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Disney Pixar’s “Coco” Showed Me My Mexican Self On Screen Like Never Before

When my great uncle called me mija for the first time after I came out as trans. When my friend El asked if I had a quinceañera. When I saw myself in the mirror after being on hormones and I finally recognized my face as my own. When my friends threw me a quince last year. The first time someone told me I looked exactly like my mother. When I saw Coco. Until these moments I never knew that certain parts of me could be seen, even by myself. As I sat in the movie theater with my mother watching Coco I could feel every Mexican cell in my body light up. This movie isn’t just one of the most visually stunning things I’ve ever seen, it doesn’t just have fantastic writing that will make you laugh and cry and reach for your heart, and it doesn’t just feature some amazing Mexican-style songs that will surely be added to list of Disney classics — it’s also the first time some of these parts of Mexican culture have been highlighted and celebrated in an American movie of this size. It’s one of the best movies I’ve ever seen and it’s the biggest, clearest mirror I’ve ever looked into.

Coco has some similarities to the earlier film Book of Life. Both are about a person who wants to become a musician despite their family’s protests and goes on an adventure to the land of the dead where they make new connections with their family. In Coco, a young boy named Miguel (played by young actor Anthony Gonzalez) comes from a family that has forbidden all music because the matriarch’s husband left her to pursue his musical career. Miguel, however, has a passion for music — and for the “greatest musician in the world,” Ernesto de la Cruz — and this leads him to fight with his family and run off to the cemetery to find Ernesto de la Cruz’s guitar. When he discovers it and strums the strings on Día de los Muertos, he finds himself transformed into a spirit, and his ancestors take him to the land of the dead to try to get him back into his living form.

Mexicans love a clown, and that’s where Gael García Bernal as Héctor comes in. He acts as Miguel’s guide, and a local trickster and roguish clown who’s quick to put on a disguise or try to sweet talk himself in and out of trouble. As Héctor and Miguel travel through the land of the dead on a quest to meet de la Cruz, they bond over music and Héctor helps to teach Miguel about the importance of family and remembering where you came from. In Mexican culture, Día de los Muertos exists as a day when your dead ancestors can visit the land of the living and you can honor their memory and in that way keep them alive. When no one remembers them, they disappear forever. This is one of the driving forces in Coco and it’s something that’s such a huge part of my Mexican identity that the movie grabbed onto my heart in the opening minutes and never let go.

There’s nothing more important than family. This is something I’ve believed since I was young. This is something I’m reminded of every time I eat papas y chorizo and tamales on Christmas morning or I go to a family reunion with dozens and dozens of cousins or I look at the ofrenda set up in my grandma’s house for Día de los Muertos. Family is a huge part of many cultures, but the specific way Mexicans and Mexican-Americans connect with family and remember family is beautifully shown, and not only that, but celebrated, in this movie. It’s not about the younger generation realizing that the things his family holds dear don’t apply to him and they must accept that he’s throwing out his family’s traditions. It’s about that younger generation learning more about his family and the older generations learning more as well and all of them coming together to celebrate what makes the family a family and what makes each member unique and part of the whole.

The gritas and chorizo and chancla and alebrije and the abuelita insisting Miguel eat a few more tamales and the elotes and the “no manches” made me feel like I was on screen with my friends and family. There were references to Mexican culture and celebrities like Frida Kahlo, singer Pedro Infante and legendary luchador El Santo. Everyone in the film is Mexican. Everything in the film is Mexican. Everyone and everything is me. Is this what it feels like to be seen? Is what it feels like to finally see yourself on the big screen? It’s so rare that we see a mainstream American film that celebrates a non-white culture in this way. I’ve gotten so used to seeing white protagonists, and if there is a Latinx hero, seeing white people populate their world. This time I was fully immersed in my culture and it felt so comfortable. It’s like I had been sleeping in a bed my whole life but had never used a blanket and this was the first time someone tucked me in.

Coco reflected parts of me that were so hidden and personal that my heart recognized them long before my head did. Several times I found myself sobbing without knowing exactly why only to realize why the scene had hit me so hard a few minutes later. There was this moment when one of the characters starts singing the song “La Llorona” and I fell apart and never recovered. My name is Melínda Chavela Valdivia Rude. Chavela comes from Chavela Vargas, a lesbian singer from Costa Rica and Mexico who sang the most famous version of the song. My song was being sung. My name is Melínda Chavela Valdivia Rude. I chose Valdivia so my family, my grandfather, my tias and ancestors would never be forgotten. It is my name because it was theirs, and now it is mine. Watching Coco with my mother in a movie theater in Los Angeles with scores of other Mexicans I finally saw that message reflected back at me from a screen.

“195 Lewis” Is a Love Letter to Black, Queer Brooklyn

Pssst… Pssst… I’m here to tell you about your new binge streaming obsession!

The hot new web series 195 Lewis is set in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY and follows a close group of young queer black women as they navigate careers, love, sex, and friendship. Yuri, a painter with the best smile I’ve seen in a while, and Camille, a recent PhD grad, are working on mutual honesty as they explore the new polyamorous borders of their long-term relationship. Anne, Camille’s scene-stealing younger sister, and Kris, Yuri’s ex and old college friend, round out the central group. Other cast member pop in and out as needed, each more unique and memorable than the one before.

They enrich the tapestry of 195 Lewis almost as much as the purposefully chosen, bold colors that wash every carefully shot frame. Together they make for an effortlessly cool, gorgeously sexy, romantic dramedy that’s as much about sisterhood as it is about sex.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BbnRIndDsIN/?taken-by=195lewis

One of the most obvious comparisons for 195 Lewis is The L Word; they are both series that focus on the strength of queer female friendships and the ways we liiiiiiive and looooooove. Of course the fact that the most obvious comparison is over a decade old and with a primarily white cast is part of the problem that 195 Lewis is interested in solving. I would also compare it to Issa Rae’s HBO breakout hit Insecure, which has its own roots as a web series, The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl. But Rae has thus far been hesitant to include a queer or trans character in her show. The stories of queer black young women all too often fall through the crevices of intersectionality in our media. At its best, 195 Lewis feels like a balm for those wounds.

These women smoke blunts without judgement and make art as they love on each other fiercely. They support each other’s ambitions and dreams. Their language mirrors how I talk with my own friends: a mixed up stew peppered with equal parts slang and academic or activist jargon. They are firm, but gentle. Their relationships feel rooted. The show itself is incredibly addictive. I started it and before I knew it, I looked up and realized that I’d already completed the entire five-episode first season!

Part of that addiction is masterfully manipulated by out queer black director Chanelle Aponte Pearson. Pearson considers herself new to film directing, but I’m here to tell you that she will quickly become a hotly sought after talent. A lot of attention has been paid lately to the ways that black skin is lit on camera, with people drawing from the excellent work of cinematographers Bradford Young, Ava Berkofsky, or director Ava Duvernay. With the rich hues of 195 Lewis, Pearson is well suited to join that exclusive cohort. Her use of color, switching between natural lighting during the day and effective use of the bright artificial neons of New York City at night, is captivating to the eye.


As a guerrilla-style intimate love letter to blackness, Pearson’s work also reminds me of late 1980s and early ’90s era Spike Lee, or at least it would if Lee had ever correctly figured out his feminism.

It’s not a coincidence that I bring up Lee. One his most iconic films of the 1980s, She’s Gotta Have It, happens to also be — as feminist critic bell hooks argues — one of the most glaring examples in modern cinema of toxic male gaze and its relationship to black female protagonists. I don’t always agree with hooks, but her argument is worth paying attention to in the current moment. Despite its checkered past, the movie has been updated and just debuted Thanksgiving weekend as a television series on Netflix, thus far to warm reviews.

Still, I think time would be better spent watching Pearson’s work instead. Like the best of what Lee has to offer, 195 Lewis is unapologetically black and memorably stylish. The costuming, hair, and music are all cutting edge. Fly with a few extra “yyyyyy’s” at the end. However unlike the legacy of Lee’s work, Pearson never loses track of the agency and full potential of her female protagonists.

As a matter of humor, the third episode of 195 Lewis, “Femme Brunch” is a stand out. Anne brings Kris as a guest to a revolving undercover brunch series. Of course Anne, who decidedly doesn’t identify as femme, didn’t mention to Kris that one of her reasons for crashing the femme-only event was to play the field.

While the women downstairs are having a heated discussion about the usefulness of sex positivity in building community, Anne is busy upstairs hooking up with one of the attendees. She licks her lips like LL Cool J and bats her eyes low, trying to work her baby swag for all its worth. She even pulls out the soft pack dildo that she keeps in her backpack for moments like this. After all, as she says with a wink, one should “never leave home without it.”

Unfortunately, for all of Anne’s “player” preparation, she forgot the girl’s name! Her hook up leaves Anne, mouth agape, standing there with her literal dick in her hands.

Later in the series, Anne’s discussion with her older sister Camille about having possibly contracted an STI is handled with equal amounts of honesty and humor. In the fifth and final episode, a character breaks down what she considers to be The Five Kinds of Lesbians for the black queer community. I may take issue with some of the characterizations, but dammit if I ain’t a Beyoncé Femme in my everyday life (except I am by no means a pillow princess and I can cook! Thank you very much). They are really on to something. The show also gets massive bonus points for a perfectly timed Bette Porter call out when it matters most.

More than anything, 195 Lewis feels lived-in and real. Pearson describes the process of making the series as community oriented, and I believe that praxis really jumps on to the screen as well. One of their strengths is their grassroots production. Pearson reached out to community members who are not traditionally trained in film, but have passion to see their stories on screen and the drive to help in the process. Together, they lovingly crafted 195 Lewis into reality.

Pearson told the website No Film School that one of the strongest examples of this was the show’s music choices. She recounts, “A really good and dear friend of mine, Ryann Holmes, is the co-founder of Bklyn Boihood, which is a collective based in Brooklyn… I just reached out to Ryann, knowing she has her ear to really talented artists… She came through with an amazing list of artists whose work is now featured in the show. All the musicians are folks of color, queer folks of color, trans folks of color. The music is truly reflective of the community”.

That sentiment of community ethos is echoed by show co-creator Rae Leone Allen. She reflected to Broadly, “we love our community and we wanted to see that depicted.” I think they nailed the mark.

I lived in Brooklyn for most of my 20s. I’ve flirted in house parties and fundraisers identical to the ones depicted in 195 Lewis, parties that were often hosted by Ryann Holmes’ Bklyn Boihood. I have brought the extra mimosa supplies to these brunches. Like Kris, I viscerally remember the pain of walking up freezing cold Fulton Street looking for Lewis Ave. It feels like miles when you are carrying heavy bags and can’t find the address on your phone. My first apartments had the same brownstone stoops and white column detailing as the ones we see on screen. The A/C Train, a major thoroughfare in and out of Bed-Stuy, was my daily commute. Hell, I even recognized some of my old acquaintances as background extras throughout the series.

When I watched 195 Lewis last weekend, I admittedly struggled wrangling my intense feelings of familiarity, nostalgia, and longing away from a more unbiased critical viewpoint to write this review. What I can say, with the utmost love, is that this series feels like Brooklyn. It feels like the Brooklyn that raised me and protected me as a young woman. It feels like Sisterhood. It’s funny and smart and bright and challenging.

It feels like home.

You can stream the entire first season of 195 Lewis at 195Lewis.com.

Holigay Gift Guide: Support These Indie POC Designers

What’s that I hear? That sounds like the early rings of black Santa’s sleigh bells. This can only mean a few things: I’m about to drink entirely too much egg nog over the next 40 days; I’m going to play these little known TLC Christmas songs on repeat; and it’s time for the annual Autostraddle Holigays Gift Guide!

I am so excited to be sharing this guide! According to the National Retail Federation, Americans spend a little over $500 on average in gifts during the winter holidays. I’m here to show you awesome ways that you can spend some of that money supporting independent designers, artists, and makers of color.

Even when you want to support indie artists, finding the right folks who match your gift list wants or needs can be a bit like finding a needle in a haystack. I save links all year in a folder on my desktop. To help us, I used that as my base, and then asked the Autostraddle team members of color to chime in. Then I curated our combined lists and am confident that you will find more than a few items on it to love as much as we do.

Did I mention that with only a few exceptions, everything on this list is under $45? Normally I am a firm believer that Holiday shopping starts after Thanksgiving, but a lot of indie shops need longer shipping times. This is a situation when earlier is better. No more delays. Let’s do this!

(An * before an item or shop name indicates the the shop is queer-owned, in addition to being POC owned)

Exciting Make Up & and Brilliant Skin Care!

[1] The Lip Bar Lipstick in Merlot made by The Lip Bar ($12.00). [2] The Masquerade Eyeshadow Palette at Juvia’s Place ($28.99). [3] Moonflower Nail Polish in Del Mar ($12.00, proceeds benefit Hurricane Maria Puerto Rican relief efforts). [4] Total Control Nail Polish at Ginger+Liz ($12.00). [5] In Grind We Trust Clay Mask at Foxie Bombs ($25.00). [6] Basil & Grapefruit Sugar Body Polish at Pooka ($22.00)

Sure, you could buy MAC or Urban Decay. But women of color owned businesses have been killing the game lately making high quality, on trend make up. This list of beauties are loaded with pigment guaranteed to pop against all skin tones. As a bonus, products like Detroit’s The Lip Bar and Brooklyn’s Ginger+Liz are vegan friendly! Ginger+Liz make their formulas free of the harsh chemicals common in mainstream nail polish without sacrificing quality. The Lip Bar’s lipsticks are enriched with shea butter, avocado oil, coconut oil, and vitamin E for maximum moisture. On top of all that, Puerto Rican owned Moonflower’s limited edition “Del Mar” will support Hurricane Maria relief.

Maybe make up isn’t your gal pal’s thing. That’s ok, I still have you covered! Everyone deserves some good skin pampering. Try this rich, nourishing clay mask enriched with cocoa and coffee beans or a classic body scrub in gender neutral scents.

T-Shirts & Tanks with Messages That Get into Your Heart

I love a good Statement Tee. They let people know who I am and what I’m about. You can’t judge a book by it’s cover, but we all know that lasting impressions are a real thing. These shirts want to help you stick the landing.

One of my favorites is the small cursive print “F*** Columbus” shirt from Salsa For President, an indie web-shop hailing from our very own Senior Editor Yvonne’s hometown. I adore the graphic on this Trans is Beautiful tee that has been burning up my Instagram feed for months. Sales from the brand go to the Work Those Pecs Transgender Fund, which financially supports trans men, trans women, and gender non-conforming folx as they wade through the financial costs of hormone treatments, surgeries, and fees associated with ID changes. There’s also this cute t-shirt (not pictured) promoting a motto that I personally live by: Black Girls Are the Purest Form of Art.

Cozy Sweatshirts That Are About That Life

[1] ÑY is Nueva York Sweatshirt at Peralta Project ($45.00, they also make this Celia Cruz shirt that I have been craving forever). [2] *Fist of Solidarity Sweatshirt at Malaika ($25). [3] Paris is Burning Sweatshirt at Philadelphia Print Works ($35, they also make a “Ningún Ser Humano es Ilegal” sweatshirt with proceeds benefitting Immigration Reform). [4] Audre Lorde “School of Thought” Collegiate sweatshirt also at Philadelphia Print Works ($40, and may I recommend these Harriet Tubman and Octavia Butler sweatshirts as well?)

I quite literally love all of these! I’d be pleased as punch to see any of them under my metaphorical Christmas tree and you have someone in your life who will feel the same.

Full disclosure, I already own the Audre Lorde sweatshirt. The central graphic is designed to look like a classic college alma mater logo, and graduating from the School of Lorde is definitely something that I think all feminists can aspire to. I want to buy each of my friends that Paris is Burning sweatshirt. Splayed across the front are the Drag Houses featured in the iconic documentary, highlighting New York City’s drag and trans communities of color in the late 1980s and early ‘90s.

Clutches and Totes To Put Your Most Important Shit In

I own so many tote bags that a moratorium has been placed on them in my house. I can’t help it! They carry anything from groceries to books — yay, BOOKS! — to my laptop. They are also lightweight and infinitely customizable. Who wouldn’t look badass with GRL TRBL’s “Dangerous Women Read Books” tote hanging off their shoulder while they run Saturday errands? My dangerous mujeres out there will probably feel equally smitten with that “Peligrosa” tote while we are at it.

If large bags really aren’t your thing, clutches to the rescue! A casual clutch has the same lightweight benefits of a tote, and having one in my hand always makes me feel so elegant.

Powerful Jewelry and Dapper Accessories!

Filipina owned Native Sol focuses on handmade earrings and accessories that use consciously sourced and sustainable materials. When possible she upcycles and re-purposes vintage or discarded items. And her work is gorgeous!

I’d personally never turn down flashy earrings featuring an icon like Grace Jones. I’m also of the mindset that butch babes across the gender spectrum look striking in bowties and I’d bet many of my masculine-of-center Latinx fam would know exactly how to highlight a dope accessory detail like a “Bad Hombre” money clip.

ETC, ETC, ETC!

Buttons, posters, housewares, and accessories! This list was once DOUBLE what you see here. So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to highlight a few items that aren’t pictured, but I just know in my heart would make great presents. Such as this tribute poster to our trans elder Sylvia Rivera-  one of many stunning posters designed by out artist Angélica Becerra– or this sticker that reminds you to Protect the Black Women & Black Femmes in your life.

There’s also this Rainbow Pride Poster that will happily decorate your best friend’s living room and is handmade by an artist in El Salvador. This Basquiat Poster feels you when you’re a person of color and the days get tough. And these Selena and Beyoncé themed votive prayer candles are going to make someone you know very happy, just saying.

OK. Going back to the gorgeous collage above, I cannot wait to lean over a kitchen counter with my Chisme mug and hear all the latest gossip. Grace Lee Boggs was an Asian-American activist and labor organizer whose life’s work should never be forgotten. And I love that Tarah, the artist behind that beautiful yellow & orange wall hanging, is a friend of Staff Writer Kayla Kumari. I’m excited to support her and keep it in the family!

Things for Kiddos

[1] Native Baby Onesie at The NTVS ($16). [2] Black Lives Matter Onesie at LoveLttrs4Liberation ($20, proceeds from sale of these onesies benefit community charities at discretion of the artist). [3] Support the Dreams of Young Girls of Color Poster at NalgonaPositiveShop ($12). [4] Fly Nerd Youth Tee at Fly Nerd Apparel ($15). [5] Todo es Posible Shirt at La Chica ($10)

I’ll be real with you: I’m not always the best with kids. I love them with my whole heart, but sometimes I worry that I won’t know how to cope with their specific needs and concerns. That said, I have made it my goal to be the Cool Aunt in my kiddos’ life, and that starts with outfitting them in fly gear. I loved buying my nephew Wu-Tang Clan and Notorious B.I.G. Onesies, and while I couldn’t find those specific items for this gift guides, I feel confident that these kid friendly clothes make for excellent alternatives.

… And a Lil’ Bit of Luxury to Round Us Out

Sometimes you have a little extra coin to spend. May I recommend spending some of it on these designers? I have been a follower of designer and plus size fashion influencer Gabi Gregg since she was a blogger going by the moniker “Gabi Fresh” in the late ‘00s. Premme, her new line with out queer fashionista Nicolette Mason, is at the top of my Christmas List.

The RISE Collective is a jewelry company founded by Mei Elizabeth Tan, a Cambodian-American woman whose family was enslaved in Cambodian labor camps. She envisions her Signature Survivor Cuff as a symbol in the fight for freedom against modern day slavery. Proceeds from the purchase of the cuff help provide food, education, and medical supplies to children of survivors.

We Lost One of TV’s Most Important Lesbian Characters When “Survivor’s Remorse” Got Axed

We lost an important lesbian character on television in October.

No, she didn’t die. But we lost her all the same.

Mary Charles Calloway, played by actress Erica Ash, was a force of nature from the premiere episode of Survivor’s Remorse up until it’s very last. Mary Charles, better known to her family and friends as M-Chuck was the older sister of the show’s protagonist, Cam Calloway.

Survivor’s Remorse followed Cam as he grappled with his sudden stardom after signing a multi-million-dollar contract with a fictional NBA team in Atlanta. Cam’s fortified by a small network of family and friends, including M-Chuck, as together they navigated the pitfalls of race, stardom, wealth, and community responsibility. The cast was rounded out by black comedy legends Tichina Arnold as Cam’s mother, Cassie, and Mike Epp’s as his Uncle Julius.

The brilliance of Survivor’s Remorse laid in its deceptively simple premise. Despite my brief description above, it was not really a sports comedy. It used sports as a launching pad. Instead of succumbing to tired clichés of bling and boobs, Survivor’s Remorse was witty, dark family comedy unafraid to push the envelope in terms of content, style, and tone. The show was a brainchild of actor and writer Mike O’Malley (yes, Kurt’s Dad from Glee) and attracted young black talent in the writing room as well as respected black directors such as Debbie Allen and Salli Richardson Whitfield. Did I mention that it was Executive Produced by LeBron James? Despite being less well-known than its peers, Survivor’s Remorse enjoyed high critical praise over the course of its four seasons. Still, it was unceremoniously cancelled by Starz due to low ratings, airing its final episode with little warning to fans on October 15th.

Survivor’s Remorse is an odd name for a comedy. On first read, it feels most applicable to Cam leaving behind his impoverished black community in Boston and his subsequent difficulty adjusting to newfound affluence in Atlanta. However, with time, each member of his family has their own survival tale.

M-Chuck is introduced as delightfully profane, crude, foul-mouthed. She’s undeniably charismatic and funny. She’s also fiercely protective of her brother, even when his fame sucks all of the air out of the room. She’s always on the prowl. In fact, she’s a womanizer. If The L Word’s Shane was black 20something with blonde highlights and thick Boston accent, she would still find competition in M-Chuck. In later seasons, we watch as she copes with the intergenerational trauma of her mother’s rape that resulted in her conception. You’re not going to find another character like her on television.

M-Chuck doesn’t exist solely on the sidelines. She’s connected to her family and most of the core plot lines. She also has her own separate character development. Even though M-Chuck is perpetually single, the show never brushes aside that she’s gay. Her revolving conquests are running joke of the series, often opening up space for multilayered political commentary. In season two, while the Calloways tour a Georgia plantation, M-Chuck beds the white actress playing a slave owner. At a time when narratives persist that homophobia is somehow worse in people of color communities than those of our white peers, her family unconditionally loves her.

In the show’s first season, the Calloways are looking for a new home church for their family after moving to Atlanta. M-Chuck brings her current girlfriend of the moment along, holding her hand and gently rubbing her thigh while they sit together in the pews. After the service, the minister approaches Cam and explains that while his sister is welcome to join the family in church, her gayness is not. The Calloways balk at the suggestion, first attempting to find middle ground with the minister and hoping to make the church more inclusive. The following Sunday, matters become more extreme. The minister’s sermon becomes a vitriolic anti-LGBT hate tirade. In response, M-Chuck stands up, yelling, and throws the Bible and church hymnals. She’s livid and willing to go down fighting if it means protecting her own humanity. The ensuing calamity is hilarious, but it’s also poignant to watch as the entire family stand by her side. They leave the church together, recognizing that if one of them isn’t welcome, then truly none of them are.

Throughout the third season, M-Chuck sees a therapist to help with her rage. As a result of these sessions, she begins to question her origin story. Cam’s father is incarcerated and rarely spoken of, but M-Chuck has never met her father at all. She starts by gently prodding her resistant mother, eventually getting her join along in therapy. In the third season finale, we learn a tragic family secret. As a teenager, Cassie was raped by three boys at a party. She is unsure which of those men “fathered” M-Chuck and has pushed the unspeakably painful night far from her memory. Erica Ash and Tichina Arnold are nothing short of a gift as they uncover new layers behind Cassie and M-Chuck following the revelation.

In the show’s post-mortem, Mike O’Malley discussed that he saw M-Chuck coming to terms her birth story as part and parcel of her settling into a long-term relationship. He expected Survivor’s Remorse to continue for another season or two and M-Chuck’s future would’ve included “being in a happy relationship, a committed relationship where she settled down… She would have been a great mom.” I agree that she would have been, but it’s a future we will never see. Survivor’s Remorse wasn’t perfect. It lost a certain spark following the death of a central character in the second season. In later seasons, the show — which was always a dramedy — leaned towards the dramatic with mixed results. But, it certainly had more story left to tell and I am saddened we will never get to experience it.

The importance of M-Chuck’s existence as a lesbian character on a primarily black television show cannot not be overstated. Most queer women of color on TV exist in white spaces. Take Kat Edison on The Bold Type or Pretty Little Liar’s Emily Fields as highlighted examples. While The Bold Type and Pretty Little Liars have developed a loyal queer fan base, both of these women are the only woman of color in their social circle. They, and the majority of other queer women of color on television, occupy a position that borders on tokenism. Though Kat is currently dating Adena El-Amin and Emily previously dated Maya St. Germain, both women of color, neither of these love interests were added to the main cast of their respective television shows. This is not necessarily reflective of the ways that queer women of color move through everyday lives. Many queer women of color live and love in majority people of color communities, places they aren’t the only black or brown friend and were conversations are not defaulted back to central whiteness.

In season four, Cassie begins a weekly live video podcast. In one episode, the broadcast is usurped by Cam’s girlfriend Allison, who wishes to talk about class and social discrimination internal to the black community. Despite Cassie’s protests of going off topic, M-Chuck joins in. She adds that black homophobia contributes to black queer folks feeling isolated from their community at large. When the podcast’s engineer points out that white people are also guilty of homophobia, M-Chuck concedes the point but also notes that white people are auxiliary to the conversation at hand. When Cassie tries once again to reroute the discussion back to the week’s scheduled topic, M-Chuck will not be deterred. She wraps up the debate, “If we are all a part of one big black community, a lot of us hate a lot of other of us.”

The conversation showcasing multi-dimensional black thought, and questions of isolation or not feeling “black enough”, is one that a lot black people are familiar with. It’s smart and nuanced. It’s also a conversation that fundamentally could not be filtered through a white lens. It could not exist on a television show that wasn’t like this.

Having black queer characters on a television show like Survivor’s Remorse not only allows for greater depth in conversations on screen. It also means that black audiences and young black queer people who won’t necessarily find their home watching The Bold Type, Pretty Little Liars, or Wynonna Earp still get to see themselves. A USA Today backed-analysis of 2017 Nielsen television audience data found that no single program ranked in the same top five among white, black, Asian, and Latinx viewing audiences. It matters that representation is found across all platforms, that it can reach as many people as possible. Whoever you are, and whatever stories you choose to consume, you should have an opportunity to see yourself.

In many ways, we are in the middle of an exciting time for black diversity on television. Comedies like Black-ish, Atlanta, and Insecure, along with dramas like Queen Sugar, are garnering critical praise. Black led primetime soaps such as Scandal and Empire have found mainstream ratings success. Combining network television and cable, there are more black-led shows on air right now than at any other point in the last 20 years.

Which brings me to the question: How may black queer women have been granted a central role into this new wave of television renaissance? How many black queer characters are even regularly seen on television right now, across the board? Orange is the New Black murdered Poussey Washington and constantly leaves both Suzanne Warren and Sophia Burset in peril; Sense8 gave us Amanita Caplan over two seasons before being cancelled by Netflix; Queen Sugar’s Nova Bordelon’s queerness has thus far withered into nothing but a blip in its second season; Starz’s other black television mainstay Power murdered its lesbian character Jukebox, played by Anika Noni Rose, just last summer. Black-ish’s lesbian aunt, played by out actress Raven Symoné, only shows up roughly once a year. While Empire has a black gay lead in Jussie Smollett’s Jamal, they completely sidelined their black lesbian character Freda Gatz and murdered Naomi Campbell’s black bisexual Camilla Marks-Whiteman. Denise on Master of None is used incredibly effectively, but admittedly sparingly. M-Chuck was a member of an incredibly tiny, and rapidly shrinking, cohort.

When asked about the possibility of including a black LGBT character on her show Insecure, Issa Rae remarked, “it’s just about figuring out the right way to do that… There’s so many topics we wanted to explore but, at the end of the day, we are just trying to tell a good story without anything feeling forced.” I’m not singling out Rae; she’s certainly not the first showrunner to make such a response. The problem is that LGBT storylines, and black LGBT storylines in particular, are still considered special or exceptional cases. We’re rarely given the opportunity to be seen on television as the everyday people we are in our regular lives. It’s simply not unfathomable that Issa Rae’s millennial black single girl living in Los Angeles would have at least one black gay or trans friend. Anymore than it was unfathomable for Cam Calloway to have a gay sister named M-Chuck.

And last month she was forced out with barely a whimper. Which is both ironic and upsetting for character who was absolutely always nothing short of a bang.

How Queer and Trans Women Are Healing Each Other After Hurricane Harvey

Friends and fans call lesbian freestyle poet Tiffany Scales the “Wordmatician” for how she manipulates words like a mathematician manipulates numbers and formulas. I watched her perform at a black box theater in downtown Houston a few weeks after Hurricane Harvey devastated the city and displaced thousands of Texans, including Scales. She had lost everything in her apartment. Like many LGBT Houstonians, Scales has been forced to find innovative ways to heal and recover after Hurricane Harvey. Her chosen way is this — her art.

“What art does for me in this space,” she begins, pausing, searching, then finally settling on: “This is why I get out of bed.”

As we chat backstage after the performance, Scales hugs friends as they approach and calls them baby and darling. An attendee tells Scales her performance was beautiful and says he’ll add her on Facebook.

“I don’t think there’s a prescription that could be sufficient to the healing than art does,” she adds.

Scales is part of The T.R.U.T.H. Project, an organization dedicated to empowering and educating LGBTQ communities of color and their allies through performance art. I met her after “Strength: After the Rain,” a spoken word, dance, visual art and music show benefiting T.R.U.T.H. Project Members impacted by Hurricane Harvey. T.R.U.T.H. CEO Kevin Anderson hoped the show would “begin healing” for the artists and community both.

The T.R.U.T.H Project artist lineup. Photo by Yvonne Marquez

The T.R.U.T.H. Project lineup consisted of all artists of color and almost all Houston natives. They included dancers Lathasia Collins, Loren Holmes, Damion Sam and Cedric Hicks; Mexican-American poet Cristina Martinez and award-winning poet Marie Brown; singer Rechatter Brady and artist Abiola Wabara who painted live on the stage during the show. The black box theater at the Midtown Arts and Theater Center was an intimate setting for the almost 70 people (mostly people of color) who attended the show.

The Weather Channel called Hurricane Harvey a “truly historic hurricane.” It dumped record-breaking rainfall in Southeast Texas, making landfall on Aug. 25 as a Category 4 storm near Rockport, Texas, and eventually weakening into a tropical storm that circled over Southeastern Texas until Aug. 30. 19 trillion gallons of water fell along the Gulf Coast, enough to cover the entire states of Alaska, California and Texas with an inch of water.

“Meteorologically, southeast Texas, at the time, was pretty much a giant stop sign,” Jonathan Belles, a meteorologist with Weather.com told the Houston Chronicle. “There were two high pressure systems that wouldn’t let Harvey move in any direction. So for three or four days, Harvey pretty much sat there and dumped rain.” What made Harvey a unique storm was that it was stalled out with part of its body hanging out on the coast and the other part on land, which meant it “acted like a conveyer bell pulling water out,” Bernhard Rappenglueck, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Houston told the Houston Chronicle.

The Houston area specifically saw upwards of 50 inches of rainfall, reaching Houston’s annual rain average of 49.77 inches in just a few days. Thousands were forced to evacuate, and many were rescued by the Texas National Guard, the U.S. Coast Guard, Houston Police, Harris County Sheriff’s Department, and even private citizens on boats. AccuWeather estimates that Harvey caused $190 billion in damages including disruptions to businesses, increased rates of unemployment, damage to infrastructure, crop losses, property damage and higher fuel prices.

Scales has lived in Houston for 21 years and has witnessed two of the Gulf Coast’s worst hurricanes — Hurricane Rita in 2005 and Hurricane Ike in 2008. After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans a few weeks earlier, anxiety over Rita, potentially a Category 5 hurricane, inspired Houston-area residents to evacuate en masse, thus causing the city’s worst-ever traffic jam. Scales sat on Highway 290 for eight hours before giving up and returning home to wait out the storm instead. Hurricane Rita eventually made landfall as a Category 3 and was responsible for $12 billion in total damages. Hurricane Ike was a Category 2, the third-costliest Atlantic hurricane ever, with a $37.6 billion price tag. Scales’ apartment at the time suffered water damages and she lost electricity for three weeks. Still, these experiences made her skeptical of evacuation and preparation measures recommended before Harvey.

Scales’ mother urged her to wait out the storm at her home in Sienna Plantation, a subdivision in Missouri City, southwest of Houston. Scales only packed a couple days worth of clothes thinking she’d be back soon. She ended up staying at her Mom’s for nearly a week, sleeping and waiting for the rain to stop and the floodwaters to recede.

On Thursday morning the roads cleared, and she returned to her job as a customer pickup coordinator at FedEx, planning to check on her one-bedroom apartment in Webster on her lunch break.

Tiffany Scales performing at “Strength After the Rain.” Photograph by Dalton DeHart.

When she did, she was met with a bleak and confusing scene. The curbs were littered with soggy couches, playpens, cribs, dressers and coffee tables, but there wasn’t any water in sight. While pulling into her designated parking spot in front of her unit, she noticed her windows were open and worried she’d been robbed. Later, she’d learn they’d been opened by apartment management without her permission, supposedly to prevent the smell of mildew.

Her first step into her first floor apartment was into a puddle of water. Everything was wet: furniture, photos, poems, journals, her shoes. The water lines on her walls marked the flood waters at a foot and a half.

Soon enough, the dehumidifiers provided by the apartment management to dry out her house would flood her house again — her apartment sink was too shallow for the water the dehumidifier’s hose was picking up. Despite her home being waterlogged, contaminated by the floodwaters, smelling like mold, and filled with dirt, she couldn’t completely clean it up until after her Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, inspection. She didn’t want to risk being denied disaster assistance by making things look better than they were.

FEMA assistance generally helps cover rent for up to two months as well as some home repairs, which depends on exactly how much of your primary living space was damaged. Personal property like eyeglasses and dentures are sometimes covered, too. One person for each household applies online, on the phone or in person at designated recovery centers, supplying information on their household income and insurance information as well as describing the extent of damages. Once you apply, a FEMA inspector makes a visit, gets proof of ownership, and submits their report.

Scales says applying for FEMA assistance was stressful. “It’s so much red tape,” she says. “Some of the questions could be simplified. If you read something the wrong way, you throw your chances out of the window.”

The inspection, when it came two weeks after the storm, offered only bad news. The inspector told Scales to find another place to live because the apartment management could probably only afford “to paint over the mold.” In total, FEMA gave her $500 for immediate necessities. She used the funds to clean up her apartment and throw away debris. Luckily for Scales and other displaced employees, her employer, FedEx, provided them with temporary hotel accommodations. She lived at a La Quinta Inn and Suites for a month before moving into a short-term lease apartment.

For both the performers and the audience, the T.R.U.T.H. Project event was a much-needed space to process the aftermath of the traumatic event together. Unlike past performances, this one wasn’t meticulously planned or even rehearsed, it was meant to be organic and raw — for the emotions of the artists to dictate how the audience experienced the show. Anderson predicted the show would make the audience laugh and cry in equal measure. He was right. At one point he asked the audience to get up from our seats and we had a couple minutes to exchange handshakes or hugs with as many strangers we could. The room instantly brightened with smiling faces and lively chatter.

The stage was also ripe for processing, grieving and coming to terms with the aftermath of a natural disaster. Before the performance began, Anderson pointed out the mental health professional they’d brought in, telling the audience she was available for chats with any individual who needed to step out and talk during the show.

Kayenne Nebula performing and Tiffany Scales holding her 6-month-old goddaughter, Nova.

“What’s important to me with the T.R.U.T.H. project is how [Anderson] always makes sure that mental health is on the frontlines,” Scales said. “There’s always at least someone to talk to [at performances] because we do spark feelings and emotions and memories or things that have not been dealt with — even in ourselves, as the artists.”

Spoken word artist and New Orleans native Kayenne Nebula stepped to the mic in a long flowy dress with a watercolor-like print of an orange flower surrounded by swirling blues and yellows, and two large disc earrings reading “Wisdom is Wealth” on one side with a blue face on the other.

She asked Scales, a trusted friend, to sit beside her while she performed. Nebula recalled how Scales was the first person to encourage Nebula to perform at the T.R.U.T.H. Project and ensured her it was a safe space to share. Nebula wanted to draw strength from Scales in order to share a new piece about Hurricane Katrina. Scales sat in a chair, holding Scales’ 6-month-old goddaughter, Nova.

Nebula snapped the entire room into attention with her booming voice, singing, “Wade in the water, wade in the water…”, before launching into a poem recounting the injustices her community faced after Katrina, which for her included losing two family members. Her story eerily paralleled the experiences of Houstonians after Harvey.

Nebula was crying by the end of her performance, and when she returned to her seat, the other artists crowded around her, enveloping her in a big group hug.

It’s extra challenging for LGBT Houstonians to navigate and recover after a hurricane when organizations and government resources aren’t culturally competent or empathetic to LGBT people and issues, Alex Mackzum, a lesbian grant writer for Houston’s LGBT center, told me. After Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Ike, the Montrose Center heard of cases where emergency and response services disregarded nontraditional family structures which led to queer families being separated during a rescue. They also heard of cases where queer and trans people were arrested at shelters for using facilities that matched their gender. Some were given clothes that didn’t match their gender identity, leaving them to remain in the dirty, wet clothes they’d came in. In other cases, response services aren’t aware of the medical necessity of HIV regimens or hormone therapy, often difficult to obtain during a natural disaster. Mackzum says that’s why the Montrose Center was quick to set up a LGBT disaster relief fund to allocate resources dedicated to their community’s recovery efforts.

“The center fills the gap between what it is already offered as a resource and the needs of the LGBTQ community because existing organizations and structures were built without consideration for that population.” Mackzum told me.

In the days and weeks following Harvey’s destruction, Montrose Center volunteers and employees got the ball rolling, providing inclusive direct response services to their community. The food pantry fed 257 individuals across 100 different households while case managers hit the phones to check in with their clients.

After the floodwaters receded, the Center had 20 teams of volunteers help clean and clear out community members’ homes — a huge undertaking for anyone or one family to do alone. When a home floods in a warm, humid climate like Houston, water-saturated walls and floors quickly develop mold, a noted health hazard. The water itself is contaminated by sewage and toxins that make people sick. So everything the water touches must go. There are carpets to rip out, sheetrock to remove, damaged furniture to move to the curb, important papers and photos to throw away. Then there’s the FEMA applications, private insurance claims and other disaster aid paperwork — the Center helps clients navigate that overwhelming project, too.

The Montrose Center is now focusing their efforts on long-term recovery. They raised about $750,000 for their disaster relief fund made possible by online donations and private foundations, which Mackzum says will all go toward helping LGBT Houstonians rebuild their homes, pay off insurance deductibles, repair cars and pay moving deposits. Families or individuals can apply for financial assistance for up to $1,000 with an option to apply for a larger sum based on needs. As of Oct. 18, they’ve had 480 online applications for disaster relief.

“We’re still rebuilding, even when we stop receiving news coverage,” Mackzum told me. “What we’re doing here is ensuring the long-term sustainability of a culture, a people, and a city.”

Among the most vulnerable populations affected by the hurricane were undocumented trans and queer people. Without proper identification, undocumented immigrants are not eligible for government assistance allocated for natural disaster victims. For example, FEMA requires a social security number, a checking account and insurance information from applicants, things an undocumented immigrant is unlikely to have, especially if they’re trans. Organización Latina de Trans en Texas (OLTT), a grassroots organization funded by the community and led by undocumented trans Latinas, are plowing forward to survive and taking care of their own after the storm.

Ana Andrea Molina

Ana Andrea Molina, the undocumented trans Latina from Matamoros, Mexico who founded the organization, is a true chingona. (That’s Spanish for “badass.”) She created the organization following an incident at an event put on by a Latino organization that proclaimed it was pro-LGBTQ in January 2015, where attendees denied Molina and her friend’s female identities as well as access to the public women’s restroom.

Molina was livid, and quickly created a Facebook video talking about the incident, which inspired more trans friends to reach out with their own stories of similar experiences.

In March 2015, Molina set up a lunch meeting with a group of friends to discuss the situation and what they could do about it, and invited them to bring at least one or two other trans friends to join in.

Molina expected 15 or so participants. 50 undocumented trans women showed up.

Some had traveled from as far as two hours away, from surrounding areas in College Station and Bryan, Texas. The women described their experiences with discrimination, transphobia and racism. The meetings became monthly.

A year after their first meeting, their socially-organized group became an official nonprofit. They opened a small office in Houston with with two rooms, one for a couple of computers and another one for the receptionist desk. Molina says it was a very small space but the trans woman who came to their meetings didn’t mind. They would crowd in and even make themselves comfortable on the floor because it was the very first space dedicated to trans Latinas in Texas. “A lot of people told me I couldn’t do it,” she tells me in Spanish. Molina says not one single month’s rent was paid for by any other organization or government agency; it was all funded by their own community.

“We paid our own rent, our own bills, and our own activities,” Molina said. “We had our own food sales, monthly loterías, our own fundraisers, and much of this community help came from women who do sex work. How is it that the people who are the most stigmatized and marginalized, that when they organize, they’re the ones who help the most?”

Ana Andrea Molina sorting out cleaning supplies, donations given to the organization.

At the start of 2017, OLTT hit rock bottom. They had $0 in their bank account and were forced to close the small space they’d worked so hard hard to maintain. But in March, Molina had a serendipitous encounter at the Texas capital, where she’d traveled to speak out against anti-immigrant and anti-trans bathroom bills introduced by the Texas legislature. Grey’s Anatomy star and out bisexual actress Sara Ramirez was there for the same reason, and the two women were introduced. Molina didn’t know who Ramirez was, assuming she was just another “privileged, cisgender woman who wanted to take her photo with a poor trans Latina.” Ramirez proved her wrong in the best way possible; after listening to Molina’s story and learning about her organization, Ramirez quietly gave $20,000 to OLTT, enabling them to re-open their office, expand their reach, and open a shelter for trans, queer and intersex people of color who are often turned away from other resources. There was no press fanfare. Ramirez just wanted to help.

Project Casa Ana Andrea began in May of this year, providing a unique space for programming dedicated to undocumented queer and trans people as well as beds for 15-20 people in need. Molina doesn’t receive a salary from the work she does for OLTT. She’s a beneficiary of her own non-profit, living there with five other trans women.

Molina was in San Francisco for a conference before Hurricane Harvey hit the Gulf Coast. The day she was supposed to fly back, the airport closed due to the incoming storm. She was stranded in California until the airport reopened days later. Fortunately, Casa Ana Andrea endured minimal loss aside from a leak in the roof that damaged their office computer.

But Molina knew she and the organization members were going to have to work twice as hard as usual to recuperate after a hurricane. Molina explained how Harvey left some of the members homeless. They lost their possessions, their only source of transportation, and two weeks of work. “For many of them, their families depend on them in Central America or Mexico or here,” Molina said.

Anonymous members of OLTT separating donations at Casa Ana Andrea.

She explained that the hurricane had a domino effect on trans sex workers specifically. When male clients who patronize sex workers are also out of work and short on cash, sex workers are more likely to put their safety at risk — doing things like agreeing to sex without a condom — in order to get whatever work they can.

“A trans woman who does this kind of service needs the money so she risks it,” Molina said. “She needs to eat, she needs to live and she doesn’t qualify for a lot of resources that are offered.”

Casa Ana Andrea opened its doors to anybody affected by the storm, regardless of race or status, and distributed, at press time, at least 40 checks of between $100-$150 to members.

“It’s not a lot, but it is really significant,” she said. “Money is what we need. We need it to fix our cars, for gas to get to work and no one wants to help you with that and they want to help you less if you don’t have an ID.”

It’ll be hard for undocumented trans women to heal and recover after the storm, Molina says. What OLTT needs to move forward is resources. They need consultations from criminal and immigration lawyers and health care professionals. They need funds to continue their programming which includes deportation defense, LGBTQ education, assistance with name and gender marker changes, and help navigating the immigration system.

“For poor trans Latinas and black women, it’s difficult to heal a wound,” Molina said. “It’s difficult to get the resources to heal after a disaster, after Harvey. But what we’re going to do because our spirit is really strong, we’re going to let ourselves fall but when we get up, nothing can make us fall again.”

Jess Alvarenga

Queer Salvadoran photographer Jessica Alvarenga is just coming to terms and processing the aftermath of the storm. Her childhood home in the Larkwood subdivision in Southwest Houston was destroyed by Hurricane Harvey’s floods. Brays Bayou, which is located directly behind the home, overflowed, flooding the predominantly Mexican and Central American immigrant neighborhood. Alvarenga lived there with her parents until high school, when neighborhood gang violence drove them out. Still, her extended family maintained and lived in the property, and Alvarenga’s cousin, his partner and their five young sons between the ages of 6-12 lived in the home when Harvey touched down. Alvarenga was planning to move back in on Sept. 1st, but now there’s no place to move back in to. It’s uninhabitable.

Alvarenga is a self-taught documentary photographer and is working on a project called Witness the Isthmus, a series of photographs and oral narratives of Central American immigrants in their homes, places of worship and workplaces in Houston, TX. She hopes to capture a truer narrative of her community to counter anti-immigrant narratives spewed by conservative politicians who depict all Central American immigrants as members of the dangerous MS-13 gang.

“I wanted to shine a different light on Central Americans and show how they’re community members, how they’re showing out for their community and how they’re showing love,” Alvarenga said.

Alvarenga finds her subjects from her own network and community. She used to work at a labor union and kept in touch with several of the janitors she helped organize. She photographed one woman making tamales (which she sells to supplement her income) from start to finish in her home for eight hours, the typical amount of time she spends with her subjects. The woman loved the experience so she recommended Alvarenga to some friends. Alvarenga now has more than enough subjects to photograph.

“I don’t think anyone has ever asked them for their story,” Alvarenga says. “I don’t think anyone’s valued them. I don’t think anyone’s been like, hey you’re beautiful. You’re a work of art. Let me take your picture. I don’t think anyone’s done that, so subconsciously they’re really grateful for that.”

Now in light of Hurricane Harvey, she hopes to capture how Central American immigrants are moving forward after this tragedy.

Alvarenga’s childhood home. Photograph by Jess Alvarenga

She photographed pastor Raul Hidalgo and his congregation at Emmanuel Baptist Church near downtown Houston. They’d converted their church into a temporary resource and donation center, open to everyone affected in the surrounding area. She tells me how appreciative the Central American immigrants she spoke with there were of that support.

“I ask them ‘how are you doing’ and todos me dicen, ‘blessed,’” Alvarenga says. “Everyone feels really grateful, even if they lost their home. They say, ‘I’m blessed. I still have my life, I still have my family.”

Alvarenga now lives with her parents in Cypress, TX. Her cousin and his family are living with Alvarenga’s aunt while they save money to fix the damaged home. For Alvarenga, a way to process the aftermath of the storm was to create new memories for herself and family. She photographed the cleanup of her childhood home. About 15 family, friends, coworkers helped tear up water-saturated floorboards and walls and removed debris and trash. She snapped a photo of her dad standing on top of the dresser Alvarenga had used as a little girl, which was now unusable and part of a pile of debris.

“Not only did we lose objects, we lost memories with the storm,” Alvarenga said.

Alvarenga’s dad on her childhood dresser. Photograph by Jess Alvarenga.

Scales is trying to look at the good things that happen after a storm. She focuses on the love and the giving done by small organizations like her own Toiletries for Families who distributes hygiene items to individuals and families in need. She founded the organization in 2010 after Scales prayed for a purpose in life, starting off with a donation drive at one of her performances and soon surpassing her goal of distributing toiletry kits full of soap, shampoo, toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant and menstrual products to 12 families of four or more. She didn’t stop there and now her organization has distributed to 21,200 families since 2010. It’s all volunteer run and is supported by donations from the community and grants.

Before Scales left her apartment to wait out the storm, she made sure to put the 100 toiletry kits she had in stock on the top of a shelf. They were safe and dry when she returned.

“When I’m tired, even when I feel like my world has literally fallen apart or evaporated, I know that’s what I’m supposed to be doing,” she says. “The fact that I can go home and all of my hygiene kits are still good, you know it was just like this, keep doing it.”

The Red Cross donated three 53-foot trailers full of hygiene items, baby clothes, baby food and water to her organization that she continues to distribute all over the Gulf Coast with the help of volunteers. Now she’s shipping donations to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. Scales calls her organization “her ministry” and says hygiene items can become difficult to obtain when people who can’t afford them but still need to be clean and presentable to hold a minimum wage job.

“We ask God or light or whatever word that isn’t offensive, how could you let this happen if you’re so good?,” she says. “But even in tragedy, after the storm, we have all of these beautiful things.”

Ana Andrea Molina’s quotes were translated from Spanish. 

Black LGBT Women Represent on The Root’s 100 Most Influential People List

On Monday the black politics and culture website The Root released their annual “Root 100” list, showcasing 100 of the most influential African Americans ages 25-45. The first Root 100 was published in 2009 and honored the election of President Barack Obama by celebrating young black achievements in politics, business, the arts, activism, science, and technology.

This year’s list is different; the surrounding climate weighs heavy. Bigotry and white supremacy are once again finding their way to the forefront of political discourse in this country. In their introduction to the list, the editors of The Root note that “honoring the best and brightest of black America has become a revolutionary act, a form of resistance.” As is often the case with the ongoing fight for liberation, queer women and trans women are at the forefront, putting in hard work. Let’s take a moment to honor the black queer and trans women on The Root’s list who are leading the way.

Roxane Gay, Author

Roxane Gay is a force to be reckoned with. She writes unflinching, direct, cut through the muck, honesty. Whatever is your genre of preference, chances are she’s written in it and brought black feminist truth to it. Gay has left her mark in anthologies of cultural critique, short and long-form fiction, newspaper op-eds, and comic books. In June, she released her New York Times best-seller memoir Hunger, which focuses on her experience with obesity and the journey to live comfortably in her own body. Even with all of her national and international acclaim, the first time I read Roxane Gay’s work, it was published right here on Autostraddle! You can find Gay on Twitter: @rgay.

Elle Hearns, Activist, Writer

Elle Hearns is an organizer for Black Lives Matter and the executive director of The Marsha P. Johnson Institute, launching in Spring 2018. Named after the legendary black trans woman activist and Stonewall veteran, the Marsha P. Johnson Institute will work to meet the needs of women and girls of color as they face violence, especially transgender women. Their primary focus will be on those coming from trans and queer communities, poor communities, those who are undocumented, formerly incarcerated, or disabled. Where do we sign up? You can find Hearns on Twitter: @SoulFreeDreams.

Lena Waithe at the 2017 Emmy Awards

Lena Waithe, Actress, Producer, and Screenwriter

Perhaps you’ve already heard of Lena Waithe this week? After all, on Sunday night she became the first black woman to win an Emmy in comedic writing. We have talked a lot about Lena Waithe on Autostraddle, and I hope we never stop. In addition to her critically acclaimed work as a writer and actress in Master of None’s “Thanksgiving” episode (which if you haven’t watched, you absolutely should! It’s on Netflix!), Showtime also recently ordered her coming-of-age drama called The Chi, which Waithe will write and executive produce. Lena Waithe isn’t waiting for Hollywood to tell her stories, she’s decided to tell them herself and they will have to catch up. Also, I’m still not over THIS SPEECH:

You can find her on Twitter: @LenaWaithe.

Dee Rees, Director, Screenwriter

Speaking of black queer women who are not waiting on Hollywood to tell their stories, let’s talk about Dee Rees. In 2011, her award-wining indie film Pariah told the story of a teenage black lesbian in Brooklyn that broke my heart wide open. In 2015, Rees directed Queen Latifah in HBO’s Bessie, the biopic of queer black Blues icon Bessie Smith. Netflix won a bidding war for her most recent feature Mudbound at Sundance in January, and its expected to be a serious contender at the Academy Awards this year. When Rees accepted the Sundance Vanguard Award in August, she implored us to remember that “our voices are all we have.” A mantra that she has certainly taken to heart.

Patrisse Khan-Cullers, Activist

Patrisse Khan-Cullers is best known as one of the co-founders of Black Lives Matter, along with fellow activists Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi. In addition, she’s also the founder of Dignity and Power Now, an organization that advocates for incarcerated people and their families. Whether its police brutality and state violence, the prison industrial complex, or violence against queer and trans black bodies, Khan-Cullers is one the black community’s fiercest advocates. She never gives up. You can find her on Twitter: @OsopePatrisse.

Ashlee Marie Preston, Editor

In June, Ashlee Marie Preston became the first out trans Editor-in-Chief of a feminist publication. As editor of Wear Your Voice magazine, Preston uses her publication to empower historically marginalized and disenfranchised communities. As a survivor of sexual violence, domestic abuse, and homelessness Preston is a firm believer of lifting others with you as you climb. She hopes to one day transform the media landscape, and reshape misconceptions about feminism. You can find Preston on Twitter: @AshleeMPreston.

Arlan Hamilton, Founder and Managing Partner of Backstage Capital

Arlan Hamilton knew that women, people of color, and LGBT community members were treated unfairly when looking for start-up capital for their businesses. She decided to get involved in venture capitalism and advocate on their behalf. She was homeless herself at the time, but made it her mission to help her community and invest in those who are otherwise not invested in. Her company, Backstage Capital, now manages two funds totaling roughly $5 million. She’s just getting started. You can follow Arlan Hamilton on Twitter: @ArlanWasHere.

Samantha Irby, Author

Samantha Irby’s New York Times best-seller memoir, We Are Never Meeting in Real Life, was released in May. In it she offers her thoughts on navigating blackness, body image, poverty, and past relationships. Her first memoir Meaty is currently being developed into a television series by FX Studios. In a 2013 interview with Bitch magazine, Irby gave her philosophy on dating: “I’ll take love in whatever package it comes. I’ve had girlfriends in the past; I’ve had boyfriends, too…. Mostly I just wish it were socially acceptable for me to settle down with a cheese sandwich.” Who hasn’t been there, amirite? You can find Irby on Twitter: @wordscience.

Raquel Willis, Activist

Black, queer, trans activist Raquel Willis is a national organizer for the Transgender Law Center, the largest advocacy group for transgender and gender-nonconforming people in the United States. She’s also been involved with Black Lives Matter. In January, she took the stage at the Women’s March in Washington, DC. She’s currently a contributing writer at Cassius. Did I mention that you can also find some of her writing published on Autostraddle? Trans women’s voices are needed now more than ever, and Raquel is not about to shut up for anybody. You can find her on Twitter: @RaquelWillis_ (and I can personally confirm, she’s a great follow!)

Malkia Cyril, Executive Director of the Center for Media Justice

Malkia Cyril is a writer, organizer, and media strategist. She’s a Black Lives Matter activist fighting for net neutrality and fair, equal communication access for people of color and impoverished communities. She’s working to amplify black voices on the open internet, in social media, not to mention on our television and film screens. You most recently saw her in Ava DuVernay’s documentary The 13th. Did I mention that she’s also a poet? You can find Cyril on Twitter: @culturejedi.

Charlene Carruthers, Activist

Charlene Carruthers is the national director of the Black Youth Project 100. The BYP100 is an activist organization helping black young adults build transformative leadership skills through development, direct action organizing, advocacy, and education that uses a black queer feminist lens. Carruthers is passionate about helping black youth find their own definition of freedom and ensuring that the rallying call “black lives matter” doesn’t silence or overlook our LGBTQ voices. With Carruthers at the helm, black futures look mighty bright. You can find her on Twitter: @CharleneCac.

As long as there has been black protest, black art, as long as there has been the fight for black freedom in this country, there have been black queer and trans folk on the frontline.

That fight is far from over.

When I look at this list, I’m fortified knowing that increasingly we are not being asked to juggle or choose between our blackness and our queerness as the movement moves forward. We are no longer being asked to merely do the work, but keep our faces in the shadows. We are being seen for the value of our full selves. I’m proud to join The Root in saluting these women in their success. Raise a glass! The (virtual) bubbly is on me.

QTPOC Roundtable: Queer Anthem Playlist

There’s just some songs that make you want to shout and dance and that make you feel proud to be queer. You know the ones, when you’re at a party and it comes on and you run to the dance floor with your friends or it’s on the radio while you’re driving and it immediately puts you in a good mood, or it’s a song you intentionally put on to boost your day. These are our queer anthems, our pride jams that make our hearts sing.

Kayla, Staff Writer

Girls Like Girls, Hayley Kiyoko

I love bubbly pop songs, and the second I heard “Girls Like Girls,” a queer bubbly pop song by Hayley Kiyoko, I knew I’d be listening to it on repeat all summer. Kiyoko released a super queer, super emotional music video for the song around the same time we were starting to shoot season one of Sidetrack, the webseries I wrote and co-created. That summer, I’d fly back-and-forth between Chicago and Brooklyn to spend sweaty, long days on set with our all-women cast and crew. “Girls Like Girls” quickly became one of the songs played most often on set. We didn’t have a budget to actually use the song on the show, but I like to think of “Girls Like Girls” as the behind-the-scenes theme song of Sidetrack. It always brings me back to those tough but fun days on set, where we were capturing the stories I wrote, which includes a retelling of my coming out story. When I think of pride, I think of Sidetrack, and when I think of Sidetrack, “Girls Like Girls” often plays in my head.

Tiara, Staff Writer

Good Dress, We Are Smug

Darren Hayes is probably the reason I am gay; I must have subconsciously picked up on his queerness long before either of us could deal with our own personal sexualities. The hair and proto-goth fashion! The fabulousness! The HIGH DRAMA. He still pretty much informs my femmeness (and also makes me have weird feelings about my gender but that’s a whole separate story).

Once Hayes came out, his music became a thousand times queerer, revelling in his fully embraced identity. A great example of that is We Are Smug, a one-off secret side project album with collaborator Robert Conley that was released for free for one day on his 37th birthday in 2009 and then made available for sale a few years later. Lots of dance-pop, some songs sounding like shitposts and others more serious than they appear, gender-ambiguous narrators everywhere. Tons of fun.

My absolute favourite song on We Are Smug is Hot Tub Blues, for which Hayes did a killer burlesque-esque performance for in his last tour that I’m hoping to recreate at a drag show some place. It’s more of a sad dreary song (dressed up in upbeat “no fucks to give” vibes) though, not really something one would call a “pride anthem”. For that I have Good Dress — messing with Dom(me)/sub expectations, weilding power in feminine wiles, the magic of having someone wrapped around your little finger and making them think they are the one in control. This song is my alarm clock song; it helps me feel like a badass on days where I’d rather sleep in.

Mey, Trans Editor

Bad Liar, Selena Gomez

So, I’ve loved Selena Gomez since her DCOM with fellow Love of My Life Demi Lovato, but in the last few years my fandom for her has shot through the roof, first with “Hands to Myself,” then with “It Ain’t Me” and now with this Song of the Summer, “Bad Liar.” I first heard it when I saw Riese post about it in Autostraddle Slack and I immediately started yelling and dying. I was in love. Here was one of my top favs in a video where she plays four different characters who are flirting with/crushing on/married to/the parents of each other and it’s so freaking weird and so sexy and the song is an absolute banger. Like, come on, the hook and the sexy weird way she sings and the drops and sways and everything! It’s impossible to not feel like a sexy brat swishing your hips around dancing in your bedroom thinking about your gay crush. It’s a queer dream and I don’t wanna wake up.

Laura M, Staff Writer

My Neck, My Back, Khia

There’s nothing explicitly gay about “My Neck, My Back,” but the song does fill me with all kinds of queer lady feelings whenever I hear it. In Spring of 2009, Tracie Egan Morrissey posted 20 Songs About Cunnilingus on Jezebel, and this song has more or less been stuck in my head ever since. Lyrically brash songs about female sexuality fill me with pride, and who can deny the brilliance of this opening call to action? “All you ladies pop your pussy like this / Shake your body, don’t stop, don’t miss / Just do it, do it, do it, do it, do it now / Lick it good / Suck this pussy, just like you should.” Marvelous.

Alexis, Staff Writer

My Girl, The Temptations

It’s short and sweet and I can sing it to basically every pretty girl I meet. I’ve wanted to be the butchiest butch basically forever but couldn’t growing up cause well that wasn’t allowed. But this song let me practice, even in public! Every time this song came on in the car, I could belt out the words and no one would look at me wrong! I didn’t have to worry about slipping up on pronouns! And it came on at least once a day on the radio we played and probably at least twice a day as we watched TV.

Reneice, Staff Writer

I Wanna Dance With Somebody, Whitney Houston

The first piece I ever had published on Autostraddle was an essay about my love for Whitney Houston, so it follows that my number one pride anthem is “I Wanna Dance With Somebody.” There is no song in existence that makes me as happy and hype and proud to be a queer black woman as that song. I hear it almost every time I go out and when I do I drop everything to dance and sing along.

KaeLyn, Staff Writer

Q.U.E.E.N., Janelle Monáe featuring Erykah Badu

I saw Janelle Monáe perform live for the first time as the unbilled opening act for the opening act at a concert at Darien Lake. There I was in the front row when this beautiful human walked onstage in a slick tuxedo suit with a perfect pompadour, dragging a folding chair towards center stage. She jumped up onto the folding chair, raised one hand into the air, and launched into “Many Moons.” I was hooked and smitten at once. I’ve been obsessed with Janelle ever since. She represents everything that Pride should be about in her music and her activism: art that pushes boundaries; centering marginalized voices; love as resistance; investing in our own resilience, fucking with gender, beauty at the intersection of class, race, and gender; self-autonomy as power; and incredibly gorgeous hair. I’ve always felt in my heart that Janelle is queer and “Q.U.E.E.N.” (and really the whole Electric Lady album, really) just made my brain explode. I’ve had the joy of seeing Janelle perform two times since then and I still play this song (and all her albums) all the damn time and I don’t know why she isn’t the queen of the recording world right now because DAMN she deserves it.

Raquel, Staff Writer

My Offence (feat. Krystle Warren), Hercules and Love Affair

I’ve loved Hercules and Love Affair for years. They’re this weirdo queer disco outfit fronted by David Butler alongside mega-babe vocalist and DJ Kim Ann Foxman. They’re super fun and draw from a long culture of house balls and disco music, and it’s the band I go to when I want to feel extra-gay when I dance. To me, they sound like a contemporary remix of the golden age of gay dance music and the New York club scene in the 80s, something I don’t usually get to feel a part of.

This song is extra-special because they connected with Krystle Warren, an amazing black queer folk singer who used to be a busker on the streets on New York. She’s a badass with a beautiful, husky voice, and with Butler’s amazing beats and dancey production behind it, it’s such a jam. I love seeing the queer community come together, especially such disparate musicians! The quality and versatility of Warren’s voice really comes out in this song (and it’s also just great for shaking your butt).

Yvonne, Senior Editor

Work From Home, Fifth Harmony

Work From Home was a 2016 summer hit but I didn’t start paying attention to it till after its debut. At last year’s annual senior editor retreat, Rachel mentioned that the senior editors should do a lip sync video to Work From Home because you guessed it, we all work from home! We watched the music video together and from then on I was hooked! I think we listened to it a million times — it was so catchy! We didn’t end up doing that video but I remember Sarah figuring out the choreography for us outside. After the retreat, I heard it everywhere, all the time and I couldn’t resist smiling and singing along! I associate Work From Home to Autostraddle and being gay af and dancing like a fool at A-Camp. It makes me instantly happy and ready to work, work, work.

Sarah, Business Director

Whistle, BLACKPINK

I first heard this jam while watching The Bold Type and it’s been in my head ever since. It’s a song you’ll want to listen to dancing in the shower, putting on a weird shade of lipstick, or stir-frying dinner for your latest crush. Whistle has all the layers of a perfectly delicious pop song — involuntary hip-shaking beats, rap breaks, and a catchy chorus. I’m now also obsessed with the music video, which features the four very cute members of BLACKPINK and is full of poppy neon and surreal landscapes.

What’s your queer anthem? Why is it your jam? Why do you love it so much? Everyone is welcome to let us know in the comments!

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17 Queer and Feminist Latinx Podcasts To Get Into

I’m really lucky to know some pretty cool Latinxs doing amazing work in the community and who fight for social justice every single day. I love our conversations and always feel like my heart and brain grew three times over the course of our discussions. Listening to these queer and feminist Latinx podcasts make me feel that way too. The Latinx hosts of these podcasts aren’t afraid to talk about what they believe in and tackle politics, racial justice, gender and sexuality— all while having loads of fun.

These podcasts are for the chingonas, the jotxs, and the baddass Latinxs who need some audio magic in their lives.

Here are 17 queer and feminist Latinx podcasts to get into immediately:

Radio Menea

Queer Cuban-American writer Miriam Zoila Pérez and queer Venezuelan writer Verónica Bayetti Flores co-host a podcast showcasing “the fabulous mezcla” of Latinx music. Every other Friday, they bring you the hottest tracks in alternative and mainstream Latinx music, throwback to some old hits, and spotlight emerging artists — all while talking about it through a queer feminist lens. Hell yeah! One of my favorites is the episode on Problematic Faves.

Listen to Radio Menea on soundcloud, iTunes, Sticher, or Google Play.

Anzalduing It

Queer bffs Angélica Becerra and Jackie Cáraves bring you a new podcast discussing politics, pop culture, horoscopes and life on the borderlands. As Jackie mentions in the first episode, “Anzalduing It” refers to the code switching Chicanos and other people of color experience, which is explored in Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands. “I’m ‘anzalduing it’ todo el tiempo” is a sentiment I deeply identify with too! Angélica’s art work was featured in Autostraddle’s Latinx essay series, Our Pulse.

Listen on Soundcloud or iTunes.

Jotxs Y Recuerdos

Jotxs y Recuerdos is a podcast archiving queer history in the Rio Grande Valley, where I grew up. It’s a dope podcast that talks to LGBTQ folks from the borderlands and their lived experiences. The host Alexandra Nichole Salazar Vasquez talks to her queer mom and her trans dad for the first two episodes. The podcast’s name is a play on words inspired by Selena’s 1995 hit song “Fotos y Recuerdos.” Alexandra reclaims the word “jotxs,” which is the non-gendered spelling of “joto” or “jota,” a Spanish slur used against queer people.

Listen to Jotxs y Recuerdos on Neta, a bilingual multimedia platform from the Rio Grande Valley or on iTunes.

Locutorreando

Queer friends Sam and Erika amplify the social justice work of brown queer women and femmes on the border in their podcast, Locutorreando.

Listen to it on Neta, a bilingual multimedia platform from the Rio Grande Valley.

Tamarindo Podcast

Tamarindo is a socially conscience podcast hosted by amigos Brenda Gonzalez and Luis Octavio who talk about politics, food, music and life. They tackle topics like rape culture, police brutality, and immigration but also keep it fun with their friendly banter. Check out episodes that uplift the work of Latina leaders and explores LA’s queer history.

Listen on Audioboom or iTunes.

Morado Lens

Cindy and Nathalie are childhood best friends that talk about sexuality, feminism and “embracing your inner bruja” on their podcast, Morado Lens. Morado is the Spanish word for purple which for them represents “creativity, magic, spiritually and the subconscious.” They frequently have LGBTQ guests on their show to talk about their experiences including Valeria from Mestiza Magic, Cuban-American illustrator Cristy C. Road, and Puerto Rican transgender activist Erika Florenciani.

Listen to Morado Lens on iTunes.

Locatora Radio

LA-native rape crisis counselor, activist and writer Mala Muñoz and queer high femme and community organizer Diosa Femme bring you a #putapositive, radiophonic novela via Locatora Radio. Their podcast focuses on intersectional feminism, healing and celebrates “the experiences, brilliance, creativity, and legacies of femmes and womxn of color.”

Listen on Soundcloud.

Cabronas y Chingonas

Yo, I know y’all love queer TV and films so I know this podcast is gonna be your jam. Myte and Fried Papita met over the internet like all good queer friends do and talk about all things gay on screen. They’re based in North Texas and I live in Dallas so I hope we get to meet one day. As I’m currently obsessed with The Bold Type, you should check out their episode about Kadena.

Listen on iTunes.

Café con Chisme

Siblings Sebastian and Yasmin Ferrada discuss “all things Latinx, race, pop culture, y más” in their podcast Café con Chisme. They start off the show with some pop culture chisme and then talk about their dating and sex experiences as a queer man of color and a woman of color.

Listen on soundcloud.

Latinos who Lunch

Las Vegas-based friends FavyFav and Babelito bring you a socially conscious podcast discussing race, gender, art and Latinx culture over lunch. FavyFav and Babelito love laughing and I can’t help but laugh along with them. Get a sense of what they’re all about from this awesome video by mitú.

Listen on iTunes.

Trans Specific Partnership Podcast

Trans Latina Joanna Cifredo and co-host Rebecca Kling unpack gender and sexuality issues and discuss everything from identity to pop culture through a trans lens. Their podcast is succinct, smart and witty.

Listen on Soundcloud.

Bag Ladiez

Two Bronx Dominicanas Estephanie and Lena are talking about baggage — their baggage, your baggage and our baggage. Each week they talk about current events, politics, feminism and culture and help you get rid of your baggage. Here are two episodes all about queerness.

Listen on soundcloud or iTunes.

Cerebronas

Yvette and Cynthia are two Latinas from working-class immigrant families navigating law school at Stanford and give their critical analysis of law and current events on their podcast, Cerebronas. They give you their legal perspective as women of color on everything from abortion laws to fair housing laws.

Listen on Soundcloud, iTunes, Stitcher and Google Play.

How Bad Could It Be?

One of Autostraddle’s favorite comedians El Sanchez co-hosts with Josh Chambers in a brand new podcast where they “do/watch/listen to/experience something that everyone agrees is terrible and ask, how bad could it be?” Did you know El and Josh are having a baby? Congrats y’all! Their second episode is all about discussing parenting strategies and how bad could it baby? Also, Mal Blum made the podcast’s theme song!

Listen on iTunes or Google Play.

Joto y La Gurl

Joto and La Gurl is a new podcast that centers on queer and trans voices from the Southwest. It’s hosted by Janice and Frankie who talk about identity, spirituality, race and RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Listen on Soundcloud, Stitcher and iTunes.

De Colores Radio

De Colores Collective is a Dallas-based collective hosting a podcast and party to celebrate Latinx art and culture. Eva and Rafael discuss Latinidad and hope to celebrate “the culture through conscious and fun conversation, interviews, and more.”

Listen on Soundcloud.

Veer Queer

Veer Queer is a brand new LGBTQ podcast hosted by Endesha Haynes and Bianca Gomez based in Houston, TX. In their very first episode, they talk about their coming out stories and being queer in the South.

Listen on Mocking Bird Network and iTunes.

What are your queer and/or feminist Latinx podcasts? Let me know in the comments!

QTPOC Roundtable: TV and Movie Characters That Made Us Feel Seen

As queer people of color, there aren’t many characters on TV or in movies that reflect our various experiences. Sometimes we’re lucky and there’s a character on screen that we can totally relate to or at least can catch glimpses of ourselves in their storylines. When that happens, we’re able to relate and connect to someone who looks like us and moves through the world like us. It allows us to celebrate and cry alongside the characters who remind us most of ourselves.

Last week, Netflix launched a new campaign called #FirstTimeISawMe and asked actors and directors of color when was the first time they saw themselves on screen. The conversation moved to Twitter where people of color continued to share which characters made an impact on them, either because they looked like them or encompassed other identities they rarely saw on screen. It’s a reminder that there are still many, many compelling characters and plot lines to be written for more inclusive representations on TV and in film.

Here are the characters that made our queer writers of color feel most seen.

Kalinda Sharma, The Good Wife

Kayla, Staff Writer

I love television, but out of all of the television shows I’ve watched in my lifetime, there have only ever been two female characters who are South Asian and queer like myself.

This means I usually am forced to identify with straight Indian characters or with white queer ones. Which is why, even though I’m not a badass private investigator shrouded in mystery and perpetually rocking thigh-high leather boots, I felt extremely seen when The Good Wife’s Kalinda Sharma came out as queer. For once, I didn’t have to pick and choose my identities when connecting with a television character, and that felt HUGE. Also, she made me feel like I could be a badass private investigator shrouded in mystery and perpetually rocking thigh-high leather boots.

Margo Hanson, The Magicians

Tiara, Staff Writer

I couldn’t stand the book version of The Magicians; I found Quentin utterly insufferable and thought literally every other character was much more interesting. I only started watching the TV series a couple of months ago and was surprised at how much I liked it — mostly because they actually did focus on other characters besides Quentin (and he himself is more bearable).

One of the characters that most stood out to me in the TV version was Margo (Janet in the books). She was a lot more Mean Girls-y in Season 1, but in Season 2, as one of the High Queens of Fillory, she channeled that energy into being High Bitch in Charge — using her temper, intelligence, cunning, and fierce loyalty to demand real change, protect those she loves, and fight the fantasy patriarchy.

What I appreciated about Margo was that, like me, she’s South Asian — but her South Asian-ness is not really a thing in the story. She’s not some walking Bollywood Princess stereotype lampshading her cultural background every five seconds. I personally find a lot of representations of South Asians in media, both Western and otherwise, to be somewhat frustrating because they often make those characters As Hindu-Indian as possible: a very Hindu name, discussions about saris and spices, their homeland being brought up a lot. My family’s Bangladeshi-Muslim culture is already not very well represented outside Bangladesh, but even in that world I am an outsider: I wasn’t really raised in that culture, I have an English word as my name, my attitudes and beliefs are generally very “Westernised” (or just “foreign”). Even diasporic literature and art doesn’t really speak to me: they often speak of a Western diaspora (not an Eastern diaspora like my family) and there’s much more of a longing or desire for a romanticized version of The Motherland that I don’t necessarily relate to.

Margo is weird, she’s sassy, she’s comfortable in her sexuality, she owns her power and doesn’t back down from being a bitch when she needs to be. She doesn’t make a big deal (or any deal) about her ethnic heritage, and she doesn’t need to. She just is. As a similarly weird, uninhibited, and occasionally bitchy South Asian with very tenuous connections to my ethnic heritage, I found Margo much more representative of me than the various other South Asian characters out there, especially those that are written specifically to be that representation.

Also, as a massive fan of romantic friendships, her friendship with Elliot was so wonderful and beautiful to watch. Those two have their own separate romantic and sexual interests, but they are each other’s Most Important People; they are affectionate, loving, emotionally intimate, ride or die. I don’t get to see many representations of romantic friendships in general, and this one was especially poignant to me as Elliot is a lot like one of my best friends, Sebastian, who I also have a similarly intense, intimate, and affectionate friendship with. That Elliot and Margo look and act very much like more Slytherinny versions of Sebastian and I is an amazing bonus!

Yolanda, Mosquita y Mari

Yvonne, Senior Editor

I watched Mosquita y Mari at a special screening in college, followed by a Q&A with writer and director, Aurora Guerrero. In that lecture room, my heart fluttered, I cried and I saw myself for the first time on screen in Yolanda, a quiet, studious teenager from Boyle Heights.

Mosquita y Mari is probably the only genuinely good representation I’ve seen of queer Latinas but I connected to Yolanda on a deeper level. She was the good girl; she listened to her strict parents, was a straight-A student, and she never got into trouble. I was totally that girl in high school! Yolanda forges a friendship with an unlikely classmate Mari, who’s a little rebellious and has to work to help her single mom with bills. Yolanda is drawn to Mari’s spirit and in turn learns to take herself a little less serious, something that many different people have done for me in my lifetime. Representation for Latinxs in television and movies is abysmal and still relies heavily on stereotypes — maids, criminals, “exotic” lovers. Yolanda cuts through all that noise and is a refreshing depiction of a nerdy Latina with a girl crush, a relatable portrayal for queer Latinxs.

Annalise Keating, How to Get Away With Murder

Natalie, TV Recapper/ Contributor

There are shows and characters that make you feel seen and then there are those that make you feel seen. The former feels like a complete triumph, like part of yourself has been vindicated because this character looks like you, talks like you, loves like you or whatever. The latter feels like you’re being exposed, like someone ripped out the pages of your diary — the ones where you confess things you never wanted anyone else to see — and put them on television.

Annalise Keating does both of those things for me…I’m seen and I’m seen.

It’s hard to divorce my love for Annalise Keating from the woman that plays her because so much of what makes me feel seen is that she’s portrayed by someone that looks like Viola Davis. Annalise Keating is a dark-skinned black woman, who isn’t a size zero and whose natural hair hides beneath impeccable wigs. Hollywood has a very narrow definition of what a beautiful black woman ought to look like —cough Halle Berry cough — and Viola Davis upends all of that.

But as the show progresses, the ways in which I’m seen shifts.

I cheer the moment Annalise pulls Eve Rothlo into a kiss. A black queer character, who gets to kiss Jean Grae, leading an entire hour of television? I live. I am seen.

But, I’m seen in the moments in which you realize that Eve loves Annalise with her whole heart —and, maybe, Annalise loves her back — they’re never going to be together long-term. Years of abuse have left Annalise convinced of her unworthiness. She doesn’t deserve something so pure.

“Men take things,” Annalise’s mama tells her. I need not be reminded of that fact. I am seen.

But I shatter inside when Annalise tells Nia, who’s been begging for Annalise to hasten her suffering as repayment for sleeping with her husband: “I think about it a lot, killing myself. I have ever since I was a child. A lot of times, I think the world would be a much better place without me in it, but I don’t do it. You’re a better woman than me and if I don’t deserve to die, then you definitely don’t.”

I’m grateful no one’s in the room with me when she says it…I can feel the tears sliding down my face and my hand shakes as I reach for the remote. I am seen and if anyone else were in the room that night, they would’ve seen Annalise Keating for the mirror she’s become for me.

I am seen and seen thanks to Annalise Keating…and it feels at once, revelatory and deeply uncomfortable. I deal with the discomfort, though, because mirrors help you see what you couldn’t on your own. Plus, I feel obliged to cheer for Annalise and hope, beyond hope, that she’s able to mend herself…because I’d like to see myself in that too.

I do, however, wish that Pete Nowalk would give me my diaries back, though…

Gosalyn Mallard, Darkwing Duck

Alaina, Staff Writer

Gosalyn is the adopted daughter of Darkwing Duck. She is hilarious. She’s bratty, sarcastic, a tomboy, and really, really, really just wants to save the world.

I felt like I saw myself in her because she’s so earnest, despite her rougher outer shell. And boy oh boy, is that me. It may take you seven years to get to really know me, but I care so deeply about everything and everyone I love that sometimes I literally feel like I’m going to explode. Plus, we both look really good in jersey dresses.

Margaret Cho, All-American Girl

KaeLyn, Staff Writer

There are literally three TV shows featuring Asian families that have ever existed in the U.S. and two of them are on right now (Fresh Off the Boat and Dr. Ken). All-American Girl was a blip that you may have entirely missed because it only ran for one season. It was loosely based on Margaret Cho’s standup comedy, but really it wasn’t at all. It was rife with stereotypes, made to pander to white audiences, and produced and written by non-Korean people. It was my favorite show.

My whole family—my white parents and my Korean sister and I—would sit down together every week to watch Margaret fight with her mom, hang out at the mall with her friends, date white boys, and sneak out of the house in skintight leather mini skirts. It was super flawed representation and Cho wrote frankly in her memoir I’m the One that I Want that doing the show literally nearly killed her. But it was everything to me.

In 1994, there was barely anything on the internet for Asian girls. The internet was barely a thing, at all. I was constrained to print teen magazines full of faces that looked nothing like mine. My sister and I were the only Korean kids in our whole school. I didn’t have anyone I could identify with except white people in every part of my life. Seeing Margaret on television made me feel seen. Here was a Korean girl who was depicted as desirable, who was rebellious and loud, who showed too much skin. I was only 11, on the cusp of puberty, but I remember feeling so excited by Margaret, just by the very fact she existed, even if I was slightly too young to understand the context behind her comedy. I didn’t understand all the built up internalized racism I was holding inside, but I could relate to the feeling of being between worlds.

When I was older, I watched her stand up specials and collected them on VHS. I read her book. I watched her reality tv show. I got front row tickets to her touring show. When I started going out to the gay bar in college, the drag queens nicknamed me Margaret Cho and it was kind of racist, but also I didn’t care because I loved her that much. Like her caricature of herself on All-American Girl, Margaret Cho is not perfect, but she’ll definitely always be one of my very first queer Korean roots.

Cristina Yang, Grey’s Anatomy

Laura M, Staff Writer

I LOVE CRISTINA YANG. Among other things, she’s a brilliant surgeon, an excellent dancer, and a loyal best friend — but the thing I admire most about her is her ambition.

She is single minded, competitive and entirely unapologetic about her desire to rise to the top, in a way that feels true to (my) life but we don’t often see on TV. Not like this. Cristina is sarcastic and can be socially off-putting, but never once did I feel like she was being punished for prioritizing herself she aggressively pursues her goals. It’s beautiful. She’s a knife (not a spoon), and she’s going to stab you in the eyeball. I totally relate.

(Also, her love life: she’s not queer, but she is habitually getting into it with smart, ambitious, successful people who are or were in direct positions of power over her. I also relate/feel very called out by that. It’s fine!)

Next up: Raquel, Priya, Alexis, Mey, Carmen, Neesha, Reneice 

Confessions of An Undocumented African Immigrant

I was barely an adult when I first legally arrived over a decade ago—what seems like a lifetime now. Over the years, I have learned not to think too much about that girl who arrived wide-eyed at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. How the bright lights had blinded her; how lost she felt in that cavernous airport; how lonely she knew she would be from that day on; how little she understood of the secrets she would have to hold onto and the lies she would have to tell to keep herself firmly planted on this treasured American soil. Sometimes, I wonder about what kind of life she would have had if she never left her home country. What dreams she lost along the way and how this land shaped her into new forms she could never have imagined.

But the game of what-ifs is a dangerous one and some things are better dealt with when they are accepted rather than questioned. The woman I am now tries not to count the gains and losses over that decade. The woman I am now wants to accept that everything that happened was out of necessity. The woman I am now wants, more than anything, to be free in her body. She doesn’t want to be an immigrant any more—legal or illegal—because it has been a bittersweet decade.

There are an estimated 2.1 million African immigrants currently living in the US. A figure that is likely higher when one factors in the number of undocumented African immigrants who such studies are often unable to capture. I am one of those, as are some of my friends. We are a secret society functioning within the fabric of America who speak a different language and live differently, though at surface level we appear the same. For us, neighborhoods and cities are more than just landscapes to traipse in; they are minefields to be maneuvered bearing in mind, always, that your ‘papers’ are not what they should be and deportation, or worse, lengthy detentions in immigration centers, loom overhead always.

Feature illustration by Jazzmyn Coker

This affects everything: from where you live to where you work to how you practice your activism. Do I go to the protest I feel strongly about and risk arrest? Do I call the cops when I have been a victim of assault? How much louder do I get when my friends and I get into an altercation in public? Do I fly instead of drive to Florida for my friend’s wedding and risk airport officials who may want to question me because my Drivers License clearly states, “Status Check 1/30/2010″ and it is now 2017?

How did I become an undocumented immigrant? The short answer is, I was poor. The long answer is far more complicated. As complicated as the folders upon folders of documents that trace my flirtations with the gatekeepers of America’s wealth and resources; its immigration agents. For most of my immigrant life in America, I have been statistically poor or low income. Only in the last few years, when I took myself out of the formal job market, have I been able to make the sort of income that offers glimpses into the American Dream I first arrived in search of. My first entry into the US was as a tourist. After a few months on a tourist visa, I left for my home country to gain an F1 Student Visa.

My goal was to earn a degree that could be useful to that place I called home and return to make it “better.” The student visa issued to me by the American embassy was valid for two years, with the idea that after that period, you would return to have your immigrant status reviewed by consulate officials who would then (hopefully) renew it for another two years; the duration of an undergraduate degree. This all seemed reasonable at the time and two years was after all, a long way off.

When my F1 visa expired in 2008, I was a sophomore in a medium-sized college town with a student visa status that limited me to working (at most) 20 hours a week on-campus. Wages hovered around $7.50 per hour and I was taking home roughly $600 a month. I would have needed, at minimum, $2,500 (four months income) to pay for my travel and the application fees for my visa renewal. That and my family and I were also paying out of pocket for my tuition only added to the financial stress (most international students in American colleges and universities cannot access federal loans and grants, nor do they have the credit history to access commercial student loans). To say that I had underestimated the hardship of living and studying independently in the US would be a gross misstatement; I had been blindsided. I couldn’t afford to go home, but it was common knowledge among the many international students that, technically, one could remain in the country beyond the visa validity period as long as you were still enrolled in school. So I did.

When graduation rolled around, I had the option to a) return home immediately, b) legally apply to work in the US for a full year under an Optional Training Program (OPT) before leaving the country or c) have an employer sponsor a H1-B Work Visa that would allow me to remain in the US for the foreseeable future. I was 23 at the time, discovering I might be queer (or at least most definitely not straight), the majority of my nuclear family had (legally) migrated to the US and were steadily building parallel lives in this new country that was quickly becoming our second home. Who or what I was even going home to?

I had changed tremendously, and like many people who spend extended periods of time living in foreign countries, feared that ‘home’ would no longer understand me. That I would no longer fit in. That there were parts of my identity I could only safely unravel in America.

To top it off, I was graduating during America’s worst economic crises since the Great Depression, when even regular Americans couldn’t get decent jobs, let alone immigrants with more stringent work restrictions. A work-sponsored visa was not an option. H1-B visas are the unicorns of immigrant visas. Unless you possess highly specialized skills, usually in Science, Technology, Engineering or Math, employers are generally unwilling to take on the costs and paperwork of sponsoring your visa. There was nothing special about my degree from the school of Social Sciences — a degree that in my junior year I already knew I would never use because my passions lay elsewhere.

Despite what many people think, there is no path to permanent residency or citizenship in America for most immigrants unless you are exceptionally talented, a refugee or asylum seeker, or you marry an American citizen. And for immigrants from the developing world, the number of visas available for them to work and travel to the US are far fewer than those awarded to our Western counterparts.

A thing that no one tells you when you are applying for immigrant status in the US is that your potential will be stifled. You will never be given the same opportunities at success despite the fact that you are there for a slice of that very same pie. It is a cruel truth that most immigrants never admit to the ones they leave behind.

Weighing my options, I opted against the OPT (which came with the inevitability of going back home) and decided to enter the job market with the full rights to work. I made a risky bet and lied on the application form for the first job I ever got out of college, claiming that I was a permanent resident and eligible to work in the US. The hiring company was a small family business, and I hoped they wouldn’t ask to see my Social Security Card, which reads, “Not Valid for Work Unless Authorized.” I smiled my way through the hiring process, holding my breath for that inevitable moment, like others before, when they would discover I was a fraud. When no one asked to see my Social Security Card, I celebrated quietly and went to work at a job that did what any American needed in 2010; it paid the bills.

A thing that no one tells you when you are applying for immigrant status in the US is that your potential will be stifled. You will never be given the same opportunities at success despite the fact that you are there for a slice of that very same pie. It is a cruel truth that most immigrants never admit to the ones they leave behind. Or else, perhaps, we wouldn’t be so eager to abandon our lot for the West. You will work more and be paid less. You will not be entitled to many resources though you duly pay your taxes with each paycheck (there is no safety net for immigrants, other than their family, friends and whatever meager savings they have managed to scrape together). You will never have the freedom to pick up and move as many of my American friends do; be it jobs, cities, or even states, because at the back of your mind hangs your immigration status and the hoops and jumps needed to prove that you are where you are supposed to be. As an undocumented immigrant, your lot is even worse.

I am solely to blame for the decisions I made as a youth. I made myself an undocumented immigrant, this I understand, but naïveté is a powerful thing. The full weight of what it meant to be illegal would only slowly settle in as the months and years went by. See, the very immigration system that Trump decries as being weak is on the contrary very strong, with a labyrinth of rules and procedures that vets out immigrants from citizens and awards privileges based off this on a day to day basis. Take for instance the simple act of renewing an Identification Card or retaining the right to drive under a state-issued driving license — valid documents needed to access everything from housing to employment to your local bar — in most states neither of these can be renewed or even obtained without valid immigration documents. Which means either acquiring fraudulent ones, made even tougher since the enactment of the Real ID Act, or going without.

Likewise, my employment opportunities have been greatly limited. What should have been an entry-level job to gain employment experience for a recent college graduate with an Honors degree and many starred academic papers would end up being the only career path viable to me. I was stuck at a job that made me miserable and greatly underutilized my talents for five years, unable to seek formal employment elsewhere because I did not have the right documentation. Yes, there are always low-paying jobs that pay ‘under the table’ available to us. The kind of jobs that most Americans are unwilling to work while the right wing condemns the immigrants taking them, but I am not made for these jobs. I was made to change the world (somehow). To inspire the communities I live in to think, act, and live differently.

American permanent residency and citizenship is a well guarded treasure, be assured.

This is to say nothing of the emotional or psychological toll of being an undocumented immigrant; of the many sleepless nights and anxiety ridden days of being on the wrong side of the law in a carceral state. Of the lack of civic agency over the things that impact your life the most, because at age 30, I am yet to ever participate in any election. Nor of the thousands of dollars poured into the United States Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS) coffers in attempts to right myself with the immigration system through various failed applications. It is impossible for me to paint wholly my immigrant experience in the US. Attempts over the years to explain to my close American friends (who all agree that I have earned the right to live amongst them) where I stand with the law, still leave them grasping to understand the intricacies and complexities of America’s vast and tightly controlled immigration system. American permanent residency and citizenship is a well guarded treasure, be assured.

I say all of this first to rid myself of the guilt and shame I have carried over the years as an illegal immigrant in this country. To bear the label illegal is to be debased many times in both public and private dialogues over your worth and your right to exist within a society. But second, to illuminate the various ways in which we, as migrants, arrive here and what our dreams and hopes are — or were. We are in the age of disillusionment, where many are now fleeing America’s violent rhetoric, rather than to it. There is a dire need to speak our stories despite a survival culture among many immigrant communities that asks us to be quiet in order to fit in. Of the thousands of people I have met in my decade here, very few know my real story, and even fewer know intimately my struggles to simply live the life I have imagined and created.

On my last attempt at legality in this country a few months ago, dozens upon dozens of us were shuttled around like cattle from room to room, each of us clutching documents as we prepared to supplicate ourselves to an immigration agent who with the stroke of a key held in their hands our futures. I sat anxiously in a room filled with countless dreams as I prepared to condense the last 10 years of decisions into the roughly five minutes I would have with this stranger. Practicing the words with precision and confidence to explain who I am and why I deserve a chance at the American dream, despite the fact that I had not been a “good” immigrant.

When my number was called, I remember looking into the face of the immigration agent, thinking to myself that he seemed ‘nice.’ He asked me two questions before informing me that my application for a new visa had been denied. I must have seemed surprised because he asked me, “Did you really think we would grant you another Visa?” I stuttered and stared at him in disbelief as he issued me a yellow slip that I have not been able to look at since it touched my hand. He called the next number as I picked up my documents and the pieces of my broken dreams.

I had reached the end of my rope. Home was calling. That place where I was no longer an alien.

I wept monsoons that day. Ten years worth of tears, fears and hopes. I wept not only because I had been rejected by America but because I also knew that my love affair with it had come to an end. I could no longer bear the abusive relationship I had been in it with. I had reached the end of my rope. Home was calling. That place where I was no longer an alien. Being in America had asked me to be invisible for a long time, to never fully tell the truth about who I was. And ultimately, it was this self erasure that had broken me over the years. I needed to be enough.

A few months ago, I packed my bags and quietly came home, escaping the anti-immigrant rhetoric that has been given release under this new administration. I am home now, without the fear or anxiety of ICE sweeps, travel bans and all manner of crackdowns meant to intimidate immigrants — legal and illegal — into not belonging in America. I am sleeping better, laughing harder, dreaming bigger and acclimating to this country that has welcomed me back into its bosom with open arms. But moving back, is not without its sadness. I lost everything I had built for myself in that decade that couldn’t fit into two suitcases or find a place in the recesses of my memory. But the hardest pill to swallow is that for so long I tried to love a place that told me I didn’t belong.

Let “New Black Swing” Hypnotize You with Smooth Summer Vibes

July is my second favorite month of the year. Everyone and everything seems squarely invested in slowing down for the summer. It’s the perfect time of year to spend six hours at the pool and get hypnotized by a really good album. I have the perfect album for you: New Black Swing.

You might remember SassyBlack from her time in the hip-hop duo THEESatisfaction. This year, she ventured out on her own to create an R&B album. New Black Swing is the result, and it’s her best work yet.

New Black Swing feels mature: it’s got synths, bass, and some of the most soul-filled R&B vocals. The record is smooth — that’s the best way to describe it. There’s this sometimes jazzy, sometimes funky blend and it’s combined with lyrics that can sometimes be incredibly vulnerable. It’s intimate and playful and you need to go listen to it! I loved getting to talk to SassyBlack about her album. She’s full of life when she discusses it, and I loved everything she had to say about her album, the industry, and being a QTPOC artist.

How has it felt venturing off as a solo artist?

It was really nerve racking at first, and now I love it. I like the freedom of doing what I want to do whenever I want to and just making my own music. A lot of people ask me how do you do it, and it’s just something I love. I’ve always been in groups and I really wanted something different.

Talk about what this album means to you.

Vibes. It’s all about the energy I share, the energy we share with one another. Whether in public or in private, in romance or otherwise. I think about the deepest times in my life and how I dealt with them through music with a bounce, catchy melodies and poetic sentiments. I’ve always wanted to write & compose a R&B record, but the fear of ultimate vulnerability & judgement haunted me. Would my Queer Black girl feelings be acceptable? With that said, this is a very intent album. Probably the most intentional record I have composed yet.

I saw you at SXSW and was in love with your set; how has reception been overall? You asked, “Would my Queer Black girl feelings be acceptable?” have they been?

I think they have been. I find that after experimenting and taking the risk, and making music that puts your business in the street, I’m seeing really good responses.

What’s exciting and challenging as a black queer artist?

Everything is challenging. I feel like I’ve trained for it my whole life. There will always be people who like me and people who don’t; accepting that is a part of life and the music industry. It’s exciting though because I get to do something different. Being intentional and writing this kind of record is fun and exciting to me. I like being myself, so it’s always gonna be exciting and a little stressful. I understand some people aren’t gonna feel it… I hope through my experimentation that people open up to it and themselves better.

Who are your musical influences?

New Edition and Bobby Brown and Janet and Michael Jackson. It’s a lot of the music I grew up on. SWV and TLC and Zhane, some of it was just R&B that also had hip-hop influence. A lot of the one-hit wonders of that time: Al B. Sure!, etc. I was listening to a lot of straight up New Jack Swing, but then I was also listening to Prince and Babyface and a lot of stuff that came right before it as well as jazz. At one point I was only listening to New Jack Swing. People don’t know anything about you until you tell them, and now people know that I’m a musicologist and interested in where music comes from — influences, inspiration, I specifically track it down. [I care about] the story behind it and not just vagueness. There are all kinds of folk/jazz. If you’re listening based off of genre and not the feel, you can end up with a whole different kind of album.

What’s your favorite track?

My favorite track right now is “Games”. It reminds me that the album is real. The album is here and I love it. I’m working on a video for it right now, so it’s really in my spirit. It’s super poppy, and repetitive. I’ve never released something like that.

Where can folks see you soon?

Getting ready to do a tour and getting ready to launch a Kickstarter. Hopefully, a North American tour in September and Europe in October. Hopefully I can raise enough money because everything comes out of pocket. Right now, I am my own label. I’m not just doing it for myself, it will also put me in a position to help others. I’ll be at Funky Congregation in New York right before Afropunk. I’m just excited to keep producing and making more music. Working on more music with another artist, producing for the first time.

Go buy New Black Swing right now, available on Bandcamp for purchase. You can also find her on Twitter and Instagram (where she’ll often improv beats in her Stories). Keep an eye out for her tour announcement, and support her on Kickstarter if you can; she might be make it to your very city sometime soon! Support Black queer women artists and treat yourself at the same time.

Vivek Shraya’s New Album “Part-Time Woman” Is a Binary-Breaking Love Letter

“I came to the conclusion that I don’t want to be a woman. I just want to be me. I want to be Sylvia Rivera.” Sylvia Rivera, trans feminine activist and icon, co-founder of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries

I wonder if it’s bad for the trans women’s movement to admit that I don’t always feel like a Full-Time Woman™. While I generally present exclusively in ways that conform to a stereotypical understanding of femininity – long hair, skirts and dresses, makeup, what in queer community is sometimes called “femme” and in trans community is sometimes called “fish” – the nuances of my gender identity, my internal sense of being, have always been more complicated than that.

And even as I write this, I can feel an old anxiety rising, the fear that I am betraying something or someone – my trans sisters? My self? – by expressing a personal truth that diverges from the simplified narrative that both politics and community so often demand.

So when I meet Vivek Shraya in my apartment on a rainy evening in Toronto to discuss her new album, Part-Time Woman, I am struck by how graciously she engages the charged subject matter of race, gender and representation. Shraya, a quadruple-threat trans girl art star who has garnered wide recognition in literature, film, photography, and music, is on her way to becoming a Canadian icon. Her work delicately troubles the boundaries of identity, eliding the usual political slogans to reveal rich shades of emotion.

“I really want trans girls to know that some of us don’t always have the right words or the powerful political declarations … in response to transphobia,” Shraya says with characteristic candor. “Some of us are struggling. Some of us are unsure. Some of us are slow to grow into who we are. I hope it brings comfort knowing that there are other people thinking about these things and singing about them too.”

Part-Time Woman is a deep and tender dive into that place of internal struggle and slow metamorphosis – giving lie to the misconception that pop music, Shraya’s chosen genre, is necessarily shallow or superficial. Shraya’s crooning vocals, set to the backdrop of original compositions performed by Toronto’s Queer Songbook Orchestra, ponder the meaning of “woman” and the experiences of those whose right to the word is contested terrain. In its six brief tracks, the album covers an impressive amount of thematic and musical ground; tracing an emotional arc from the balladic disappointment of “SWEETIE” and “I’M AFRAID OF MEN” which excavate the hypocrisy of the male gaze, through the contemplative longing of the titular number “PART-TIME WOMAN,” to the triumph of “BROWN GIRLS” and the final track “GIRL IT’S YOUR TIME” (a 1960s send-up which Shraya jokingly refers to as “the selfie of the album”).

Yet even triumph acquires new, complex dimensions in Part-Time Woman. Rather than attempting to replicate the anthemic, oversimplified (though admittedly delicious) feel of, say, Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way,” Shraya goes for something more textured, more grounded in the insecurities and resiliencies of day to day life that every girl – trans or cis, racialized or white – will recognize.

“For me, it was really important to end in a sort of celebratory way,” Shraya muses, “but the bridge [of “GIRL, IT’S YOUR TIME”] is like:

“GIRL, IT’S YOUR LIFE
BUT IT’S NOT YOUR WORLD
YOU’RE NOT ALWAYS SAFE
SO WHENEVER YOU’RE AFRAID
JUST KNOW YOU’RE ALWAYS MY GIRL

“So there’s this pain there too,” Shraya continues. “My reality as a trans girl isn’t this one, easy walk through life. It’s not always feeling desirable or feminine or safe or any of those things. And yet there is a celebratory tone in the album, because it moves from male gaze to self gaze and affirmation.”

Listening to Shraya muse on the way her life inflects her art, I think about my own mixed experience as someone whose life has arced through the identities of Chinese gay party boy to anarcho-punk non-binary femme to trans woman of colour writer. There are aspects of each part of that journey that I loved and mourned and missed. The increased confidence and sense of self that accompanied each shift has never negated the fear and loneliness and trauma. And yet I wouldn’t give up any parts of my past.

The juxtaposition of subtle joys and private grief is a theme that weaves throughout the album. Shraya’s strength is in her ability to take the listener with her to the edge of some very dark emotional places and then pull us back with a burst of unexpected insight.

Take, for example, the stark contrast of the final verse of “I’M AFRAID OF MEN,” in which she sings:

“ARE YOU HITTING ON ME?
ARE YOU HITTING ON ME?
OR ARE YOU GOING TO HIT ME?”

Followed by a beat of silence, and then the chorus

“IN MY HOUSE
IN MY HOUSE
DONT EVEN TURN THE LIGHTS ON
CAUSE I SHINE SO BRIGHT”

The song closes on a meandering brass solo that leaves the listener on the edge of their proverbial seat.

Shraya’s lyrics tease apart the ways in which trans girls’ emotional lives are drawings rendered in chiaroscuro, the play of light and shadow: The power and relief of discovering one’s identity in private intertwined with the pain of objectification and sexual violence.

This complex interplay is most evident in my favorite song in the album, the enigmatic “HARI NEF,” which is Shraya’s ode to the eponymous trans femme model and co-star of the hit sitcom Transparent. She sings:

“IS THE LEGACY OF BEING A GIRL
WANTING TO BE HEARD
TO BE HER

SHE’S SO PRETTY BET HER LIFE IS PERFECT
SHE’S SO FUNNY BET HER LIFE IS FLAWLESS

I WONDER IF SHE’S HAPPY BEING HER
OR IF LIKE ME SHE WANTS TO BE SOMEBODY ELSE”

There is something achingly resonant about this glimpse into the envy, longing, and empathy that exists between girls – something that takes on even more layers in the context of being trans and racialized. Trans girls of colour spend our whole lives either invisible or in the spotlight – it’s one or the other, never between. And so our womanhood either goes unrecognized or objectified, co-opted to satisfy someone else’s story about who we are.

In this polarized context, there is no room for ambiguity, for softness, for uncertainty or exploration. There is no room, in other words, to be human.

“I think that the way that people think about trans women is that [we] have to be totally confident or defiant all the time or that we all have similar politics and personalities,” Shraya confides. She goes on to describe the ways in which trans girls are sold a particular, restrictive mode of womanhood that is tied to normative ideals of beauty and race. “This [album] is a love letter to trans girls and a love letter to brown girls.”

This is a love that breaks through binaries and flowers in the margins. Lounging on a sofa with Shraya, talking and listening to the rain, I can feel tiny cracks opening in the walls of the labyrinth of labels, identities, and ideals in which we live.

Shraya, like all the best artists, is a storyteller whose vision both captures the world and in so doing, envisions a new one: A world in which you can still be anything. In which every person – man, woman, non-binary, all or no gender, or constantly changing – is exactly enough.

Foolish Child #27: Foolish Nonya

Foolish Child is a biweekly comic series by Dickens! 

Trumpcare Is an Attack on Trans People of Color. Let’s Fight Like Hell Against It.

Republicans claim to fight for the protection of lives, but the revised Senate health care bill released on Thursday indicates otherwise. Based on a previous version of the bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA) threatens to leave 22 million people without health care by 2026, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO’s report of how much the revised bill would cost and how many people would lose insurance is expected on Monday. Defeating this bill is a matter of life and death to the transgender, gender non-conforming and intersex people of color (TPOC) who depend on Medicaid to survive.

“It’s just a part of genocide — people gentrifying our health care and taking it from us and telling us how we can have it and how we can’t,” Jade Dynasty told Autostraddle. Dynasty is a 22-year-old queer, trans mixed-race nightlife performer, producer, dancer, choreographer and activist based in Seattle who’s currently covered by Medicaid.

Jade Dynasty. Photo via Gender Justice League

Dynasty benefited from the Medicaid expansion established in 2014 by former President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, which allowed states to extend Medicaid coverage to adults without dependent children with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty level. Washington is one of the 31 states (plus the District of Columbia) whose legislatures voted to accept federal money for the expansion. Historically, Medicaid was only available to single parents, disabled folks and low-income seniors but the expansion allowed more than 11 million people, including trans people, to become eligible and receive vital health care.

Under the new federal regulations, Medicaid was extended to any adult with an annual income of less than about $16,643. For comparison, before Medicaid expansion, eligibility was 100% of the federal poverty level or about $12,060. The expansion has been a lifeline for many queer and trans people, as they are more likely than non-LGBT people to live in poverty, especially trans people of color. According to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, trans people of color — including Latinx (43%), American Indian (41%), multiracial (40%), and Black (38%) respondents — were up to three times as likely as the U.S. population (14%) to be living in poverty. In addition, the unemployment rate among respondents (15%) was three times higher than the unemployment rate in the U.S. population (5%), with Middle Eastern, American Indian, multiracial, Latinx, and Black respondents experiencing higher rates of unemployment. Thirteen percent of respondents to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey reported being covered by Medicaid; that’s ten percent more than in 2011 (before Obamacare).

If implemented, Trumpcare would freeze enrollment and gut $770 billion of federal funding from Medicaid in the next ten years, stripping health benefits from 15 million Americans.

“For people who are immigrants, of color, poor and who don’t have higher educations, it is hard for people to keep up with the potential roll backs and all the regulations changing. All laws should be accessible and clear for all people, and the uncertainty in the political climate only compounds the barriers facing the TGNCI community.”

Kyle Rapiñan and Stefanie Rivera, both directors at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP) — a NYC-based legal representation and advocacy group named for the patron saint of trans rights — agree that trans, gender non-conforming and intersex individuals will be disparately impacted if Medicaid expansion is rolled back.

In a joint email statement to Autostraddle, Rapiñan and Rivera wrote, “For people who are immigrants, of color, poor and who don’t have higher educations, it is hard for people to keep up with the potential roll backs and all the regulations changing. All laws should be accessible and clear for all people, and the uncertainty in the political climate only compounds the barriers facing the TGNCI community.”

The Senate health care bill delivers another blow to trans health care by stripping Planned Parenthood of its federal funding for one year. More than 40 percent of Planned Parenthood’s budget comes from Medicaid reimbursements, including from patients seeking transition-related care. Planned Parenthood offers hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in at least 16 states and transition-related care at about 65 Planned Parenthood locations. Some trans and gender-variant people opt to take HRT so their appearance more closely aligns with their gender identity. From 2013 to 2015, there was an 80 percent increase in Planned Parenthood affiliates that reported offering HRT. These medications not only allow trans people to feel like themselves, but can also increase their safety in public spaces.

“The more ‘passable’ you are, the safer that it is for you in certain situations,” says Dynasty, who also notes that straddling the gender binary is more accepted in cities like Seattle that have protections for the trans community.

When trans people who rely on HRT cannot access it legally, turning to the black market for hormones may become their last resort. Several online pharmacy websites located outside of the U.S. sell illegal hormones. The SLRP wrote that when trans and gender non-conforming people are forced to obtain black market hormones, they are exposed to the risks of lifelong health complications and even death.

In an email to Autostraddle, Vin Tangpricha, MD, PhD, Endocrinologist and President Elect of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), explained how black market hormones put trans people at risk.

“‘Black market’ hormones are unsafe because they may not contain the hormones in the appropriate concentrations or may have been contaminated by unsafe handling and/or storage conditions,” Tangpricha said. “Even worse, the ‘black market’ hormones might not even have any hormones in them. The costs of hormones are relatively inexpensive and many free care clinics are now providing transgender medicine services. I highly recommend that people seek help from a medical professional to obtain low or no-cost hormone therapy.”

While Washington is one of 12 states to ban exclusions of transition-related care, such as HRT, in both private health insurance and Medicaid coverage, TPOC in the state who access health care still encounter racist, transphobic health care providers who are incompetent in trans issues. Dynasty says she’s had only one doctor, a cisgender white woman (she’s never had a trans doctor), in Seattle treat her like a human being, but the doctor can rarely see her because her clinic is across town from where Dynasty lives.

Zoe Samudzi, a 24-year-old writer and PhD student in medical sociology with an emphasis on trans health care at the University of California San Francisco, says that preventative care becomes difficult for trans people when they anticipate experiencing transphobia or trans-antagonism where they have to teach doctors.

“Trans folks have to be both the patient and the educator,” Samudzi says. “When it comes to trans folks of color, all of these structural issues around gender identity get compounded by these experiences of racism.”

TPOC are more likely to receive culturally incompetent health care than their white trans peers, and Black and Latinx trans folks are more likely to lack access to healthcare. The National Transgender Discrimination Survey found that 12 percent of white respondents lacked health insurance compared to 20 percent of Black respondents and 17 percent of Latinx respondents. 19 percent of respondents to the same survey reported being denied healthcare because of their gender identity.

“We have a responsibility as cis folks to do the work to dismantle these systems of domination that we are beneficiaries of and that we’re complicit in.”

Studies on trans people and health care are usually biased and often dreary, but they aren’t able to measure the enormous amount of resilience within TPOC that enables them to survive. Dynasty is just one of countless TPOC who unapologetically advocate for what they need within community and on a legislative level. They shouldn’t have to fight for basic human rights and cisgender people who identify as “allies” or “accomplices” have a duty to speak up when their rights are under attack, a principle Samudzi applies to her research.

“I am the beneficiary of this biomedical system that marginalizes trans people and makes my cis body a superior body,” says Samudzi, a cisgender queer Black woman. “We have a responsibility as cis folks to do the work to dismantle these systems of domination that we are beneficiaries of and that we’re complicit in.”

In their email statement, SRLP staff wrote, “Trans people and gender non-conforming people should be afforded high quality medical care and should be free from harm — we all must keep organizing to prevent state and interpersonal violence.”

This is what it will take to secure affordable, accessible health care and safer spaces for all TPOC. A quick action you can take is calling your senators and urging them to vote “no” on the BCRA and then asking all of your friends, co-workers, and schoolmates to do the same. Make your calls as soon as possible because Republicans are trying to rush the bill to a vote. If you have more time on your hands, get creative with your resistance, like the 60 disability rights activists who staged a die-in outside of Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell’s office on June 22 to oppose the bill. You don’t have to get arrested like they did, but at least use your talents and your privilege to be in solidarity with TPOC.

And if all else fails, Dynasty suggests that cis people can always help TPOC in their community take care of themselves by giving them money.

“As a trans person, this is a process. Makeup costs money, getting your hair done costs money, getting your nails done costs money, being hygienic costs money,” Dynasty says. “If you’re a trans person, and you’re not on your shit, people view you as dirty or like you’re not doing it right.”

TPOC need our money, and they need it now. Far too many TPOC such as Princess Harmony, a 25-year-old Afro-Latina writer based in Philadelphia, are forced to raise money on crowdfunding sites simply to survive. A social worker is currently helping her obtain Medicaid, an attempt that will be for naught if Republicans get their way. While the fight against the dismantling of Medicaid is most urgent, we can’t forget that universal health care should be our long-term goal if we truly believe that health care is a human right.

“I think that the only health care reform bill that’s truly good for QTPOC is the Medicare for All bill that was introduced in Congress,” says Harmony.

According to National Nurses United, Medicare for All is a health care system that would require each state to “set up and administer comprehensive healthcare services as an entitlement for all, through a progressively financed, single-payer system, administered by the states.” Single-payer health care may be our best hope for the future, but unfortunately, Trumpcare is our immediate present. Trans people, especially TPOC, have enough to worry about without losing their health care.

It’s time to fight like hell to prevent the GOP’s latest bill from becoming law, just like Sylvia Rivera fought for liberation for us all.

14 Music Videos That Confirmed My Sexuality

Growing up, there weren’t many ways for me to figure out my sexuality. Picking up books with obvious lesbian themes, going on certain sites when we shared a family computer, etc. were out of the question. Music videos gave me a chance to explore my sexuality without alerting my family and friends that I was gay before I was ready to come out. If someone walked in during a music video, regardless of the content, you can say you didn’t even know it was on and feign disappointment and anger at what dared to cross your television screen as your back was turned (this is why I kept books around, so I can say I was reading). Going down memory lane (and a few from the present) I’m now trying to use music videos as a guide to figure out my type, but I think I ended up more confused than usual.

1. Ching A Ling

Missy Elliott is the one time I answer both to the classic question of “do I want to be her or do I want to date her?”  An artistic genius who has fun in every video (let’s all fall in love with her in Work It again, shall we?) and AND IS JUST GORGEOUS.

2. Check On It

She gave so many looks and this is the reason pink is one of my favorite colors. As a young one, I gave up pink because of internalized misogyny and homophobia but fear not, this video has brought me back to the light.

3. Beautiful Liar

So they’ve decided the man that’s cheated on both of them isn’t worth their time and they wish they could heal the pain in each other, which basically means they’re girlfriends by the end of this video. We are so blessed.

Look at how happy they are now that the man is gone, if that’s not a gospel idk what is.

4. Like A Boy

“Ladies, I think it’s time to switch roles.”

Imagine my disappointment when I learned she didn’t mean it was time for us to do as in the good ol’ days and take the mens’ place as other women’s lovers.

LOOK AT ALL THE BUTCHES, IT’S A DREAM COME TRUE.

5. Promise

IMAGINE MY SURPRISE WHEN CIARA DID THIS RIGHT AFTER “LIKE A BOY.” I was not only shook, I was wrecked and a mere composition of crumbles.

6. Umbrella

We’ve got to be real here. There’s no story going on here. This is four minutes of Rihanna showing us how beautiful she is, especially when wet. And I think we need to honor the gift she has given us here. Also, I have never been more jealous of an umbrella in my entire life.

7. Fallin’

Let’s travel back in time, before the “make-up free” and ”cheated with Swizz Beatz” Alicia Keys, to the “Fallin’” and “You Don’t Know My Name” era Keys — back when cornrows and black girl soft butch swag was the style.

I had this as a t-shirt and a huge ass poster hanging over my bed:

How wasn’t this baby gay gonna fall for her?

8. You Don’t Know My Name

Deadass, this was my closeted lesbian anthem. I be going into school looking at every pretty girl crush mentally sangin’ YOU DON’T KNOW MY NAME even though they obviously did. There were like 20 of us, but I was like BUT YOU DON’T KNOW MY* (*LESBIAN ASS READY TO RISK IT ALL FOR YOU) NAME and I liked the idea that for six minutes and six seconds, there was a possibility that I could shoot my shot and have that shit work out. Also, Mos Def is one of my favorite rappers/actors ever and he made it easy when the girls in class asked who I was looking at in this video. Also, to each their own, but I am so disappointed that I cannot go back in time and tell middle school / high school me that Alicia Keys is not some kind of not straight. I’m not saying my gaydar is amazing, but I didn’t think it’d let me down like this.

The literal moment Keys went “oh fuck, I can’t believe I just said that” but didn’t backtrack and she soldiered on was this not life goals. LIKE, YEAH, I LIKE YOU. DO YOU LIKE ME? CHECK A BOX MOTHERFUCKER!

“But I always use milk and cream for you cause I think you’re kinda sweet”

I was like DAMN BABE, LET ‘EM KNOW. The spoken part of this music video was ridiculous. I was like taking notes on how to ask girls out cause, “I know girls don’t usually do this.” Oh but they do, Ms. Keys. Maybe not the straight ones, but they do.

9. Touch My Body

Answering the door in lingerie #iconic.

If I could’ve aged myself and then gone back in time, I would’ve gone back to be the CompuNerd in this video tbh.

10. Can’t Remember to Forget You

So Beyonce and Shakira didn’t work out. It’s chill. Sometimes that’s how life goes. They’re still great friends, hang out every couple of weekends to catch up. And now, Shakira has more to share because look at who she has recently fallen for. The moment Rihanna walks down the hall and we see Shakira smile is when you knew they were in this shit for real. I mean they keep singing about this guy they can’t remember to forget and I completely believe them because whenever I’ve had boy troubles I’d cuddle with my best friend in heels and lingerie.

I mean, how else do you cope with the sadness? It totally makes sense. Let’s also take a moment of silence for Rihanna here:

Because this is the look of a woman who is not playing any type of straight game.

11. Gold Digger

I used to wait in my cousin’s room at my grandparent’s house before we went to school and this video came on MTV. I vaguely remember thinking “This is the best day of my life,” and then immediately going straight to the chapel when I got to school.

12. Whatever You Like

I seriously considered becoming a rapper just so I could, like T.I., have enough gumption to give my number to the cute cashier.

Could Reagan Gomez be any more adorable?

13. American Boy

The opening shot, literally, that was enough.

But then she explained all the things she wants, and I was like “BET, I CAN DO THAT.” I was like “I’m American and sometimes I dress like a boy so I’m already halfway and like .2% there.”

14. BANJI

This entire video is all I want in life. A girl gang that initiates new recruits by double dutch? Soft butches everywhere? Music that makes me jam every time I hear two notes? I don’t know what your heaven looks like, but this is mine.

“The Bold Type” Gives Us a Muslim Lesbian and Unapologetic Feel-Good Feminism

In the pilot of Freeform’s new summer drama, The Bold Type, the editor in chief of Scarlet says to the people attending the magazine’s 60th anniversary gala that yes, it’s a fashion and beauty magazine, but it’s not just a fashion and beauty magazine. “Here’s the next great mascara, to give you bigger eyes to see the world,” she says. “Here’s a fabulous pair of jeans; now, go climb a mountain.” It’s a recurring theme in the show’s first two episodes, the Scarlet staff — including our main characters: newly promoted writer, Jane; social media director, Kat; and executive assistant, Sutton — pushing back against the idea that a “women’s magazine” can’t be a feminist magazine.

Oh, it dangles the bait right out there. “This month, in our desire and devotion section,” EIC Jacqueline Carlyle beams, standing in front of a giant picture of a vibrator in a room full of predominantly male board members, “I present to you, ‘Mount Up and Ride.’ From side-saddle to bareback, we’ve got positions guaranteed to make you yee-haw!” But the cynics The Bold Type focuses on aren’t old white guys; they’re women. Specifically, a Muslim lesbian photographer named Adeena who balks at having her work showcased in the magazine.

This is way too clean and dry and well-lit to an actual NYC subway station, FYI.

Social media director Kat takes Adeena’s skepticism as a personal challenge. She visits her in her studio, where she’s photographing Muslim women holding signs that describe their life experiences and interests in a way she hopes will reveal their humanity to a country steeped in Islamophobia. Adeena defies Kat’s claims that Scarlet is a political publication, and Kat challenges Adeena right back. They dance around each other, both unapologetic in their claims on feminism, and finally find common ground in the “Mount Up and Ride” cover story vibrators, which pique Adeena’s interest when she visits Scarlet‘s office because they’re illegal in her home country (which the writers never describe beyond a vague mention of the Middle East).

As Kat helps her disassemble and pack up the sex toys like contraband, they talk about why Adeena still wears her hijab and whether or not Kat is queer. Kat says she’s not, but there’s something humming between them and they both know it. By the end of the night, Adeena is so charmed she agrees to let Scarlet publish her photos.

And then she gets arrested in the airport when she arrives back home.

Kat’s not the only one with intersecting work and personal crises. Jane has trouble executing her first assignment as a Scarlet staff writer. Her first pitches fall flat and the one Jacqueline latches onto — how to stalk your ex when they’re not on social media — means Jane has to confront her first real heartbreak, literally, and find answers to all the questions she’s been pummeling herself with since her boyfriend left her on her birthday in the middle of Grand Central Station. Sutton is trying to navigate a blossoming (secret) relationship with one of the board members.

Is this your friend? The bisexual social media director who’s absolutely bisexual?

It’s rare for a pilot to bring even one character arc to a satisfying conclusion, as everyone usually get bogged down in expository dialogue about their clunky decisions, but The Bold Type manages to sketch out Kat, Jane, and Sutton; color in the lines of their characters; and take all three of them on a journey that ends in personal triumph. By the episode’s end, it’s hard not to feel invested in all three of them, and in their friendships with each other. Also, miraculously, in Jacqueline’s relationship her magazine and the women who work for her. You think you’ve seen her character a dozen times before, just another paint-by-numbers Miranda Priestly. And sure, she’s a boss and she’s not sorry for it, but the power she has over the women who work for her is freely given. She’s so much more than stone cold ambition.

The show’s second episode, “O Hell No,” which aired back-to-back with the pilot last night, expands on the groundwork it laid in the first 42 minutes. Kat visits Adeena’s art show when she comes back to the States and does another “I’m not queer but I’m definitely saying I’m not queer too much to not be queer” waltz with her. Jane struggles to get out of her own head and preconceived notions about what a “real” writer is. She doesn’t want to be just another sex columnist. Sutton has dreams of becoming more than an assistant (and a girlfriend), but they’re not specific; she hasn’t found her path forward like her best friends. And Jacqueline is still full of sage advice and unblinking, eyebrow-popped gazes when she’s waiting for an answer to the incisive, gut-check question she just asked.

:sips:

The Bold Type‘s ability to pull off so many small feminist victories in just two episodes is fun to watch; that those feminist victories exist in this format is extra exciting. Freeform’s TV shows are focus grouped to absolute death. Read The New York Times review of the series if you need proof. And what Freeform discovered on their recent deep dive into What Young Women Want is exactly what the fictional Scarlet magazine strives to give to its readers: “It’s feel good, it’s sexy, and it’s just the right amount of political.” Kat, Jane, and Sutton pep talk each other with SnapChats of Elizabeth Warren captioned “Persist!” The magazine company they work for is called Steinem. They promise, right out loud, to crush the patriarchy. When Jacqueline addresses the people gathered for the 60th anniversary gala, she says, “You are the women and the men who work at Scarlet.” It tugs on your ears because you’ve heard the “men” before the “women” all of your life. Every feminist has to start somewhere.

What’s particularly impressive — subversive, even — is that Scarlet takes on the naysayers in the form of a Muslim lesbian. The challenge to the magazine’s legitimacy doesn’t come from handsome young lawyers who sleep with assistants, or curmudgeonly board members who’ve never seen a vibrator. Scarlet isn’t interested in acquitting itself to any man. And as the magazine repeatedly rejects the reductive assumption that sex and feminism and fashion and politics can’t coexist, so does the show itself.

Style Thief: How to Dress Like Jazzmyne Robbins

Even if you don’t know Jazzmyne Robbins by name, you’ve probably seen her in a bikini. The BuzzFeed video producer and star made waves last year by documenting her first time wearing a two-piece as a plus-size woman, racking up millions of views and inspiring others to celebrate their own beach bodies. Robbins is a dynamo, a pal, a babe, and a personal fashion icon of yours truly. Here’s how to get her style.

Sex-Positive, Body-Positive Pieces

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Robbins literally wears her convictions on her sleeve in queered-up, feminist as fuck pieces like fat-positive and anti-misogynist statement tees, and, of course, The Tata Top. You should too!


1. Slut Collar 2. The Tata Top 3. Flaws of Couture Windbreaker 4. Make a Woman Cum Hat 5.Wacky Wacko Somethin’ 2 Say Skirt

Sheer Shit

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Plus-size people are supposed to cover up, say the rules — not that Robbins plays by those. Sheer, lightweight fabrics are just her ticket for showcasing every glorious, sexy, thoroughly human lump and bump.


1. Pink Long-Sleeved Bodysuit 2. Black Tank Bodysuit 3. Universal Standard Thames Dress 4. Torrid Mesh Tee 5. Chubby Cartwheels Mesh Skirt

Something A Little Dangerous

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Whether it’s metallic details, leather-y looks, or fabric that’s slashed or bound together with laces, Robbins often has a spectacular Mad Max: Thunderdome-type thing goin’ on. Hot.


1. Ready to Stare Y Body Chain 2. Courtney Noelle Tina Dress 3. Tough Luv Harness 4.Lace-Up Catsuit 5. Slashed Teggings Dress 6. Faux Leather Leggings

The Brighter, the Better

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When she’s not swathed in black, the pendulum of Robbins’ aesthetic swings in exactly the opposite direction. Take a cue from her in these pieces, and never get lost in a crowd again.


1. Orange Swing Dress 2. Pink Blazer 3. Rue 107 Multicolored Duster 4. RebDolls Pink Minidress 5. Asos Red Fishnet Tights

A Sprinkle of Sporty Spice

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The importance of comfort cannot be overestimated, and Robbins makes the athleisure look her own. After all, why work out when you could always work it?


1. Forever 21 Mesh Jacket 2. Neon Waistband Leggings 3. RebDolls Heathered Jumpsuit 4. Striped Side Dress 5. Adidas Shell Toe Sneakers

“Claws” Features a Butch Lesbian, a Bisexual Crime Boss and a Chance to Stop Talking About “Breaking Bad”

About 45 minutes into the debut episode of Claws — TNT’s woman-led summertime nail salon/organized crime dramedy — Desna Simms (Niecy Nash) finally has a moment to herself. The manicurist, who has seemed impenetrable up until now, sits quietly on the toilet in her outdated bathroom, the emotions playing out on her face.

The new year had begun filled with such promise. Her loyal friend, Polly (Carrie Preston), has been released from prison and returned to her rightful place at the Nail Artisan of Manatee County salon. Desna fulfilled her commitment to her boyfriend, Roller Husser (Jack Kesy), to launder money for his pill mill operation for a year, and she awaited the bonus he’d promised. The bonus would be enough to cover the deposit on her dream nail salon in upscale Sarasota. A better life for her and her autistic brother (Harold Perrineau) finally seemed within reach.

Sunshine state of mind.

And then, the rug gets pulled out from under her.

Polly’s prison sentence has left her penniless, after she was forced to pay restitution for her crimes. Roller’s boss/uncle, affectionately known as Uncle Daddy (Dean Norris), had made her no promises, so instead of a $20,000 bonus, Desna’s thank you for a year of service was just “three funky thousand dollars.” Her only recourse is to stick with Uncle Daddy and the Dixie Mafia until they open more clinics. Whenever Desna does get her money, it’ll be too late to secure her dream salon whose deposit is due in a few days.

She’s forced to take on a greater role in the existing clinic — acting as muscle in the face of a threat from some Russians — while Roller takes all the credit. While she gets shortchanged, he gets lavished, earning the keys to a luxurious beachfront estate, one almost identical to one she and her brother imagined for themselves. And, if that wasn’t enough, the former stripper Desna just hired to work at the salon is sleeping with her boyfriend.

The weight of it all is just too much for Desna and, in the quiet solitude of her bathroom, she breaks down. When her brother interrupts, shrieking that “it’s raining in the house again,” her anger boils over, “Can I just get two seconds to myself, Dean?!”

It’s a compelling scene — one that fans of Nash have been waiting for years to see. The perpetualy effervescent actress has been a fixture in Hollywood since the late ’90s but throughout her career, she’s been pigeonholed as a comedic actress. And while she’s exceptionally good at that — she stole the show on Getting On and was the highlight of Scream Queens — fans have been clamoring to see her try her hand at the dramatic. Nash excels here.

Nash’s performance is buttressed by an incredible supporting cast.

This show features more artistic shots of manicures than the #NailArt tag on Instagram.

As Polly, Carrie Preston looks like the unassuming suburban mom who organizes the school bake sale on behalf of the PTA, but the monitor that’s attached to her left ankle betrays a different story. Claws employs storytelling similar to Orange is the New Black to give us insight into Polly’s backstory, but with one big difference: Polly isn’t a reliable narrator.

In the opening episode, she explains her absence from the salon by telling the new girl that she’d been on vacation in the South of France, at the personal invitation of novelist Judy Krantz. By the second episode, Polly tells a captive audience of teens, sans accent, that she was once the head of a modeling agency that was a front for an upscale prostitution ring. As she files the nails of a bridal party in the third episode, she recalls her first marriage, at age 14, to the leader of the Symbionese Liberation Army. None of it is true, of course, but one thing is clear: whoever the real Polly is, Polly does not want to be her.

Three episodes into Claws and we’re only scratching the surface of Jennifer (Jenn Lyon), Desna’s best friend and trusted right hand. The one-time party girl and recovering addict has transformed into a caring wife — her husband is Roller’s older brother, Bryce — and mother to two. She’s fiercely loyal to her friends and family, ready to pounce on any perceived threat. But, already, as her involvement with the clinic deepens, Jen’s tenuous grasp on her sobriety is starting to slip.

“Do you think we’re gonna be stuck in Husser-ville forever?” Jen asks.

“I know we won’t,” Desna answers firmly, willing herself and Jen to believe it.

“That family is like quicksand,” Jenn replies, without acknowledging that the family she fears is her own. “The more you struggle, the more they just suck you in.”

Quiet Anne is a soft butch babe.

Judy Reyes’ physical transformation into Quiet Ann, the butch lesbian that handles pedicures and security at the salon, is a sight to behold. Even for fans of Reyes’ previous roles on Scrubs and Devious Maids, she is barely recognizable as Ann. There is, admittedly, some disappointment that Ann’s not played by someone who presents more masculine-of-center, given the dearth of roles available to those women, but, thus far, I’m impressed with her portrayal.

Ann remains an enigma through three episodes. Thus far, we know that her backstory includes a stint in prison and, more surprisingly, a six-year stint as the wife of a male Yale linguistics professor. Remarkably, though, even in the absence of dialogue, Ann manages to charm and captivate, perhaps too much for the married client with whom Ann spends New Year’s’ Eve who now stalks her across Manatee County.

And then there’s the stripper, Virginia (Karrueche Tran), who’s managed to snake her way into Desna’s salon and, ultimately, into her boyfriend’s bed. She’s still a relative unknown in the salon but her ambition earns her some respect from Desna initially. “She kind of reminds me of me,” the salon owner admits. What eventually drives a wedge between Virginia and Desna isn’t her affair with Roller, it’s that she outed Polly’s probationary status. It’s clear that the thing that Desna values most is loyalty. Virginia has shown none of it, so Jen tosses her out of the salon, literally.

Virginia earns her way back into Desna’s good graces in a major way and is ultimately welcomed back into the salon. After a lifetime of not being able to count on anyone but herself, she struggles to trust Desna and the members of her crew, but you can tell that Virginia wants nothing more than to belong.

If this show decided to take the stories of these women — these flawed and ambitious women in the service industry, portrayed by these actresses — and just tell them, it would be a show worth watching. But, far too often, Claws doesn’t do that, as if these nuance portrayals of these flawed women couldn’t sustain a show. More often than I’d like, the show bends towards the garish and cliche for reasons surpassing understanding.

On some level, I get it: this is Florida and if ever there was a place that lent itself to garish and cliche, it’s Florida. And perhaps this story is only possible in Florida, where non-existent regulations (yay, small government!) allowed pain clinics to become pill mills, handing out oxycodone to addicts like candy. But, at some point, it just becomes a distraction.

Spencer’s TWIN was A? COME ON.

No one embodies that garishness better than Uncle Daddy who we first meet on New Year’s Eve in the back of his strip club, She She’s (no, really, that’s the name of the club). Draped in gold chains and rosaries, he snorts coke and slurps oysters, as he and Roller celebrate the financial success of their pill mill. The shifts between that Uncle Daddy, who’s almost a parody of every mob boss you’ve ever seen, and the moments when we’re supposed to take him seriously as a threat to Desna, are so jarring that it takes you completely out of the story.

There could be an interesting story to tell with Uncle Daddy — a devoutly Catholic, bisexual crime boss in an organization called the Dixie Mafia is probably the most complicated narrative for a male villain since Omar Little ran the streets of Baltimore on The Wire — but Claws uses Daddy’s sexuality for cheap laughs. Given that the creator and head writer of Claws, Eliot Laurence, was once a writer and executive producer for The Big Gay Sketch Show, I expected better.

Part of me thinks that Laurence saw similarities between the premise of Claws and the premise of Breaking Bad — that is, a protagonist that gets involved with the drug trade in order to support their family — and sought to distinguish one from the other. So Claws ends up with a second line of twerking strippers as part of a character’s funeral procession and Quiet Ann chasing bare-assed addicts around a parking lot, as a way to prove that Claws is a different show. It’s all completely unnecessary. Breaking Bad is not Breaking Bad if Walter White isn’t a white man cloaked in respectability. You share that narrative through the eyes of a struggling black woman, a recent parolee, a recovering addict, a lesbian and a former sex worker, and the story changes completely.

Still, at its heart, Claws is a show about five compelling women — Desna, Polly, Jen, Quiet Ann and Virginia — and how they navigate a world in which they aren’t really meant to succeed. It’s a show that pays tribute to sisterhood and how it can thrive under the harshest of circumstances. The show errs in its audacious moments, which seem crass for the sake of being crass — but there’s enough relatable material on Claws to make enduring those moments worthwhile.

Claws airs Sunday nights at 9PM on TNT.

VIDEO! Getting In Bed with Gabby Rivera: Summer Body Love

Sorry for the delay in getting this Gabby Rivera episode your way, A+ lovelies! After I got out of bed with Gabby in New York, I flew out to San Francisco and then drove for one million hours (approx) with Jenny on the last leg of her tour. It was fun! But! I FORGOT TO POST THIS EPISODE THAT I ADORE!

This was the very first *traveling* episode of Getting In Bed with Kristin, and Gabby Rivera’s bed was all that I’d hoped and more. Yea, I said it. We dug into body image, summertime feelings, America Chavez, and even our own friendship during our time together. I hope you enjoy!!

Tune in next Thursday, July 13th, back at our regular time of 3pm Pacific for “But… Who Am I?”, where I will be giving advice on figuring out who the hell you are… or maybe just making peace with the fact that we are always & forever changing?!

Getting In Bed with Kristin: Summer Body Love with Gabby Riveral | June 28, 2017 from autostraddle on Vimeo.

Playlist: Fuck Independence Day, Celebrate Black Women Instead

It’s the 4th of July y’all, which means all around the country people are congregating to binge drink and see how many burgers and hot dogs their stomachs can hold while lighting things on fire in honor of the signing and adoption of the Declaration of Independence 241 years ago. This is the one that states “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

This quote and the document it hails from are supposedly cornerstones of U.S. history and values, and the basis of the American dream which is why I, a black woman who knows far too well that equality in the U.S. is a myth, am calling bullshit and refuse to celebrate this oppressive pile of injustice we call a country. I will not celebrate the systematically racist government full of laws and policies that lead to the often overlooked deaths of black women and people of color at the hands of those meant to protect us. I will not celebrate a country in which 13 of the 15 trans women of color murdered this year have been black women. I will not celebrate a country currently run by fascists and white supremacists. I will not eat your bland potato salad. I will not celebrate a country that does not celebrate me.

If you’re not feeling the idea of spending your day off celebrating a country that prides itself on being built on the very backs of the black women and people of color it now murders, imprisons and never intended to protect, I got you. I invite you instead to spend it celebrating the strength and beauty of black women by listening to this dope playlist Alaina and I put together featuring the talents of amazing black women throughout history.

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