to celebrate; it also asks that I stay purposeful, driven, and strive to make good on the sacrifices that those who came before me were forced to make.
As much as I was taught to revere my blackness and honor black history, there were no such messaging about queerness. I had to learn that on my own. I was a freshman in college before I knew that Langston Hughes or James Baldwin were gay, even though I read both writers throughout my childhood. I remember once seeing a poster at some community center; it had pictures of Langston Hughes, Bessie Smith, along with Eleanor Roosevelt, Virginia Wolf, and others underneath the slogan “Sometimes History Sets The Record A Little Too Straight.” The play on words has always stuck with me. The same can be said about blackness — sometimes we like to keep it a ‘lil (or a lot) too straight.
Along the way of my life, I internalized that being gay was for white people. I was a proud black, Afro-Latina woman. I was out in the world, busy kicking ass and taking names; I didn’t believe I could be that and also be gay.
For me, queering Black History Month is about making sure that future generations don’t feel the same pressure to choose between their blackness and their sexuality that I once did. It’s about leaving space to be all of yourself, at once. That starts with re-learning our history and allowing for that history to be messy instead of in neat, separated boxes.
When designing this roundtable, I thought a lot about renowned black lesbian political scientist and activist Cathy Cohen. She’s argued that the word “queerness” is about more than who you sleep with; it’s about creating “a space in opposition to dominant norms.” These new spaces can and should uplift “community as paths to survival, using shared experiences of oppression and resistance to build indigenous resources, shape consciousness, and act collectively.” When it comes to queering Black History Month, upending expected norms and instead making space for community as a resource to our resistance, well you know, that sounds like a pretty good place to start for me.
Natalie, Staff Writer
I was in fourth grade when my frustration with my school’s Black History Month activities reached its peak. After being handed the same handouts about the same people that I’d been given for years, after being recruited to deliver the same portion of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech that I’d done the last two years, I’d had enough. I complained to the teacher — why do we just keep learning about the same people, I lamented — to no avail. It wasn’t a political awakening. It wasn’t the moment nine-year-old Natalie became woke. I was just bored. Even then, I knew there had to be more to Black History than handful of (mostly male) voices we were exposed to every February.
Many years later, those same feelings persist. To be clear, my misgivings about Black History Month have more to do with the practice of it than its existence. I still firmly believe that communities of color need space carved out for their histories to be celebrated. I’d love to imagine that a world in which the stories of people of color are fully integrated into the story we tell about America, but nothing about the story of America suggests that faith would be warranted. If we’ve failed to teach more than 8% of U.S. high school seniors that slavery was the reason the South seceded from the Union, the problem isn’t that Black History Month exists. The problem is that we’re not giving students the full breadth of the black experience in America.
The way we practice Black History Month, particularly in our public schools, can and should change. On a national level, I’m hoping that the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) can begin to shape a more robust curriculum around Black History Month. Using their exhibitions as a guide, the NMAAHC can curate a set of resources for schools that can expose children to the totality of Black History, rather than just the select few heroes that I was taught growing up. Our ancestors are so much more than they’ve ever been given credit for being.
Involving the NMAAHC also ensures that LGBT African-Americans get incorporated into Black History Month narratives; the museum’s been intentional about ensuring our place in African-American history. The museum highlights contributions from Bayard Rustin, Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin and Barbara Jordan. It’s also looking to expand its collection to include, among others, Marsha P. Johnson, the Stonewall Riots, and LGBT life during the Harlem Renaissance, which would highlight folks like Ma Rainey, Angelina Weld Grimké and Alice Dunbar-Nelson. The queering of black history has already happened, we just have to find a sustainable way to get the word out.
Technology stands out as one of the best way to democratize Black History Month, both in terms of who gets represented and ease of consumption. Projects like Mic’s newly launched “The Black Monuments Project,” provides an opportunity to learn about black history in your backyard without much effort, but those projects don’t come to fruition without a substantial commitment of time and resources. While a direct investment in black and queer archivists would be ideal, it’s also important to push existing institutions — including black-focused and LGBT-focused spaces — to be intentional about incorporating the stories of QTPOC into their narratives.
On a local level, I’d like to see more people seek out and embrace the black history that lives all around them. What if, instead of being handed another worksheet about George Washington Carver and his many uses of peanuts, my fourth grade teacher had taken our class to what remained of Saint Agnes Hospital, which served for nearly half a century as the only hospital and training school for African Americans between Atlanta and Washington, DC? What about visiting St. Paul AME Church, whose founders were enslaved people, and where the Freedman Convention of 1865 was held? Both locations were a short distance from my classroom, but remained mysteries to me until I grew older.
Admittedly, living in the South — and in North Carolina, in particular —means you’re never too far from a lot of black history, but it really does exist everywhere. Where was your city’s Black Main Street? What were the names of the first black students to integrate your college or university? How many years after Brown v. Board of Education did it take for the schools in your community actually desegregate? It’s liberating to know that the ground you walk on everyday was once touched by your community’s history and I’m remiss that more people (including the 4th grade version of myself) don’t get a chance to experience it.
Reneice, Staff Writer
I’ve never thought about my feelings around Black History Month before and now as I try to, I’m realizing that they constantly change. As a child I loved learning about the black people that went unaddressed the rest of the year, but hated the eyes on me, usually the only black kid in class. As a young adult I’d felt that Black History Month was an all out unapologetic celebration of black beauty and experience and excellence. These were my first years having finally escaped WASP territory. I went natural, started to embrace my curves, accept my sexuality, and process all that I’d endured as a minority in white spaces. My feelings have changed with my experience, understanding of myself, and my personal climate.
I still see Black History Month as a celebration, but also a revolution. It’s a protest. It’s a sadly still necessary time to shout, to lift every voice and sing that our lives matter, as much as we can, in as many ways as we can, during the shortest month of the year. To remind the oppressors and the privileged that there is no American History without Black History.
In terms of queering Black History and changing how it’s taught — first and foremost the control of literature and resources used to teach Black History needs to be taken out of the hands of those who are outside of our community. Black history taught from the view of white people is not authentic or acceptable. We already see that in textbooks referring to slaves as happy volunteers; we see that in the way that American children aren’t taught about the Haitian revolution or the culture and current political status of African countries. We see it in the daily rising death toll of Black people, boys who are killed for playing with toys or eating skittles while mobs of unafraid white people can trash an entire city in celebration of a football game and then go home after for a good night’s rest. We need to wash the white influence off our stories and begin again in truth.
Now about queerness; the black community struggles to acknowledge and accept queerness, but so does society at large. It needs to change. Just as black people have always been intertwined to, but left out of American History — queer black people have always been a part of black history. We don’t need to queer black history, it’s already queer because I exist, we exist, and have always existed. Black history is innately queer AF. What we need to do is kick the patriarchy out of the club and it’s far right conservative views handed down to us by slave masters. They can’t dance with us.
11 Black Experience Movies to Watch on Your Martin Luther King Jr. Day Off
Today is the 32nd annual Martin Luther King Jr. day and most people in the U.S. are enjoying a day off as a result of the holiday. This day that is filled with celebratory parades, quotes from the late Dr. King posted on every social media site, and reminders of how far we’ve come does not seem to hold the same glow of justice and empowerment today that it has in years past. We can thank — among many things including decades of systematic racism and oppression — our president and his administration for their proud, extreme and rampant release of the racist dust that this country swept under the rug but never threw out for the muted energy felt throughout the nation today. So many of us are sitting in our homes wondering “What would Dr. King think of where are now?”
One thing is crystal clear, we have a long journey ahead of us to reach that beautiful, harmonious dream of justice and equality Dr. King spoke of. The one we were taught about in grade school as though it had already been achieved. Leaving the prevalent injustices still occurring daily kept conveniently out of school books and MLK day celebrations nationwide to feed a false narrative of a post-racial United States of America. Today it seems more people than ever before are finally realizing the scope of the lies they were told. The horrors they were shielded from. They’re watching Trump go golfing, breaking presidential tradition by doing so without a single public appearance or volunteer service event planned to honor the man we celebrate today. They’re sitting at home, just like I am now, tired, and confused, and bewildered, and angry, and overwhelmed, and wondering what can be done today to honor Dr. King and everything he stands for when all we really want to do is lie in bed and wait for this nightmare to be over.
We all need our days of rest in between our days of activism and advocacy, so if that’s what you’re feeling you need today, you can curl up and watch one these movies. Rest, but remember why you have this day off to do so. These films are all incredibly important to and educational of the black American experience in some way. They were all also written at least partly by black writers. If what you need is more knowledge and understanding, you’ll find it here. If what you need is a respite and reminder that black love and joy exist, there’s a few for that too. Above all, these films are beautiful and poignant — though at times painful and heart-wrenching — testaments to Black Lives and just how much they matter, not just today, but always.
1. Selma
Co-written and Produced by Ava Duvernay, this film depicts Dr. King’s march from Selma to Montgomery.
2. Hidden Figures
The screenplay for Hidden Figures is based off a non-fiction book of the same title written by Margot Lee Shetterly, and tells the formerly little known story of a powerful trio of Black women mathematicians who were crucial to NASA’s success in the space race.
3. Malcom X
This film written by Spike Lee and and Arnold Perl is a drama that chronicles the life of Malcom X.
4. Love Jones
This is one of the most iconic and beautifully shot movies about black love in existence. Written by Theodore Witcher and loved by many.
5. 13th
Ava DuVernay strikes again with her critically acclaimed documentary 13th that examines the effects of the prison industrial complex on black men and the black community at large.
6. The Best Man
This is an amazing and far too rare film focused on the joy and normalcy of black life, love, and friendship rather than trauma and hardship. Another Spike Lee joint. It was penned by his cousin Malcom D Lee.
7. 12 Years a Slave
If you want to cry, scream, and rage it out. This is the movie for you. A story about a free black man sold into slavery. Written by John Ridley.
8. The Color Purple
If you haven’t seen this by now, I’m not sure I even trust you.
9. Fruitvale Station
I’m watching this at this very moment because I wanted motivation and a reminder of the importance of making this list. This story written and directed by Ryan Coogler depicts Oscar Grant’s last day of life before being killed by a Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer.
10. Get Out
Jordan Peele’s debut horror film still has me reeling from the blurred lines between reality and fiction regarding the black experience present throughout the movie.
11. Waiting to Exhale
This breath of fresh air written by Terry McMillan is an iconic story of black female friendship at its best. It will make you laugh and happy cry.
“Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart: Lorraine Hansberry” Is the Documentary We All Need and Deserve in 2018
Feature image courtesy of Lorraine Hansberry Properties Trust.
“For some time now—I think since I was a child—I have been possessed of the desire to put down the stuff of my life,” Lorraine Hansberry wrote in To Be Young, Gifted, and Black. That impulse, heightened by the Hansberry family’s harrowing experiences with segregation and discrimination in their native Chicago, drove her to write one of the greatest American theater scripts, A Raisin in the Sun. In a new documentary, airing January 19th on PBS, director Tracy Heather Strain (Race: The Power of an Illusion) picks up what Hansberry put down.
As you might remember from high school English class, Raisin focuses on the Youngers, a family that both resembles Lorraine’s activist/real estate broker kin and their lower-income tenants. When the play’s patriarch passes away, his brood clashes over what to do with his modest life insurance check. Despite having different ideas about how to go about it, each member basically desires the same thing: an easier shot at life in America. Nearly 60 years later, this longing still persists. The first work by a Black woman to be performed on Broadway, Raisin became a commercial and critical success, scooping up the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play in 1959. It would be adapted for film, using the playwright’s script, in 1961. Lorraine, who wrote as though she’d lived multiple lifetimes, was only 28.
Lorraine’s work was so intensely influenced by her life, so it’s a bit strange to admit that we know more about her plays than we do her biography. But make no mistake: Lorraine—“Sweet Lorraine,” as her friend James Baldwin called her in his eulogy—was a literary rockstar; an uncredited beat poet. She chain-smoked too much. She made it rain on grassroots integrationists in the South while giving the Kennedy brothers a tongue-lashing for their failure to protect the region’s African-Americans. She inspired a Nina Simone song. She was clocked by the Feds. She wore pearl earrings. She gave a generation of Black actors the roles that would define their careers. She bedded white people years before miscegenation was legalized. She pissed off American theater. She pissed off American theater critics. She named her home in upstate New York Chitterling Heights. Years before Stonewall, she penned letters of solidarity to the early lesbian publication The Ladder. She had a mean sense of humor that continues to defy the “serious activist” stereotype. She didn’t stop until her body made her stop.
Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart: Lorraine Hansberry touches on all of this and more. It’s a first-of-its-kind documentary, connecting the important plays our teachers had us read with the intrepid woman behind them. While there are touches of Lorraine in Raoul Peck’s near-perfect film about Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro, his documentary concerns itself with the perilous state of race in America first and—by honing in on the author’s murdered friends Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr.—brotherhood second.
Photo Copyright David Attie
But Lorraine, who died at 34 from pancreatic cancer that her doctors and loved ones didn’t notify her she had, was also killed by white America. At the time, the medical establishment regularly encouraged husbands, fathers, and male friends to hide potentially lethal diagnoses from female patients. Ironically, Lurleen Wallace, wife of the governor from Alabama who infamously refused desegregation, faced a similar fate.
When viewing Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart at DocNYC this past fall, I was struck by Peck’s failure to consider Hansberry’s life and death worth their time on the screen; instead, she was relegated to the footnotes. After seeing I Am Not Your Negro, some moviegoers questioned why Peck didn’t allude to Baldwin’s queerness. It was an inquiry I didn’t feel was mine to answer. But in thinking about Hansberry now, I find myself asking different versions of the same question. Did Peck view sexuality and gender as distractions from his primary subjects (race and masculine solidarity)? Did he not want to ruffle viewers with homophobic or misogynist leanings? Wouldn’t addressing the systematic paternalism that harmed an exceptional Black woman only enhance the ongoing conversations about race in America? While it won’t kill us to acknowledge multiplicity, it certainly will if we don’t.
Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart, fourteen years in the making, is a great example of a work that thoughtfully and creatively layers ideas about gender and sexuality alongside race. In addition to readings from Lorraine’s private journals, the film features a ton of esteemed folks familiar with her, from feminist scholars and theater critics to legendary actors like Sidney Poitier and subversive writers like Ann Bannon; some of whom weren’t afraid to spar with one another’s ideas or Hansberry’s work on-camera. Like Lorraine’s second play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart fearlessly and gracefully tackles the mix of identities—femininity and queerness among them—that Peck found too overwhelming.
Like women the world over, Hansberry was deeply influenced by French feminist Simone de Beauvoir’s book The Second Sex; Sighted dramatizes her devouring the book, page by page. As a nod to this, Strain cleverly juxtaposes French pop music and archival footage of happy Black couples, crafting a culture clash that hints that all was not well in domestic paradise. The moment echoes Peck’s pairing of happy white family portraits with voiceovers that critique white ignorance. By indulging each and every social complication, Strain doesn’t seem at all worried that a gentle feminist indictment of the midcentury Black family will derail her life’s work.
Lorraine moved to NYC in 1950 and married the Jewish publisher Robert Nemiroff three years later; she was 23. It was a creatively beneficial relationship for both, Robert penning songs and Lorraine toiling over—and sometimes nearly abandoning— what would become her first play, A Raisin in the Sun. Upon coming into some serious cash, Robert was able to bankroll Hansberry’s career, and, posthumously, serve as her literary executor.
While Lorraine’s political alignment with early gay activists is old news, Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart is the first major effort to confirm and embrace Hansberry’s own orientation. By the time the couple divorced 1962, Lorraine had long been actively and delightfully gay, having published pulp under the pen name Emily Smith and—as the late, great, Edie Windsor divulges in interview—partied on Manhattan’s mafia-owned lesbian bar circuit. This second revelation sent me scampering back to Edie & Thea: A Very Long Engagement to see if Lorraine’s name or pseudonym was on that “prominent lesbians circa 1960″ towel that Edie eagerly whips out. As far as I can tell, she wasn’t. Apart from her own journals that use acronyms for her queer loves, Hansberry didn’t leave much trace of her romantic past. As the director explained in a Q&A after the film, she was able to locate at least one woman who’d had a relationship with Lorraine, but—wary of either disrupting the writer’s legacy or unethically outing the dead—she backed out of being interviewed at the last moment.
It’s in Sighted’s moments of thoughtful picking and choosing what to include that Strain is her best. She finds a great balance between the humanity and humor that should define how we remember Lorraine. In one of the playwright’s trademark end-of-year lists, dramatized in the film, Lorraine annotates her ‘likes.’ As obsessed with the why and the who of human life as ever, the list includes ‘my homosexuality’ and ‘Eartha Kitt.’ Same girl, same.
If I were to make a belated Hansberry-style end-of-year list for 2017, this doc would definitely be on it.
Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart airs Friday, January 19 at 9 p.m. on PBS, and will be streaming online Saturday on PBS.org.
10 Times Black Women Slayed in 2017
Click for more 2017 End of the Year Lists
Despite the world working as hard as ever to prevent us from doing so, black women — especially queer black women — did a whole lot of slaying in 2017. This year, while fraught with political and racial assaults on our lives almost daily, also held some of the greatest achievements black women as a collective have earned. No surprise given that we have always managed to stand strong in the face of adversity and snatch our wildest dreams from the hands of those that would deny us. From awards earned to silences shattered, records broken, and history made, black women made sure the world knew that we did not come play. Here are just a few of the noteworthy ways that black women slayed in 2017.
Lena Waithe’s Emmy Win
Lena Waithe poses in the press room with the award for outstanding writing for a comedy series for the “Master of None” episode “Thanksgiving” at the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 17, 2017, at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
I know I’m not the only one who was in tears watching Lena Waithe accepting her Emmy, becoming the first Black woman to win an Emmy Award for comedy writing. If you have yet to see her critically acclaimed “Thanksgiving” episode of “Master of None” do yourself a long overdue favor and watch it with tissues in hand. To make this sweet story even sweeter, Waithe was named Out 100’s “Artist of the Year” AND got engaged this thanksgiving!
The Black Women Voters of Alabama
In one of the most epic elections ever seen in the United States, Black women showed up to the United States Senate special election polls in Alabama and showed all the way out. Thanks to their unity in numbers and commitment to restoring justice, Democrats were able to clinch the senate nomination for candidate Doug Jones giving a much needed win to the democratic party. Let this stand on record as proof of who is truly committed to the fight for equality in the United States.
Andrea Jenkins’ Election Win
.@andreaforward8 is the first openly transgender African American woman elected to public office in the U.S. https://t.co/H0hCsZAh8a pic.twitter.com/puRZ4BSHnb
— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) November 8, 2017
In more happy election news and another 2017 win, Andrea Jenkins made herstory and became the first openly trans woman of color elected to public office in the Minneapolis city council election on Nov 8th 2017. Jenkins received 73% of the votes which is a beautiful testament to the slowly but surely changing political landscape.
Cardi B Topping the Charts
With the release of “Bodak Yellow” Cardi B – who identifies as bisexual– broke a 19 year absence of solo female rappers reaching the top of Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. The song has also received two grammy nominations for 2018, and won Single of The Year at the BET Hip-Hop Awards. When she says she’s making money moves, she means it. It is also noteworthy that the last female rapper to achieve this feat with no other credited artists was also a Black woman, Ms Lauryn Hill in 1998 with “Doo Wop (That Thing)”.
Tarana Burke Breaking The Silence
Though the #MeToo movement caught fire this year after Alyssa Milano tweeted it, Tarana Burke is the original creator of the movement. She created in 2006 after starting her own non-profit, Just Be Inc, that aids victims of sexual assault and harassment. Far too often the credit for work that Black women and women of color do for feminism is not given when and where it is due. Tarana Burke’s movement and the hashtag that followed gave millions of women the courage through solidarity to speak up and out against abuse. As a result, she was named among the group of silence breakers that make up Time Magazine’s Person of the Year.
Rihanna’s Release of Fenty Beauty
Makeup lovers everywhere rejoiced when Rihanna dropped her new makeup line Fenty Beauty earlier this year. The line received scores of well deserved praise for the diversity of foundation shades it carries. 40 shades to be exact, which is a base level of inclusivity never before seen in a high-end commercial makeup line. Rihanna’s major boss moves of bringing more shade inclusivity to the makeup industry led to Fenty Beauty being named one of Time’s best inventions of the year for 2017.
Munroe Bergdorf Refusing to Stand Down
Speaking of increasing diversity and inclusivity in the makeup industry, trans model Munroe Bergdorf deserves major props for her role in holding the industry accountable this year. Using her voice and status as a public figure to call out and stand against racism caused a major hit to her career, but she stood firm and continues to do so. She is yet another example of the resilience and grace black women have in the face of adversity.
Roxane Gay Power Publishing
Who releases not one, but TWO soul shakingly beautiful books in one year? Roxane Gay does. Talk about hustle goals. She is a force to be reckoned with. Both Hunger: A Memoir of (my) Body, and her short story collection Difficult Women were released in 2017 and landed on countless people’s “must-read” lists. Hunger made the Autostraddle “Top 10 Queer and Feminist books of 2017” list and would make a great first read of 2018 if you haven’t already devoured it.
Samira Wiley On and Off Screen
Photography via Jose Villa / Martha Stewart Weddings
Samira first slayed in 2017 when she delivered a hauntingly beautiful portrayal of her character Moira in the Emmy Award winning series Handmaid’s Tale. Unsurprising given that she brings excellence into everything she does. The show was important but difficult to watch given the present United States political climate, so thankfully Samira also came through like the ray of sunshine she is and shared photos from her fairytale wedding to her love Lauren Morelli. Their wedding had queer hearts everywhere bursting with joy. The celebration of their love was a much needed rainbow in stormy skies to remind us that among the danger and darkness that surround the lives of black women everywhere, love and light and happiness are still here, and real, and we should revel in them as well.
Missy Elliot Reminding Us We’re Better
Remember when 2015 rolled around and Missy Elliot’s surprise superbowl performance followed by her release of “WTF” that had us all happy crying and twerking in celebration of her return? Her slow and long awaited re-entry to our lives continued this with the release of her track “I’m better”. Seeing another of her visually electrifying music videos back on screen — shout out to that insane choreography on the medicine balls — and having an upbeat mantra to jam to was such a gift in 2017. I can’t wait to see what comes next.
The 12 Best Lesbian, Bisexual and Trans Latinx Pop Culture Moments of 2017
Click for more 2017 End of the Year Lists
If you’re a queer Latinx, it can be hard to see yourself in pop culture. American media rarely focuses on Latinx characters and stories at all, and it’s even more rare when those characters are LGBTQ. This year, we finally got some stories and characters that showed real Latina heart. Whether you’re Mexican, Puerto Rican, Costa Rican, Cuban, Panamanian or Argentinian, there were great examples of queer Latinidad for you. We’re still working on making things better, especially when it comes to real life issues about immigration and health care and education and racism, but these were some of the highlights of the year in Latinx pop culture.
1. America Chavez Gets a Comic Book and Gabby Rivera Writes it
While we recently got some bad news that this series is being canceled, it was still an amazing thing to see. Queer Latina, and former Autostraddle writer, Gabby Rivera got to write a comic about a lesbian Latina superhero. That’s something that’s never happened before. Not only did Latinx readers get to see a great role model in the Marvel’s first lesbian Latina superhero, but it was written by a real life Latinx role model too. And Rivera brought a great reality and genuine familiarity to the character that had been lacking before.
2. Becky G Plays a Queer Superhero in Power Rangers
There was a Power Rangers movie this summer, and honestly, it was my favorite superhero movie this year, even more than Thor: Ragnorok or Wonder Woman. Yeah, you heard that right. It was weird and hilarious and fun and the cast was so diverse! That diverse cast included Mexican-American singer and actress Becky G playing Trini, the yellow ranger, who is revealed to be queer in a team bonding scene.
3. Tessa Thompson Plays a Bisexual Valkyrie in Thor Ragnarok
Power Rangers wasn’t the only superhero movie this year to feature a queer woman. Afro-Latina actress Tessa Thompson confirmed on twitter that her character in the Marvel sequel Thor Ragnarok, Valkyrie, was bisexual in the movie, just like she is in the comics. There was a scene in the movie that confirmed this, but it was sadly cut.
4. Leiomy Maldonado Stars In Her Own Nike Commercial
Leiomy Maldonado is a trans Latina and one of the most iconic and legendary vogue dancers alive. This year, Nike featured her and other dancers in a commercial for their #betrue collection for Pride. This commercial made me cry like a baby.
5. Selena Gomez Has a Crush on Herself in “Bad Liar”
Selena sampled the Talking Heads and made this summer jam with one of the weirdest, gayest music videos ever. Selena plays a high school student, the female gym teacher she has a crush on, her dad (who’s trying to sleep with the gym teacher) and her mom (who’s had enough of her dad’s bullshit). As I said in slack when Autostraddle fist found out about this video, “THIS IS MY FAV VIDEO EVER?????? This video is my entire life. Selena is me, I am Selena.”
6. One Day At a Time Shows a Supportive Latina Family and a Gay Quinceañera
Netflix’s reboot of One Day at a Time, this time with a Cuban family, was one of the best shows I’ve seen all year. It only got better when Elena, the teenage daughter on the show, had a season-long coming out arc that felt real and familiar and fresh. All of this culminated with her mom, grandma and brother supporting her as she wore a white suit to her quinceañera, showing that you can honor your culture and yourself at the same time.
7. Lauren Jauregui Joins Halsey for Bi Anthem “Strangers”
Lauren Jauregui is a Cuban-American singer and member of the band Fifth Harmony. She’s also bisexual, just like Halsey, who she teamed up with on this hit song. The two sing a love song about each other, wishing for more intimacy than they can get from each other.
8. Brooklyn 99‘s Rosa Diaz is Bi
Last year, actress Stephanie Beatriz came out as bisexual, and this year her character on Brooklyn 99 did the same thing. Her coming out was sweet, real and funny. The show didn’t shy away from showing that coming out doesn’t always go smooth, and it definitely didn’t shy away from saying the words “bisexual” and “bi” as many times as they could.
9. Demi Lovato Talks About Dating Women in Her Documentary
Demi had talked about how she wasn’t straight before, but she talked about her queerness and relationships with women more than ever before in her Youtube documentary “Simply Complicated.” While most of the focus was on her struggles with mental health and addiction, she also talked about using dating apps and dating both men and women, making her one of the highest profile queer pop stars in America.
10. Frida Kahlo Makes Art in Coco
I wrote about how I had never seen myself in a movie before like I saw myself in Coco. In my review I mentioned that queer Mexican painter Frida Kahlo makes an appearance, but I didn’t talk very much about her. She shows up in the land of the dead and helps out Hector and Miguel several times in their journey through the afterlife. She’s familiar, she’s funny and she’s terrific.
11. Iconic Costa Rican/Mexican Lesbian Singer Chavela Vargas Gets Her Own Documentary
Chavela Vargas is one of my favorite Latina singers of all time. When I picked my name, I chose her first name for my middle name. This year she got a much-deserved documentary, CHAVELA, and a new generation of audiences was introduced to her. If you want to learn more about this gender non-conforming, radical, amazingly talented singer, this is a great place to start.
12. Bisexual Actress Sara Ramirez Plays Butch Bombshell on Madam Secretary
Sara Ramirez has been playing iconic bisexual character Dr. Callie Torres in Grey’s Anatomy for years, and now she plays butch bombshell Kat Sandoval on Madam Secretary. The initial pictures of her character took all of our breaths away and we didn’t recover for two full weeks. Honestly, a lot of us are still trying to recover.
Spike Lee’s Queer-ish Remake of “She’s Gotta Have It” Would Have Been Better Without Spike Lee
This post was written by Carmen Phillips and Alaina
At the end of November, Netflix released a television series remake of Spike Lee’s 1986 film She’s Gotta Have It. The original is often considered one of Lee’s most iconic works. It’s also almost uniformly derided by feminist critics for the depiction of its protagonist, Nola Darling. In both the original film and the newly released television series, Nola is a young black woman who self-identifies as a “sex-positive, polyamorous, pansexual” artist juggling relationships with three men: married business professional Jamie Overstreet, model/photographer Greer Childs, and bike messenger Mars Blackmon.
She’s Gotta Have It (1986) / She’s Gotta Have It (2017)
The new iteration has a potentially more queer ending, thanks in part to Nola’s female love interest, Opal Gilstrap, a character who is also reimagined from the original film. The new She’s Gotta Have It has sparked a nuanced discussion among black women and black queer folks, with some calling the series “a feminist breakthrough” and others pointing out that it maligns representations of queerness and polyamory. With that ongoing dialogue in mind, in lieu of a traditional review, Autostraddle Staff Writers Carmen and Alaina decided to publish a conversation together about the TV series, the legacy of Spike Lee’s work, black female representation on film, polyamory, and pansexuality. Check it out!
Carmen: First, Alaina, thank you for agreeing to do this with me! I believe you were the first person to bring an article about the new She’s Gotta Have It to the staff’s attention, and I pounced all over it! And not in a good way!
I have a lot of strong negative feelings towards the original 1986 film, and I have a lot of conflicting feelings about Spike Lee. I think he’s one of the most important black filmmakers of the last 30 years, but also he has been incredibly damaging when it comes to the portrayals of black women. Which is ironic considering that at least five of his films, including the first film that made him famous (the original She’s Gotta Have It), have prominent black or Afro-Latina female protagonists.
Alaina: Carmen! I’m so excited to talk to you about this series because I so have many, many feelings about it and about Spike Lee in general! I just finished a class called “Staging Black Feminisms” and watching the pilot was one of our last assignments. So, I was already coming into it from a critical Black feminist lens, and not just as entertainment. I tried to come into it with an open mind, I really truly did, but I too am cautious of Spike Lee’s work, particularly his representations of Black women.
Nola Darling
The source material was what made me so nervous; the ending of the original movie is so damaging, and even though Spike has written that he regrets it, that doesn’t erase the effect it had on culture.
I couldn’t help going into it thinking about bell hooks’ essay in Reel to Real: Race, Sex and Class at the Movies, “Whose Pussy Is This? A Feminist Comment.” She talks about how even when a film by Spike is centered around a woman, she’s still not fully developed, and is a prop for his own message – in the case of She’s Gotta Have It, the message is that self-identified sexually liberated Black women are just asking to be hurt by a man. About the rape scene in the original, hooks writes, “Suddenly we are not witnessing a radical questioning of female sexual passivity or a celebration of female sexual self-assertion but a reconstruction of the same old sexist content in a new and more interesting form… male domination and patriarchal order were restored.” But I wanted to give the new iteration a chance, and I had to watch it anyway, so I girded my loins and binged last weekend. Was I surprised by my reaction? Nope. More about that later though.
Carmen: YES! I’m so glad that you started us off by bringing up bell hooks! The first time I watched the film version of She’s Gotta Have It, I scanned copies of hooks’ essay for all of my friends to read. Ok, that makes me sound like a huge nerd (I am!), but also I think it’s an important piece of black feminist criticism. “Whose Pussy Is This?” changed how I engage with Spike’s work more generally, and definitely was at my forefront as I watched this series.
Binging the new She’s Gotta Have It had me both cringing and screaming at my television. On paper I should’ve related to Nola Darling. We’re both black queer femmes who’ve lived in Brooklyn, and like Nola I’ve never met a piece of “Afrocentric” or “bohemian” jewelry that I didn’t love. However, in reality she comes across as a two-dimensional stand in for… who knows? I think Spike Lee was going for “woke black millennial feminist culture,” but I don’t know what those catchphrases mean when lined up against each other. I resent Spike for forcing me to make sense of the alphabet soup that pours from Nola’s mouth.
The experience left me wondering, what do we lose when we rely on black men to tell black women’s stories? Particularly those black men who have been traditionally harmful to their black women characters. As you mentioned earlier, Spike recently told The Hollywood Reporter that his biggest career regret is ending the 1986 She’s Gotta Have It in that infamous date rape scene. Is the apology enough? His lack of compassion or empathy for black women is not unique to that singular picture. It’s a problem that has followed him on to other female characters — queer and straight alike — that he has written and directed. There’s also this surprisingly underreported, and deeply harrowing, testimony from Puerto Rican actress Rosie Perez about working with Lee during 1989’s Do the Right Thing. Considering this history, it’s worth asking when looking for authentic portrayals of black women on screen, why do we keep coming back to Spike Lee at all?
I don’t want to lose track of the black women whose voices also helped shape the Netflix version of She’s Gotta Have It. Spike co-produced the series with his wife, Tonya Lewis Lee, as well as the Pulitzer Prize and Tony award winning writer Lynn Nottage. Nottage also penned one of scripts for the first season, along with other female staff writers Joie Lee (Spike’s sister), Eisa Davis, and Radha Blank. He recruited Tatyana Fazlaizadeh as a consultant and the painter of Nola’s many pieces throughout the series. Like Nola, Fazlaizadeh is famous for her 2012 feminist street art campaign, “Stop Telling Women to Smile.” You can feel the fingerprints of these women’s work throughout. For example, Nola now has women friends to socialize with, unlike in the original film. I appreciated that Nola finds time for her mental and spiritual health, both with the aid of a therapist and via a Yoruba cleansing from a Santería spiritual healer. As a black Puerto Rican, the care taken in showcasing the Afro-Latinx religion is absolutely my favorite detail of the series.
Tatyana Fazlaizadeh and one of her most well known pieces, “Stop Telling Women To Smile” (2012)
But, Spike directed all ten episodes of the show. If the 2017 version of She’s Gotta Have It was in part about his repentance, then why not step aside? Still produce the series, but allow a young black woman to take the helm. What would this exact story have looked like through the eyes of a young black queer filmmaker like Lena Waithe, for example? Or Spike Lee’s former student, out director and writer Dee Rees? I think we’d be having a very different conversation right now.
Alaina: I like what you bring up about Lee’s attachment to the show. I think that’s what bothers me so much; his dedication to his work being his work. It’s almost as if he feels like he has a right to tell this story, and even though he brings on board lots of other black women, at the end of the day, he (a straight, black man) is the one who has the final say. Especially as this new Nola is describing herself as pansexual, I wonder why he felt the need to be so closely attached to it. Why not let other artists add something new to his work?
On the line of sexuality, I think part of what made this show fall short for me was a clear lack of perspective from actual black queer women. In the 1980s, Nola being an upper middle class black woman who was slept around felt radical and innovative to viewers, and in the remake, Nola’s pansexuality and polyamory is framed as what makes her radical. I have to believe that there were no queer women in the writers room, because had there been there’s no way that queerness would’ve been equated with radicalness. Because yes, being queer is fun and amazing, but it’s also regular as hell! The idea that queerness isn’t regular or normal has kept a lot of people in the closet for a long time, and Lee is furthering that misconception through his characterization of Nola.
I was also troubled by the way that Nola’s polyamory is attached with her queer identity because of the ways it furthered the idea that non-monosexual and non-monogamous folks don’t know what they want. While I appreciate this show for the way that it further fleshed out Nola’s life – I loved the new focus on her art and her friends – she still was a flat character. She consistently lacked boundaries with her friends and lovers, and was so busy trying to juggle the people that she was dating that she didn’t actually ever pay attention to what they wanted. This shit pissed me off! Polyamory takes so much work! People don’t date women because they want a self-care break from men! There wasn’t a person behind these sexualities, there was a stereotype, and that’s where I was most uncomfortable.
Carmen: So, I’m not polyamorous, and one of the reasons I’m not sure if polyamory would work for me is because, as you mentioned, it takes a lot of emotional and physical work. That wasn’t shown in the series at all. Nola is an incredibly selfish partner. I think it’s worth paying attention to the nuance between being a single woman who is casually dating multiple people at the same time (for lack of a better example, I’ll call this the “Carrie Bradshaw model”) and being polyamorous. She’s Gotta Have It conflates the two in ways that are absolutely damaging.
I wanted more of Opal and Nola together. She gets comparatively less screen time than Nola’s male partners. And I enjoyed Nola bonding with Opal’s daughter, Skylar. I think seeing more of their relationship would’ve helped Nola develop better boundaries and accountability practices; it also would’ve helped the series find some balance. While we’re talking about Nola’s romantic partners, I really think they should’ve also given Nola a trans or non-binary love interest. “Pansexuality” on television often means, “having only cis partners.” It’s time to break past that.
OPAAAAL!! I could’ve used a thousand percent more of you, girl.
If I’m being generous, I’d say that Spike Lee’s aesthetic choices are the strengths She’s Gotta Have It.
In particular, I’m interested that Lee took such care filming the gentrification of his hometown in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Arguably, Spike’s earlier movies are part of the reason that Fort Greene got gentrified in the first place! No one revels in the beauty of Brooklyn like he does. His sweeping shots of the Brooklyn Bridge still take my breath away every time. Films such as She’s Gotta Have It put the neighborhood in the bullseye of a lot of artists and those in the upper middle class who wanted live near “artist cred” without any of the accompanying grit. Women like Nola’s white neighbor Bianca. I sometimes wonder if Lee speaks better with a camera than a script. While a lot of the dialogue about gentrification in She’s Gotta Have It was stilted, I was impressed with his imagery choices, such as using the opening credits to juxtapose footage of the “new Fort Greene” with still photographs of the same neighborhood from the 1970s through 1990s. It’s a very specific, and perhaps overly narrow, view through which to explore black identity, but it’s one that really works for me.
I was also touched by the loving references to black culture, art, and music throughout the series. At one point, Nola spends a three-minute music break paying her respects to various black “heroes” — activists, artists, writers, and musicians — who are laid to rest in the city. In another five minute stretch, all action comes to a complete halt. The characters mourn the 2016 election of Donald Trump with black indie musician Stew’s “Klown Wit Da Nuclear Code” playing in the background (which, coincidentally, was probably my favorite moment in the entire show). Every single scene is punctuated with an album cover displaying the background music you were just listening to. Carrie Mae Weem’s “Kitchen Table Series” hangs in the office of Nola’s therapist. Nola tells her friends that she models her portraiture work after black artist Mickalene Thomas. I loved it all. I can be such a softie about these things!
Alaina: That Spike Lee aesthetic was everywhere. No spoilers, but I didn’t feel like I was actually watching a Spike Lee Joint until he used that dolly shot that he loves so much. It was a beautifully shot show and having black art be so central to it was definitely one of my favorite parts about it.
And now I’m gonna be negative Nancy. My least favorite part of the series was the way that Spike Lee dealt with poor women. One of Nola’s best friends is a character who grew up poor in Brooklyn, and unlike Nola, didn’t go to a fancy art school and have opportunities to culturally climb the socio-economic ladder. Shemekka is a single mom and a sex worker who, obviously, wants to be able to provide her daughter with the things she wants and needs in life. To do this, she decides to modify her body, and the way that Spike Lee dealt with those body modifications is a clear indication that he still doesn’t wholly believe that women have the right to do whatever they want with their bodies. While Nola got off easier in the series than she did in the movie, Shemekka gets the short end of the stick. Nola doesn’t honor her request when she asks if she can be painted with her weave in, and in the process of getting a body augmentation, she’s almost killed.
Shemekka (far left) hanging out with Nola after a dance class.
Shemekka is the show’s only representation of a poor black woman living in Brooklyn, and her desires are at best mocked; at worst, they almost kill her. It’s as if Spike Lee really doesn’t think that women, especially poor women, know what they want to be happy, and that it’s his job to teach them what they really want by showing what can go wrong when a woman attempts to change herself.
Lee had the opportunity to explore the exploitation that poor black women experience every day, especially those in sex work, and instead it felt like what happened to Shemekka was her fault. Like, if she’d only listened to her friends (all of whom are lighter skinned and wealthier than her), she could be happy. He furthered the misconception that poor black women don’t actually know how to handle their own lives. This sort of upper middle class black respectability politics bullshit makes me so angry. As if not getting ass implants will make society respect them more! And while Nola’s central storyline for the season gets wrapped up (unsatisfyingly, but wrapped nonetheless), we’re left wondering what’s going to happen to Shemekka, who is still poor, still living in the ghetto, and now jobless. For a show called She’s Gotta Have It it seems like Spike Lee worked hard to make sure that every “she” couldn’t have what they wanted. Poor black women shouldn’t be used as tools to teach a lesson, but that’s all they were used for, at least in this season.
Carmen: Wow. That is all so perfect. I… have nothing to add. Imagine a thousand “Praise Hand” emojis here.
Overall, She’s Gotta Have It is better than the original, but it — and Spike Lee — have work to do. What is it about feminism and self empowerment that’s so stressful to men? Until Spike is able to work out his insecurities about women who do what they want without the input of men, he’s not going to be able to successfully craft a well developed woman character. Here’s hoping that next season we get a Nola who knows what she wants and doesn’t have to navigate pleasing the men in her life to get it.
Black Queer Teenage Detective Comic “Goldie Vance” Is Gonna Be a Movie!
by rory midhani
Goldie Vance is a great book. It’s written by Hope Larson, one of the most successful writers in all of comics, working on books like Batgirl, Chiggers, Mercury and A Wrinkle in Time. Plus, it’s drawn by Brittney Williams, an artist who not only makes art that I love and that millions of others love to, but is a gosh dang wonderful person to be around. Soon it’s going to be a great movie. Boom! Studios, who publishes the comic, recently announced that Fox is developing a new movie, and potentially a family-friendly franchise of movies, based on the comic. This is the start of a brand new series of movies starring a Black queer teenage girl where she get’s to show off her intelligence and curiosity and heroic heart. This is exactly the kind of movie we need more of right now.
If you haven’t read Goldie Vance, you should! It’s about a 16-year-old girl detective (one of my favorite character types) in 1960’s Miami. Goldie is a Black mixed race girl, and lives in a resort hotel where she’s opened her own detective agency. In the comics, Goldie is queer, and hopefully that will translate into the film. She meets a girl named Diane, who’s a James Dean style cool kid, and instantly falls for her. I don’t see any reason why this part of the plot shouldn’t be in the movie series.
I talked to series artist Brittney Williams and she said that the movie franchise is going to be a great chance for queer brown girls to see themselves on screen. “I’m super excited for Goldie Vance! I’ve already seen the joy the comics bring kids, especially little brown girls. I can only imagine the positive effect it will have once it’s bought to the big screen. Our main character, Goldie is a brown queer girl who races cool cars and solves mysteries — that’s all I need in my life,” she said.
The Goldie Vance series of movies is being produced by Kerry Washington and adapted and directed by Rashida Jones. In a press release, Washington said “I’m ecstatic to be collaborating with Rashida and BOOM! Studios on telling this story. Fox is the perfect home for this project. Goldie Vance will steal your heart. She’s already stolen mine!” While Jones added, “Goldie is exactly the kind of fearless, curious, and funny heroine we need right now. I’m so honored to partner with Kerry Washington, BOOM! Studios, and FOX to bring her world to life.” Jones has previously co-written an episode of Black Mirror and the movie Celeste and Jesse Forever and has directed music videos including for Sara Bareilles’ hit “Brave.”
This is really awesome. I recently wrote about how the abuse of men coming to light is accomplishing two things. Not only are we weeding out predators and abusers, but also it’s opening up spots for women and marginalized groups to have more chances to make movies and TV. That’s important not just for those creators, but for audiences as well who are finally getting a chance to see people like them in and behind the art they see. While there’s no indication that the Goldie Vance movie is happening because of these scandals, it’s going to have similar results. Not only is the main character, Goldie a clever, hardworking, precocious and ingenious Black girl, and not only are many other of the main characters people of color, but with Washington producing and Jones directing, so are the people behind the movie. Young Black girls are going to have a whole series of chances to see new role models. All young girls are going to have a whole series of chances to see new role models.
New Releases (Dec 6)
Batgirl and the Birds of Prey Vol 2 Source Code TP
Harley & Ivy Meet Betty & Veronica #3
Jem & The Holograms Dimensions #1
My Little Pony Friendship is Magic #61
Faith’s Winter Wonderland Special #1
Femforce #180
Welcome to Drawn to Comics! From diary comics to superheroes, from webcomics to graphic novels – this is where we’ll be taking a look at comics by, featuring and for queer ladies. So whether you love to look at detailed personal accounts of other people’s lives, explore new and creative worlds, or you just love to see hot ladies in spandex, we’ve got something for you.
If you have a comic that you’d like to see me review, you can email me at mey [at] autostraddle [dot] com.