What You Think A Woman Looks Like

Welcome to Autostraddle’s AAPI Heritage Month Series, about taking up space as our queer and Asian/Pacific Islander selves.

I look like what you think a woman looks like.

Okay, that’s not fair. I don’t actually know you. What I really mean is: Every time I leave my apartment, someone calls me “miss” or “ma’am” or “lady,” even in trans-inclusive spaces. I am invited without hesitation and accepted without question into women’s circles. I offer my pronouns and receive immediate reassurance: I am welcome, my truth is welcome, my pronouns are welcome. Plenty of women who don’t look like me aren’t granted the same courtesy. Women in many of my friend groups casually refer to our group as “ladies” or “women” or, at one point, “girl gang.” Occasionally they remember me and apologize after the fact. More often, it doesn’t occur to them. I don’t blame any individual person for this. It happens with everyone, regardless of their heritage or gender. If I met me, I’d assume I was a woman, too.

It’s obvious that there’s an F on my birth certificate. My cheeks are full and rosy, my body all curves and flare: narrow waist, broad hips, small but prominent breasts. (Extra prominent because bras give me dysphoria.) For some people, that’s more than enough to make the assumption.

For others, it’s the long hair. Long nails. Long, flowy, colorful clothes. My wardrobe is a mess of odds and ends. In cold weather, I mostly wear black pants and men’s shirts, while the warm weather brings out a sea of colors and patterns. My favorite skirt reminds me of a garden: it is a long, shining green wrap skirt, plain on one side, shimmering with blossoms on the other. Mostly I wear pants, even in summer, but they are loose and brightly patterned, which Americans also associate with women’s clothes.

And the assumptions run deeper than how I look. I love cooking, and especially feeding people. I love talking to people about their feelings. (I’m a ghostwriter and a somatic coach, which means I spend a lot of time being paid to talk about people’s feelings.) I love kids and bunnies and lilacs. I swing my hips when I dance. I sing often and laugh loudly and cuddle frequently. I am the classic Mom Friend, complete with the constant exhortations to stay hydrated. Of course, none of these are exclusive to women, but they are certainly associated with them.

As an AFAB person in the U.S., being seen as nonbinary requires being seen as masculine. A rigid, colorless form of masculinity, defined primarily by what it’s not. Skirts, not allowed. Flowers, not allowed. Softness, not allowed.

Illustration by Althea

Masculinity in India looks very different. Certainly, there are requirements and restrictions, probably more than I’ll ever be privy to, as someone neither raised in India nor treated as a man. But I’ve observed that men in India are expected to be expressive in ways men in America are not: to laugh, to dance, to hug.

My loud, muscular dad has always been considered manly. Like me, he sings often and is aggressively hospitable — in India, these are seen as masculine traits. (Women are also expected to be hospitable, but not aggressive about it.) My dad also takes great pride in filling his backyard with colorful roses, and no one has ever questioned the manliness of that.

Plenty of my colorful, flowing clothes are men’s clothes from India or Thailand. I have bright kurtas, Indian men’s tunics, and loose men’s pants from Thailand patterned with feathers or elephants that are also popular in India. In the U.S. these would be considered feminine, but in India they are somewhere between masculine and gender-neutral.

Indeed, to my family in India, I am shockingly unfeminine. I’m not as social as women are expected to be; I don’t say yes as often as women should. And I certainly don’t engage in any of the endless grooming and dressing expected of women. Even my long, wavy hair is considered unfeminine, because I neither straighten nor curl it.

If the aesthetic of masculinity in the U.S. is often defined by what is not allowed, the aesthetic of femininity in India is defined by what is required: makeup, “hygiene” (which could better be described as a war on hair), modesty, fitted clothes.

My nieces and their moms are always asking why I don’t do the things women do. Questions like: Why don’t you tweeze your eyebrows? Why don’t you wear makeup? Why don’t you dress up? Why don’t you shave? Why do you sit like that? Why do you travel alone? Why do you say ‘no’ so much?

Of course, they don’t consider the possibility that I’m nonbinary. India legally has three genders, and a broad swath of identities fit into India’s third gender, but the assumption by cisgender people is that the third gender primarily consists of AMAB people who present in a feminine way — a box I don’t fit into at all.

I used to ask questions back: Why not? Why should I? Why do you?

The answer tended to be, Because you’re/I’m/we’re A GIRL, so I stopped asking.

When I was a kid, it was easy. I wore shorts and a t-shirt, cropped my hair short, rode a bicycle. My little brother called me bhai — big brother. No one questioned this: if there’s one thing Americans and Indians seemed to agree on, it’s that a tomboy phase is no big deal, as long as you grow out of it.

The struggles started around puberty. I successfully argued out of wearing makeup, and I (briefly) surrendered to wearing bras, but the biggest battleground was jeans. I hated them. They itched, they pinched, they reminded me that my body was changing without permission. My dad took me shopping regularly for jeans, and I hated all of them. Sometimes they were too tight on my hips, sometimes they were too baggy on my legs, sometimes they fit perfectly, and I had no vocabulary yet to explain why that was the most uncomfortable of all. To this day, jeans feel like prison. They also, for reasons I’ve never been able to articulate, feel like gender.

I went to college on the other side of the country. Suddenly I had no family around to tell me how I was supposed to look. My campus had an enormous queer population, and maybe as a result of that, many of the cis straight people also freely experimented with clothes and gender expression. For the first time, I could look however I wanted. But I already had clothes, and no money to buy new ones, so I didn’t change my look overnight: I just put away the clothes I particularly hated, especially the jeans.

My best friend, a white cis girl who rarely wears makeup, who wears her hair long because it makes her feel like a princess and always paints one nail a different color than the others because Cosmo told her it would pop (it took months for me to figure out if she was being facetious), introduced me to the joy of long skirts. The first time she lent me one of hers, it was a revelation: a floor-length peasant skirt with enormous rainbow stripes. It was soft and colorful and it fit, no matter what shape I was. I remember standing in the college courtyard, spinning and spinning, and marveling at how the fabric lifted and fell, never restricting my movement or clinging to any curves I wasn’t comfortable remembering I had. To this day, floor-length skirts feel like freedom.

For years of college, I borrowed her clothes regularly. She bought me a floor-length peasant skirt similar to hers, in bi flag colors, and I romped around in it gleefully, even in the winter, over very thick leggings. I tore and re-stitched it many times before fully wrecking it during a snowball fight, stomping right through it with my boot as I clambered out of a pile of snow. I was oddly delighted by the loss: what a fun way for a skirt to die.

When we graduated, my friend bought me the beautiful green wrap skirt that is my favorite piece of clothing. I haven’t torn it yet, but if I do, I hope it’s for an equally fun reason.

I never really wanted to come out as nonbinary. I’d already gone through the exhaustion of being an AFAB bisexual with a cis boyfriend and of being a person with multiple invisible disabilities and of being multiracial but not quite looking like any of those races. I didn’t especially want to go through defending one more aspect of my identity.

Then my office started asking us to put pronouns in our email signatures and to introduce our pronouns at the beginning of meetings. It had been easy enough to just never say anything one way or another, but actually writing she/her felt like a betrayal of something deep. So I put they/them at the end of every signature, introduced my pronouns as they/them at the beginning of every meeting.

No one treated me any differently, mostly because no one seemed to believe me. In my theoretically queer-friendly office, no one ever remembered my pronouns on the first try. When people listed the women in the office, my name was inevitably mentioned. My very last email to my former boss, sent after I had already resigned, was the single line, “Friendly reminder that my pronouns are they/them and have been for over two years now.”

Of course, I tried the short hair and the men’s clothes. I was pretty into them, especially when my hair was just the right length to go fwoop whenever I shook my head. But the part I wasn’t into was not wearing skirts for a full year. I missed them. I missed color. I felt restricted again, in a way I hadn’t since high school. My plain black pants always felt too tight. When summer came, I looked at people in lovely flowing skirts, purple and pink and tiger-striped, and wished I was wearing them.

And then I got mad at myself, because who was stopping me? Theoretically, coming out as nonbinary should have meant freedom, but I’d just shoved myself into a different box, desperate to feel like a “real” nonbinary person the way I’d never felt like a real woman.

So I took my skirts back out.

Coming out to my friends was a relatively easy process. My friend group is mostly Ashkenazi and East Asian, mostly queer, and heavily nonbinary. Some of them forget my pronouns more often than others, but most of them remember most of the time. Only one friend actually said to my face that she didn’t believe me: she said I just didn’t like the restrictions that come with being a woman. As far as I’m aware, no one likes the restrictions that come with being a woman.

Slowly, steadily, beautifully, people across the world are fighting to shift the boundaries of what masculinity and femininity look like. They’re fighting to acknowledge that masculinity is not exclusive to men, nor femininity to women. Some will say nonbinary people hurt that cause: that by rejecting the gender assigned to us, we’re rejecting the battle to broaden gender for everyone. You probably won’t be surprised to hear that I reject this argument. Prescriptive, exclusive views of gender hurt everyone. Nonbinary people are hardly immune from restrictions or expectations. Ideally we reject those restrictions and expectations, but I want everyone to do that. I want everyone, cis or trans or otherwise, to seize the same freedom I did.

Recognizing that I was never going to fit comfortably into my American peers’ idea of masculine or my Indian family’s idea of feminine meant freedom to throw out both scripts and write a new one. I laugh, cry, cuddle and bask in color in ways men in the U.S. are not expected to — and I think men in the U.S. should, too, if they feel like it. I don’t tame my hair, voice or opinions the way women in India are expected to — and I don’t think they should, either, if they don’t feel like it.

Someone’s always going to be unhappy with the way you look, talk, and act. That someone shouldn’t be you.

How Tam Found Empowerment in the Closet

Welcome to Autostraddle’s AAPI Heritage Month Series, about taking up space as our queer and Asian/Pacific Islander selves.

Many queer people find incredible strength and power in the act of coming out fully as themselves. While being able to show up as our full queer selves in our lives is a very beautiful thing, it can also be a lot of pressure to craft the perfect official coming out. This is especially true for aromantic and/or asexual folks, who still lack a societial template to navigate their sexuality, and for queer Asians, for whom coming out has communal repercussions. So what are you to do when you are a Vietnamese asexual and aromantic woman who grew up in white, cishet, francophone-dominated Montreal in the 1980s and 1990s?

This is Tam’s (not her real name) reality. I first met the 38-year-old office worker in a Montreal-based Asian group, and was struck by how open, upbeat and talkative she was. So getting to sit down with her to candidly chat about her journey navigating her asexuality and aromanticism was an absolute blast. Over many laughs, we discussed her confusing process into finding her sexuality, her dating adventures and how she came to find empowerment in the closet.

Illustration by Joyce Chau.

To start, can you tell me how you identify in terms of gender and sexuality?

Cis female, very straightforward. I am the only Asian who is aromantic that I know of. I have not met another person who’s Asian and asexual. And I haven’t met another person who is aromantic in Montreal. There probably is someone, but I’ve not met a single person.

Tell me about your journey navigating your sexuality.

This journey was very much externally motivated. Because, being aromantic, I didn’t give two fucks. I already had close friends and family who responded to my emotional needs. I understand romantic people desire that sort of connection with another person, but I never looked for it myself. So until puberty, I just thought I was different, but I didn’t think about it much more than that.

It started becoming a more pressing part of my life when people started asking me out because I didn’t want to go on dates. So I started wondering why. At 18, I didn’t realize there was such a thing as asexuality. So I just thought I was bisexual because I really didn’t care which gender was asking me out — I just didn’t want to date. I concluded that since I didn’t care for either gender, I must have been OK with both.

At 21, I found a site called AVEN which was, and still is, the main site for asexual people. I ended up on that site, and realized I was asexual. I still didn’t date anybody, so beyond that, I didn’t think much about it at all

When I was 25, my older brother and my dad sat me down separately and advised me to try dating. Taking their advice, I started dating. I had one short queer relationship and one long term queer relationship, even though I dated guys as well. I dated my first girlfriend for four-ish months. That ended not very great, but we’re still friends. I still hang out with her, her kids and her husband.

Then I dated my second girlfriend for close to five years. This is when I realized that I was aromantic because even though I loved her very deeply, the intensity was very different. When romantic people do something nice for their partner, they feel warm inside. Their partner appreciates it and feels warm inside too. I don’t have that feeling. I’ll do something nice for you, it’ll be like a fist bump. And that’s the end of it! I would do the same thing for my family or any of my friends. I’ll shower people with love, but that intensity is completely absent.

Even though she was willing to let that go to stay with me, I didn’t feel staying together was fair to my partner because she wanted somebody who was equally as intense. But I only had platonic feelings, so I made the choice to end that relationship — I was 33, understanding I was aromantic. I realized it was not the best idea to be in a relationship because I don’t have the same capacity for feelings as romantic people. My emotional intensity doesn’t go in that direction.

Have you been dating since?

I never wanted to date to begin with. I tried it, and I have determined that it’s not for me. I have not been on any dates since. I’m not closed off to meeting people, but I make it very clear from the beginning that I’m just not interested in a romantic relationship, mostly because they will be disappointed. They’re going to see that there’s something lacking immediately.

So you don’t date, but I understand you were very involved in the club scene. A lot of people in the queer community criticize it for being very heteronormative. What was your experience like?

At queer clubs in Montreal, heteronormativity is not an issue, but fetishism is a huge problem. Like, oh you’re Asian, you look queer, you’re a girl? People have a fetishized idea of Asians. And I’m not gonna point fingers at queer women or at straight men because everybody has fetishized ideals of queer Asian women. Even a resting bitch face can only get you so far. Some people are very persistent. You can look like as much of a bitch as you want, but sometimes that’s also a fetish. What are you gonna do?

How do people react to your queerness in Montreal?

That’s a loaded question. For the most part, people are either indifferent, or very nice about it. However, one time, at work, I was at the pride flag raising event of my company. When I sat down, this lady started making pointed homophobic comments while photographers were taking pictures of us. Then, she told me that she was my ally. Since I don’t share my personal life with colleagues, she was making an assumption about me, waiting for me to confirm her suspicions. It happened because I present myself androgynously at work. It was a very negative experience.

I reported her. Now she walks on eggshells around me, and I’m OK with that. She’s still employed, and as long as she doesn’t bug me, I don’t care. The only reason I reported her is because I don’t want her to do that to other people, especially [since she is in] upper management. She didn’t hurt me at all, because I have had to deal with much worse in my life in terms of racism. So what I experienced with her is half as bad as the things I’ve lived through as a person of color in Quebec.

I think what comes up again is that you get more flak for being Asian than for being queer.

Absolutely. In Quebec, there’s the language debate. I’m anglophone — I can speak French, but I prefer speaking English. That automatically puts me on a shittier level, because now I’m an anglophone, queer-presenting, woman of color. At work, as much as people have been very accepting, I worked 20 times as hard as the majority of the people in my office to get where I am today. I’m very happy now — I have a great boss and a great salary. But getting here is incomparable to people who are white and francophone, of any gender. They’ll get to places an anglophone, androgynous-presenting, woman of color won’t get to.

What should be done to combat Asian queer invisibility, and have you personally done anything to combat it?

I think that one of the main obstacles is always going to be the older generation. The first thing is to get our parents to be more accepting. Because if the older generation is more accepting, the kids are going to be more open to reach out. Queer Asians’ relationships with their parents will always play a part in their willingness to fully put themselves out there. Being out always negatively impacts the parents, even the parents who accept them, because their parents’ friends and communities will judge them. And do you really want your immigrant parents who don’t speak English or French well to be isolated from the only community they know? So it’s a very loaded issue. It’s an insidious problem that starts with the older generation and that carries over to us.

Do I feel like I’ve broached it? Yes, mostly because I talk to my younger friends, and I’ve tried to help them navigate these conversations with their parents. If homophobic commentary comes up with my own parents or other Asian parents, I’m very direct with them. Because I don’t have a girlfriend or a boyfriend, they can’t accuse me of anything. I’m in a perfect position to always stand up to homophobes because it never impacts my parents. I don’t have a partner to hide.

Who have you come out to and when? Why them?

The first time, I came out to my mom at 18 as bisexual, and she completely ignored what I said. Then at 21, when I discovered what asexuality was, I came out to my mom again. She asked me if I could still date boys, and I told her yes. That’s where that conversation ended.

I came out again to my mom at 25 when my dad and my brother told me to date. But this time, she actually looked up asexuality, so she understood me a bit better. It was her first step in accepting that I was asexual. I came out to a couple of my friends because I thought they should know. Maybe three or four people because they were closest to me. Nobody really pressured me into anything romantic because they could sense I wasn’t open to it.

Between 25 and 30, I didn’t have to come out. If somebody asked me out, I just told them I wasn’t interested, regardless of their gender, without giving any reason, because it’s none of their business.

But when I realized I was aromantic at 33, that was a headache because I had to come out to multiple people. It was a lot of educating, because most people’s idea of happiness includes a partner. A lot of my close friends kept trying to set me up, and I had to tell them no. They couldn’t fully grasp that concept — it’s not their reality. And when something’s not your reality, it’s much harder to understand.

Who haven’t you come out to yet, and why?

Most people! If I don’t know you, I don’t tell you anything about my life. It’s not a big part of my identity.

I’m semi-closeted for a few reasons: one, to protect my parents and my family, and two, why do people need to know? I just don’t tell people because it doesn’t change anything. That’s my private life.

I haven’t come out to the majority of my family because we’re a nicer [version of] “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” When I was dating my last girlfriend, they invited her to every family reunion. It was unspoken that we were seeing each other, but they never said anything. So it’s accepted as long as you don’t identify what it is. I also have a cousin who’s married and lesbian, with a wife and kids. They’re also welcome [to come] over, but we just call them roommates. So to most of my family I have not come out. It’s unspoken that they understand.

How do you feel about that arrangement?

I’m fine with it. I know that some queer people feel very differently about it. I understand where a lot of queer people come from, that feeling of oppression, shame and self-flagellation. But that’s not my reality, because I just view things very differently.

Right now, how does your family deal with your queerness?

My dad is extremely accepting: if I’m happy, he’s happy. My mom is more curious. She doesn’t fully understand me, but she accepts me as I am. And that’s all I could ask for. Because, honestly, she grew up in a country where she never even knew there were gay people. They are extremely oppressed in Vietnam. I can’t expect her to suddenly just develop all the terminology and knowledge related to queerness. The fact that she accepts me and has a vague idea of my life experience is enough.

My parents have come to understand that happiness is not so much being married, having kids, having a family, but instead, being happy living life right now and being able to take care of oneself — which is all I want. Having them change that life view was very difficult, but they were able to do so. Obviously, I’m sure they still get sad sometimes. But for the most part, they don’t press their ideas of happiness on me. They simply accept me as I am.

The Complicated Nature of Sex for Asian Women

Welcome to Autostraddle’s AAPI Heritage Month Series, about taking up space as our queer and Asian/Pacific Islander selves.

Jayda Shuavarnnasri is a Thai-American cis woman. I am a Vietnamese-American trans woman. Certainly, our history and experiences are, in some ways, vastly different. But we both grew up in a country hellbent on telling us who we are. The sexual narratives surrounding Asian women end up introducing violence into our lives.

We are just two of many Asian women. We represent particular lineages. And this is a conversation that didn’t begin with us. This is us adding to the chorus of many Asian women’s voices who’ve demanded that we have ownership over our bodies and our stories.

As a sexuality and relationships educator, Jayda’s work offers a different vision for how we can relate to ourselves and other people, counter to what she calls the “scam” of who we’re told to be.

Jayda Shuavarnnasri: I’m the auntie that has like wild sex stories, but at the same time, like it’s just like chilling in her, you know, like, what is it? What’s the, like, people wore like mumus or whatever, and like shower cap on and just like, yeah, let me tell you about the Dick that I’ve had. You know, like that’s like the auntie energy that I would have loved growing up, like the, like the auntie that I would feel safe enough to ask questions, too.

Xoai Pham: You’re, you’re trying to be the auntie that we all needed, that you needed.

Hi everybody. Ladies and gentlemen, theydies and gentlethems, and all people of the human species, and all the ancestors watching. I’m super excited to be speaking with Jayda Shuavarnnasri today. Jayda is a sex, love, and relationships educator. Jayda goes by #SexPositiveAsianAuntie and hosts a podcast called “Don’t Say Sorry.” Her work revolves around unpacking and redefining cultural norms around what we consider sex, relationships, love and how they impact our lives on many levels. Jayda, do you want to introduce yourself?

That was a great introduction. Yeah. I am a sexuality and relationship educator. I am Thai American. That experience informs kind of why I’m here. Why sex positive Asian Aunty? So most of my work centers around just creating spaces for people to explore sexuality. The people that I work with the most are really trying to navigate sexual shame. A lot of it that we’ve grown up with as in the Asian community. Um, and then also learning how to have relationships that feel liberating and relationships that actually feel good for us. So, yeah.

I love your work because I think that there’s so few Asian people in this space and I feel like as a self-proclaimed hoe myself, I find it really refreshing to see another Southeast Asian woman in this space. I also think I said your name wrong, even though I asked you before this interview, if you could say it for me. It’s So-Wanna-See, and I think I said So-Wa-Sa-Nee before.

It’s like, “So you wanna see?”

Okay. That’s good. Um, I’ve gotten, I’ve gotten a Zoey at Starbucks before when I spell out my name and that’s always, to me, it’s giving me like Zoey 101, but it’s just so much of a stretch that I think is really funny. I feel like one thing I’m really craving is a space for Southeast Asian women within the context of Asian women in general, right? Asian women being impacted by this moment, who can speak to some of the ways that we’re different and some of the ways we’re similar as cis women and trans women. And it got me thinking about all the, all the layers that exist that so few people get to see, except for those of us that experience it, right? Those of us who were actually Asian women who are, who are experiencing these types of things to different degrees on a daily basis. I’m thinking about how, when people talk about Asian hate, within Asian hate, there’s so many layers of East Asians having colorism towards Southeast Asians and South Asians. And then West Asians hardly being in the conversation at all. And then the ways that patriarchy or Asian men hurt Asian women. I mean, among Southeast Asians, we have some of the highest domestic abuse rates. We have some of the lowest mental health wellness rates because of most of us experiencing war across generations with the war in Southeast Asia and American imperialism. And then for me, I feel like I constantly feel this pressure on myself as an Asian trans woman, as a Vietnamese trans woman, to be repping this little bubble in my community within this, these larger structures and feeling like cis Asian women are over there. And then it’s cis Asian men over there, you know? And I just feel like I really craved the bridge. Like I want, I want to cross the bridge and I’m ready to cross the bridge. And I feel like your side of the bridge is really fun, you’re talking sex and relationships and yeah, and I want to cross it. I want to eat with you over there. That’s how I view our conversation. But I wanna know more about, I want to dive into how you came to be the sex-positive Asian auntie, I’m sure that there was a journey to that. I want to hear the story from the beginning.

Oh, everything you just said. I appreciate you so much. And I’m so glad that we’re here having this conversation, um, how I became sex-positive Asian auntie. I think a lot of it has to do with several things, but one is titles. I don’t feel good or great about any of these like “sex educator, sex coach, sex therapists” kind of titles, because so much of me coming into this work is from personal experience, right? I’m a child, I’m a survivor of child sexual abuse. And that in itself, I think positioned me as a person who was always thinking about my body in relationship to the world. So some of the things that we talked about right, of like the violence that Asian women face, um, violence that Asian children, young, Asian girls face living in this world like that, that was always a question I had without really having the vocabulary for it. And so I think that experience in itself has really shaped, like all the questions I had about the world. Like why was I being treated in this way? Why are the things that I’m seeing in the media also like telling me that this is what it means to be an Asian woman, that our bodies are exploited, that our bodies are fetishized, you know, that our bodies are used and devalued in this world. And then interacting with different types of men. White, non-white. And so that in itself is like, Oh, okay, well, this is just all around. And so that’s one layer of just like personal experiences that I’ve had growing up.

And the other layer is like, when I was doing my own healing work around my trauma, I didn’t have anyone to really talk to about it. Like I didn’t have other Asian sex educators that I could learn from. The few sex educators I did follow, like on YouTube and stuff, it was like Lacey Green and like Shannon Boodram. And they were amazing. But they, you know, definitely different experiences than my own. I think at some point I just said like, all right, I should just do it myself. Like I should just, you know, and it really just started out with like, I talk really openly with my girlfriends and we have thankfully cultivated a relationship where we can tell each other hoe stories, there’s zero shame in us sharing our experiences and what that came with us. Also asking questions of whether or not our experiences were normal. And that I think was the light bulb for me. We just need this, we just need to talk about what is going on in the world. We need to talk about what we’re confused about. We need to be talking about what has harmed us. Right. And make that normal, just make that an everyday thing that we do, particularly as Asian women. So I just started doing like workshops here and there talking about sex and it resonated with people. And, you know, I think a lot of people now are realizing how important it is to have conversations around sexuality that also center like the Asian experience. And for me, the like, I’m, you know, a lot of other sex educators that I also see in the world or saw in the world as I was kind of entering this space were very sexual themselves, you know, like beautiful boudoir photos, which I find stunning, but it wasn’t like my style. Like that’s not the energy that I feel like I carry in general.

Um, and so I think my energy is very like humorous, I want to sit in the awkwardness and then laugh about it, and I want to be able to talk about sex in a way that it feels like you’re sitting with your auntie, you know, at the table or in the kitchen and you’re cooking together and just kind of have it be fun. Very informal without this super sexy image. So yeah, so the auntie energy is like, that’s what I try and bring. I’m the auntie that has wild sex stories, but at the same time, it’s just like chilling in her, you know, what is it? What’s the, like, people wore like moomoos or whatever, and shower cap on and just like, “Let me tell you about the dick that I’ve had.” You know, like that’s like the auntie energy that I would have loved growing up, the auntie that I would feel safe enough to ask questions too. So, yeah.

You’re, you’re trying to be the auntie that we all needed, that you needed. I love that. I love that because I think that when it comes to families, families are so often the site of so much violence and suffering in our lives. And it’s so often the greatest source of joy and safety and, you know, the phrase “the revolution starts at home” comes up for me, just the idea that in these spaces where we’re really intimate with people, either by choice or by design, in some ways it ends up being either weaponized against us, or it becomes a really great opportunity for transformation. And that’s kind of how I see what you’re describing as utilizing that space, a family via the auntie figure as a space for transformation. I’m really curious though, in terms of the Asian part, right? It’s Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. And I think that I’m really curious what, what it is to you, how the Asian experience factors into your work, like what makes Asianness different in your experience when it comes to the sex and relationship world?

Yeah, that was a big one too, because I think I thought about like, am I not just sex-positive auntie, you know, to all folks, because I don’t actually work exclusively with Asian folks. I think it’s for me to name my positionality as an Asian person living in this world, right? As we mentioned, like for me, the Asianness is that we are sexualized differently. We are viewed differently as Asian people navigating sexuality and gender, you know, and also bringing the kind of historical context of Asian sexuality and gender in our histories is different than it is from like Western or European countries. Particularly as a Thai person, like sexuality and queerness there looks different than it looks like here. And so for me, I think it’s important to kind name that as a distinction. And just when I first was thinking about that question of what the Asian means in my work was just the fact that when I saw others, just to be perfectly candid, the sexuality space was very white and usually white women and the way that they were, uh, providing advice around like navigating sexuality just looked so distant from what it felt like my experience was.

I also think that there’s, there’s these elements in Western culture that talk about being direct and this direct communication in your relationships and your sexual experiences. And that is normal in maybe a Western context, but that’s not as accessible in a lot of Asian cultures. This direct communication, even when we talk about something like consent, not valuing something like non-verbal consent or kind of like learning each other’s cues. To me is still as valuable. And that’s such a big part of like moving about in Asian families and Asian communities. We’re not as direct communicators, but we still communicate with one another in these more subtle ways. I guess that to me is really ingrained in our culture. I don’t know if that makes sense, but yeah, just the style of the way these white women were teaching and were listening, not like, didn’t resonate with me a lot of times. Um, and to be honest, I’m still figuring out what that Asianess means for me as well, too, as I kind of dig back into my own roots.

What does it mean to you? I’m really curious, because for me, whenever I get asked, I say, “I’m Vietnamese,” If I am asked to broaden it, I say, “I’m Southeast Asian.” Because I just think it makes, I understand Asian-ness as an attempt to have this sort of cohesive identity that we organize around. But I think when people start to see it as a fixed identity with umbrella experiences, it’s not very helpful when we use it to describe ourselves with. I’m curious for you, how do you relate to the word Asian?

I’m glad you said that particularly around Southeast Asian. Cause I think I’ve had to figure out my feelings around being Southeast Asian, because most of the people around me that identify as Southeast Asian or at least that I grew up with learning about the war and conflict that happened within Southeast Asia, but then being Thai is so different from those experiences. So I really had to figure out as a Thai person. What does it mean to be Southeast Asian in the context of Thailand in the middle, as a “neutral” entity, you know. Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Burma, and everyone else around us experiencing so much war and genocide. Like what does it mean to be a Thai person amongst all of that? And so I feel like I’ve had to figure out, what does it mean to be Southeast Asian?

And to me it’s, we’re all of the same land, have such intricate histories with one another. And that’s, the important part about being Southeast Asian. Then being Asian to me is like, yeah, I use that here because I’m definitely not white. You know, if you were to ask, I don’t know what else to be associated with at this point. Um, and so yeah, when I say Thai-American, I definitely say American as a default, not like a “I’m American too,” nothing about that, that I’m proud of. It’s more like I’m American. I have these privileges of being an American, you know, because I was born here, but it’s not something that I’m going to, I’m not waving any flag by any means about the American part. And so the Thai part is really more honoring my family more than me. It’s just my parents and my grandparents.

Yeah. There’s definitely privilege when it comes to being American, but sometimes I definitely grumble the American part. I think that it’s really interesting because you mentioned imperialism earlier and you know, this work with sex and relationships can feel so interpersonal, feel so small in some ways, in terms of it being about individual relationships, one person dealing with another person, or maybe more people, if it’s a polyamorous situation or something like that. But there’s so many things that we carry with us as individuals from intergenerational trauma to just the lineage that we carry, whether it be good or bad, and studies have shown that it makes an imprint on our DNA through epigenetics and how we operate in our lives and it lives in the body.

And I want to turn to some research for a little bit, just get a little nerdy because I’m definitely a nerd at heart. I know that you’re aware of this as well, because I know that you’ve used it in some of your workshops, but the research of Dr.Sunny Woan has been so vital in this time in terms of detailing the sexualization of Asian women, as it relates to us imperialism. Dr. Sonny Woan is an attorney and wrote this pivotal piece in the Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice about the role of Thailand in the war in Southeast Asia. And when I say the war in Southeast Asia, I’m referring to what people call the “Vietnam War” that actually took place across many countries, including Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and including many ethnic groups that are still persecuted in these nation-states, that are often forgotten. I mention this because there there’s little known about the fact that Thailand had “rest and recreation facilities,” facilities where over 70,000 men visited between 1966 and 1969 during the course of the war.

And they were offered sex with local women. And that was that’s just one example. I mean, the same thing happened in the Philippines where there was a sex industry that sprang up because the U.S. occupation and the soldiers there were offered access to women’s bodies as if we were materials, as if we’re like natural resources that they needed to survive. Dr. Woan wrote that “rest and recreation facilities are a vital component of the U.S. military policy with pervasive disregard for human rights. The military accepts access to indigenous women’s bodies as a necessity for GIs stationed overseas.” And I mentioned this because I think that in our lives, our sex lives are often the subject of so much aloneness, especially when the sex, especially when the sexualized things in our lives involve trauma. And they feel so insular.

And yet there’s this, there are so many events that happened in the world in terms of international politics and imperialist wars that actually shape our individual lives to this day. Right? I’m thinking about how you and I sitting here today are shaped in terms of who we are,, what we’ve experienced in our lives, because of the decisions of men who preceded our births, and made decisions that harm many people. And how to this day, as people in the U.S., as Asian women in the U.S., we face all of these violences and the legacies of this violence that happened so many years ago.

Yeah. We say all the time that gender and sexuality is socially constructed. But we think of that as if it’s just like socially constructed onto the individual. But as you just said, right now, it expands across centuries, this construction of what humans, how certain human life is valued or devalued, how certain human life is exploited, is socially constructed. And we continue that pattern if we’re not able to see that those connections, if we’re not able to see those legacies and how they should continue to show up in the way we interact with one another, people talk about fetishization all the time, but they don’t go as often into the imperialism. And that factor, and then Asian, like Asian women who will talk about fetishization all the time, but then don’t look at the fetishization of trans women. These different layers, like people who aren’t able to kind of connect those dots. I think one of the reasons why we fail so often to move forward, because we’re not able to kind of see those throughlines between, between these identities. I don’t even know if they’re identities, but these experiences really. Between these experiences.

Don’t even get me started. So I was in Thailand for three months in 2016, and I was in Bangkok specifically for a job. And I was working for this organization that worked on sexual health. It was really interesting because I was able to observe firsthand the sex tourism that was happening in front of me. And sometimes I was asked to be a part of it, of course, because people just assumed I was Thai, because that’s how the world is, but I just thought it was shocking at first, I think I became a little numb to it, but I was just in all these spaces where I was, I was craving connection with other Southeast Asian trans women. But in those same spaces where we gathered, where in this case, Thai women gathered, there were always male suitors.

And usually they were white male suitors who had come from other countries to experience Southeast Asian trans women. And I know that that occurs like all across Southeast Asia. And there’s a really specific trope of Southeast Asian trans women being a specific type of experience. There’s the term ladyboys. And there’s all this history and these layers. I feel like there hasn’t been enough discussion about it. And I think that in order for Asian women’s experiences to be fully represented and meaningfully discussed towards some end, towards some road towards justice or liberation, we have to consider the vastness of what we experience. And that includes what trans women experience. So I’m happy that you mentioned that. I also know that you’re queer, and I feel like most of the sex educators that have become famous and have become really successful in recent times, you mentioned Shan Boodram. A lot of folks are straight and I just feel like, I feel like maybe I’m biased, but I think that straightness limits the scope of what people get to see about the human experience. So I’m really curious, you talked about the Asianness, how do you think that your queer experiences factor into your work, but also your life?

Yeah, that’s a good one, you know, to go back on like what other sex educators that are exist out there, to be honest, like even us having this conversation around the politics of sex, one of the things I was frustrated with with a lot of other sex educators is that it felt very apolitical. It felt like it didn’t have that layer of understanding that the way we move about in the world, in our sexuality and in our gender is absolutely political. And that the relationships that we have to other people are political as well. And that to me, was a piece that was like missing for a very, very long time. I definitely don’t think that’s as prevalent now, at least with other sex educators that I’m connected to, but I think that’s, that was part of my frustration and then queerness, right.

You can’t remove the politics around queerness when you’re moving about in this world. To me like how my queerness informs, my work or being sex-positive Asian auntie that like, yeah. The outlook and the frameworks that I have are it, it wouldn’t be exist without that queerness. I came into my queerness, like later, whatever that means where I’ve had to learn that my heterosexuality before was completely compulsory and that I just live in a society that assumed that’s the norm for everybody. And I was like, yeah, cool. There was never anything in me that like, you’re gay.

And I don’t think I came into my queerness until I started exploring non-monogamy actually, they kind of both happen at the same time for me, where I just had these moments of realizing that everything is a scam. All of it is a lie. I’ve been told to live life in this way, because this is what good Asian daughters do. This is the mold that you live by to survive. This is the mold of thriving or what it looks like. And so it took, it took me a minute, and it wasn’t until I was really exploring non-monogamy and starting to dismantle all the risks, like stories I had about relationships in general, that was also coming into my queerness and also just like completely unlearning everything that I was told around love, relationships, care. So that’s kind of how I came into that and that absolutely informs all of my work.

You mentioned non-monogamy and I think that is, I’m sure you have a pulse on it, but there’s a growing conversation about it. There are so many myths surrounding polyamory. I’m curious in your work, what are some of the biggest myths that you tackle with the folks that you work with?

Yeah. I talk about this one. Often I talk about this with my partner often, one of the biggest misses people think that polyamory or non-monogamy is about the sex. And it’s really ironic that how people automatically sexualize monogamy or non-monogamy and polyamory when it’s so far from it. And it makes it feel like, I think just the culture that we live in is so obsessed with sex as part of relationships. And I’m like, so when people kind of argue, “Oh, you just want to all these people. You want to cheat on your partner. Blah blah blah.” Like can’t “commit.” And it’s like, actually it’s about having multiple commitments and sex is not really on the table for all of them. There are asexual people who practice non-monogamy right. And it’s actually the world that we live in that cannot separate sex and relationships. And so that’s one thing that I find really, really fascinating when I talk to monogamous people about non-monogamy.

What came up for me when you were speaking about it is how much of it has to do with fear in terms of how people respond to non-monogamy. Because I think in relationships in general, when you’re in a vulnerable state, fear naturally comes up and we’re either going to make friends with fear, or it leads us to reactions that end up hurting us and our partners. And I think what happens is in these situations, the responses I often hear are, basically under the surface, someone is saying, “I’m afraid that I can’t handle this much intimacy or this much vulnerability,” or they’re afraid that the other person who desires non-monogamy, isn’t actually in love with them or they aren’t enough for people. There’s always this sense, this doubt about enoughness. Which is why I think this work around sexuality is also very much so spiritual work, around the soul and how we feel in their hearts and minds.

I’m curious for you, so Autostraddle‘s Asian Pacific American Heritage Month theme is taking up space and refusing to compromise different parts of ourselves. Because so much of what we hear about Asian-Americans, as people often say, they don’t feel Asian enough and they don’t feel American enough, or they feel like they are too queer to be in an Asian-American experience, or they have to choose different parts of themselves and what we’re trying to get at within our team. And what we’re trying to put out into the world is what happens when we stop compromising and we start reconciling and we take up space as our whole selves. What have you refused to compromise on recently and how are you taking up space in your life?

Oh, that’s a good one. Well, I mean, so our podcasts that I cohost is called, “Don’t Say Sorry.” That in itself is, we are here exactly the way we are, often confused, often very opinionated, definitely anti-capitalist in our episodes. We’re really unapologetic about the opinions that we have. And I think that in itself, for me, it’s I don’t always know what I’m doing and I’m still going to move through it. And I’m not really apologizing for the fact that I’m still learning and I’m still growing and I’m still being in the world. And I think before it would have been, I’m not apologizing for being vocal or I’m not apologizing for being opinionated. And I think because I was resisting so much of that Asian identity of being quiet and not taking up space, now for me, it’s like, I actually, I feel so good in my knowing now.

Like I feel so good in my, so grounded in who I am, that I don’t even feel the need to yell as often as I used to. You know? And now I’m like, actually I’m still learning and if I’m learning, I don’t actually have to be loud about it if I don’t want to. And I’m still growing. And so I think that’s where right now I’m taking up that kind of space. I’m okay not having all the answers. I’m okay still blooming. And I’m still I’m okay still cocooning sometimes when I need to. And I think more of us need that. I think we also live in a, because of everything that’s happening, we’re encouraged to have such instant formulated opinions. Like we’re expected to react to all of this trauma and news and that’s coming out. And what I feel from the collective right now is we actually need to take this break of not feeling the need to share opinion instantly and not feeling the need to be reactive to, to what we’re experiencing and just giving ourselves the space to not know, and giving ourselves a space to just sit and be with it. 

When Love Is A Matter Of Desperation

Welcome to Autostraddle’s AAPI Heritage Month Series, about taking up space as our queer and Asian/Pacific Islander selves.

Sometimes it feels like there’s a fissure running straight through my life, dividing it into a before and an after. Before we dated; after we broke up. Before I challenged the assumptions I had been making about myself; after I laid the truth bare. Before, when I didn’t think that love could exist for me; after, when I still don’t believe it — the same on both sides and yet so completely different.

In between is the time we were together. What do I even call it? — more than a few months, less than a year. It feels so distant now, like vague memories of a faraway land I visited once. I had been searching for love my whole life, but now I can’t even find my way back to it.

Instead, I’m watching from the peripheries, again. Watching as the people around me build their lives, deepen their own relationships and still, somehow, manage to leave a little space for me. But it’s not enough. It’s never enough.

There’s a hole inside me — it’s been there from the start — that will never be filled. I know this. And yet the only thing I’ve ever wanted is to close it before that emptiness fully consumes me.

I was raised with no understanding of love, which is to say, I was raised with a hunger that only grew as each year passed by.

I have one memory — exactly one memory — of my mother kissing me on the cheek. A surprising brush of her lips on my skin before the door opened onto a starlit sky, and she rushed off after my father to a work social event. When she returned some hours later, she asked me about the dull red stain on my face, and then, remembering her sudden, uncharacteristic token of affection, she rubbed at it and remarked, “It’s lipstick.” I must have been eight or nine at the time and didn’t know what to make of the whole thing.

My sister was devastated when I told her. I knew our mother only ever had harshness for her: she had never gotten a caress, in fact the opposite. My sister recounted the time she had kissed our mother on the cheek years earlier, a mere child herself, imitating the loving gestures of her classmates after a school presentation for parents. Our mother jerked her face away and said, sharply, a word in Hindi that holds a multitude of meanings: dirty, contaminated, impure.

She never did it again, my sister. Our mother never did, either. Love was like a shame in my family, and I carried that message for years to come.

When we were much older, my sister observed that I have always been our mother’s favorite child. I hadn’t realized it because the small fragments of anything remotely resembling fondness that our mother doled out came at the steep price of obedience, so the daughter she favored was a child I wasn’t.

But favor is relative, after all, and something, no matter how small, isn’t nothing, and that something was just enough to make me crave more.

Do you remember — when we were together, you came and wrapped your arms around me from behind?

I didn’t expect it. I had just finished cooking us a meal I had never made before. The sunlight streaming in through the kitchen window in my apartment, I found myself taken back two decades and more. A staple growing up, my mother only cooked kidney beans on the weekends because, even in a pressure cooker, they take so long to soften.

“It makes me really happy when you share things from your childhood,” you said. And I, also, softened.

I revealed it bit by bit, that childhood, as I found myself feeling safer and safer in the intimacy we had. The childhood I had buried deep inside myself, first, in an attempt to assimilate to the white world around me and, later, in an attempt to escape that painful past. The childhood I had stamped down so thoroughly, all I’m left with is the feelings and a smattering of memories that hardly begin to capture the actual experience.

In middle school, I made myself obsessed with the only boy on the bus who spoke to me without ridicule. Having so little for so long, I had learned to wring the least bit of affection out of the smallest measure of attention. His friends picked on me mercilessly, but he never explicitly took part in their cruelty; he even talked to me on occasion. That had to mean something, and something could mean anything, and anything included the possibility that someone could give me what I never got if I just clung to them a little harder. Desperation gave rise to obsession which I read as attraction, as I buried my actual feelings ever deeper. The possibility never came to fruition, but how many times I repeated that pattern in the years to come.

In college, an older student who I generally liked showed real interest in me, and, in retrospect, I was laughably oblivious. Inviting me to sit close, to share a seat. “Walking me home” across the parking lot of the apartment complex. Video calling me shirtless. My utter indifference to it all was a tell I couldn’t possibly recognize. Because I was a woman, which meant I had to set my hopes on a man. Because at that point I only knew four queer women, and they were all white, and they were much older and oh so certain in their love. And so, I told myself, I was unmoved because he already had a girlfriend and surely he was just playing around.

Unable to imagine anything else for my life, I resigned myself to the heterosexual world I knew I had no real place in.

Do you remember — when we were together, that time you brought me camping with your friends? I was quiet and shy and tense the whole time, but I found myself growing more and more at ease by the strength of your attraction, the sincerity of your care for me.

In the early morning, listening to the rain pattering overtop the two of us in your tent, the comforting weight of your body overtop mine, I said, “I’ve never felt so at peace in my life.”

“Then, we can’t let you leave,” you replied, your voice full of smiles I didn’t have to look to see.

I didn’t say it, but the more time we spent together, the more I felt that maybe, just maybe, I could have a home in this world after all, one where I truly belonged. Not the pleasant residences of my sisters or my friends, where I would visit and we would laugh and I might rest and — invariably — I would leave. But a place I could stay, brimming with companionship and love.

As I followed the motions of a heterosexuality I couldn’t make sense of, I fell in love with the wrong people, without even realizing it. Some of my closest friends, and all I understood at the time was that I simply needed to know these women better, I needed to be in their lives and to have them in mine.

What is the line between friendship and love? Was it love that drew me closer and closer to D. over the course of seventh and eighth grade, that led me to call her week after week, even when we went to different high schools? Or the earliest sparks of love — attraction — when A. asked me “my type” during a break in high school gym class, and I told her that I didn’t have a type but sometimes I thought people were pretty, like, for instance, her? Or how about the time in college when M. invited me to stay over her place and I told her that I think everyone’s at least a little bi and she asked me why was I bringing this up now and I told her no reason and never, ever mentioned it again?

It was years after the fact that I realized it was love that led me to constantly seek out the comfort of J.’s companionship, one of my dearest friends who I met shortly after graduating college. I’ll never forget that lazy Saturday afternoon in September — the burning heat of summer past, the coolness of fall not quite set in, lying on my couch, listening to Tchaikovsky’s final tribute to despair, the Pathetique Symphony — when the pieces finally fell into place. Lying, listening, reflecting on a recent visit from J., I was consumed by nostalgia for the closeness we had and the heartbreak from when we had moved apart some years before, a heartbreak I had never acknowledged. “Ah,” I had thought, “I wish we could be together forever.” And I heard myself, really heard myself, for the first time.

“Ah,” I had thought, “I wish we could be together forever.” And I heard myself, really heard myself, for the first time.

What is the line between friendship and love? Truly, I can’t say, but I know there is one. Because one by one, my friends and I, all of us, prioritized other parts of our lives over the friendships we cherished. And every time, I felt a little something crack inside, and every time, I wondered if I was the only one who felt that way, and every time, I thought that perhaps I was too soft, and so every time, I steeled my heart a little more for the end that was inevitable.

Do you remember — when we were together, that time you lay next to me on my bed, and I said that, in that moment, gender was utterly meaningless?

You felt ambivalent about that statement, and I understood why. I hadn’t expressed myself clearly at all. Much later, I realized what I had wanted to say was that, with you beside me, I finally found myself. My relationship to gender, in terms of sexuality and identity — there was nothing left to hesitate about, no more questions to leave open, no uncertainty I could hide behind.

It’s hard, when you’ve kept your feelings locked away from yourself for so long, to not let moments like those and the relationships attached to them define you. It’s hard, even though you know you can’t, you know you shouldn’t. It’s hard because when those moments pass, when those relationships end, you’re left to find yourself anew among the shattered pieces of your heart.

I had thought that we were close friends, but she told me, for her it was more, and so, I couldn’t avoid facing myself any longer. And I thought, here at my doorstep is what I’ve been yearning for, for so long. So I took that leap, knowing nothing could ever be the same again.

I tried to live in those moments, without worrying what it might mean for the future. But you can’t love with half a heart. The longer we were together, the harder it became not to invest in the idea of “us,” quietly starting to trust that perhaps I, too, could have what had always been just beyond my reach.

But in the end, a love born out of friendship followed the same path as all my loves born out of friendship, as she, also, prioritized other parts of her future and did not see fit to build me in it. We were just travelers in each other’s lives, but I didn’t know until it was too late.

I used to say that the pursuit of happiness made me miserable. That perhaps I had no claims to happiness in my life, and so I should just stop chasing it, wishing for it, believing in it. But when we were together, I had finally found an emotion within me I could recognize in that word.

When we were together, I no longer felt trapped in the emptiness of my past. I saw a future open up before me, one I actually had a place in, where my deepest desire might finally be fulfilled.

When we were together, hope landed in my heart like a nightingale, freed from its cage made of less and less and less.

I read a story about a nightingale once.

It died because it gave too much of itself.

It died because the humans around it were selfish and uncaring creatures, as all humans are.

It died because it was a fool who believed in the lie called love.

It died.

I don’t know what happened to my little nightingale. I wish it a beautiful, dark woodland to fly in freedom, far, far away from the cynical utility of human life.

Heartbreak is, perhaps, a more universal experience than love itself. But I can’t seem to make my way to hope afterwards. People talk about being strong enough to bear it. But what about when your heart was broken at the very beginning?

When you grow up with so little, you grasp at anything you manage to get your hands on and hold it tight, try to make it last for as long as you can, for a dream of ever after. But that’s no way to love, and that’s no way to live. I know that much, even if I don’t know any other way.

I spent a year trying to make sense of the world again, and then the second year everyone’s lives shrank because it’s just safer to be alone. Each day that goes by, I’m bound tighter and tighter by my fears: break something enough times and you’ll never be able to piece it back together again, will you? So, I gingerly hide the shards I’m left holding, afraid to show them, afraid to share them, all the while desperate for love, starved for touch, staring down a future that looks as devoid of both as the past.

Some days I can’t imagine anything beyond the solitude that has defined so much of my life. Loneliness is an old bedfellow of mine; despair, my oldest friend. If I can come to embrace those parts of myself I’ve always tried to push away — perhaps, that is the only lifelong love I can count on.

Baopu #85: Portrait Through Immigration

Foolish Child #94: The Verdict

..

Editor’s Notes: On Black History Month 2021

An inside look, just for A+ members, from Autostraddle’s editors on the process, struggles, and surprises of working on what you’re reading on the site. We learn so much from this work before it ever even makes it to your eyes; now you can, too!

This is my third year editing Autostraddle’s Black History Month series. I began planning my first one just a few weeks after I started full-time as an Associate Editor. I was looking back on that time this morning, hoping to be “inspired” about what to say today, and found this:

“It’s my favorite holiday. Maybe it sounds strange to you to call Black History Month a holiday. After all, there’s no Santa Claus coming down the tree or an Easter Bunny bringing baskets. No ‘day after’ sale on candy. No rainbow colored balloon arches like the kind that adorn gayborhoods every June. In fact, Black History Month is probably thought of as stodgy – tired black and white photographs of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Jackie Robinson.

Here’s the secret about Black History Month: few people know how to celebrate the way Black people know how to celebrate. And we celebrate this month FOR US. We don’t look towards white eyes or ask for white approval. The morning of February 1st social media streams are filled with gifs and memes, well-timed quotes and inside jokes, words of affirmation. Black churches host banquets. Community centers put up billboards draped in red, black, and green. There are talent shows and pageants where little black girls are forced on stage in itchy thick white cotton tights to recite Maya Angelou’s ‘Phenomenal Woman’ and ‘Still I Rise.’ Our littlest ones fumble through the words of the Black national anthem, ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing.’ There are dozens of these traditions happening all across the country this month, and I love each and every one of them. At the 2017 Emmys, Issa Rae told a reporter, ‘I’m Rooting For Everybody Black’ and even though it wasn’t technically Black History Month when she said it – nothing better captures the attitude.”

It’s still true, you know. I am unapologetically, over the moon, absolutely just cheesy cornball, would probably make you roll your eyes levels, proud of being Black, especially during this — the 28 Blackest days of the year. And still, I found this year’s Black History Month hard to plan. Hard to even be excited for.

I’m sure part of that is pandemic exhaustion. Pandemic exhaustion wears more heavily when your Black. When your people are in every way bearing the brunt of the virus — between two and three as likely to contract it, overrepresented in the essential work industries that put them in daily direct contact with it and in the resulting unemployment caused by its economic effects, conversely underrepresented by nearly every measure of who has access to a vaccine.

I went into lockdown on March 11th, 2020. My father called on Sunday March 22nd to tell me that he was being hospitalized with difficulty breathing. He was put on a ventilator the next day. He stayed on that ventilator for nearly two months. It was 102 days — July 2nd — before he walked back out of that hospital. There’s an entire Spring he won’t remember ever again, vanished from his life. An entire Spring that I spent traumatized. A Spring of learning medical terms and keeping haphazard notes in a small yellow notebook, of waking up nauseous every day and unsure how to steady my next steps, of doctor’s phone calls on top of doctors phone calls and memorizing the name of every single nurse — just hoping that if they remembered my name in return then maybe, just maybe they would treat my father like he belonged to somebody. The surgeries when I couldn’t be there.

I don’t know why I’m sharing that now. I never have before.

I think it’s because recently a (white) friend of mine was talking about the Black Lives Matter protests over the summer and how she felt “reinvigorated, like a world of change and ‘people power’ was finally really possible” and all I felt was worn out and exhausted. I’ve loved Black people since before I knew the words or how to spell them. I’ve been in the streets for our lives long before last summer. Where others feel inspired, I’m left wondering what took so damn long. I’m left frustrated knowing that this, too, won’t be change.

Maybe I needed you to know all this so you could understand what drew me to this year’s Black History Month theme. When I first read Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham’s Black Futures in December, I was spent out of possibility. I also didn’t have the energy to keep circling the past. But within their gorgeous multimedia art book (which you should absolutely cop if you haven’t yet, consider it my Official Editor’s Recommendation) was a simple premise: “What does it mean to be Black and alive?” Starting from that inquiry, they assembled an archive of the digital landscape and communities built and the art found in the living life and breath of Black people right now. It was small, just asking us to look around and see the magic in our every day — and that was my restoration.

I wrote out a prompt. I sent Sarah (the graphics genius and design director behind all the beauty you’ve witnessed this month) an embarrassingly rough looking mood board. Then miraculously, carved deep into the late nights around the ongoing Autostraddle fundraiser that’s eating our days, the two of us got to work.

My first attempt at a mood board. Ever.

Sarah turned my mood board into this gorgeous collection of calls for work.

I’ve loved every essay we’ve published this month. They easily represent my best editing work at Autostraddle, and one of the truest distillations of a vision I’ve had go from concept to completion.

It’s a small party of sorts, carefully curated, and I’m ecstatically proud (what did I tell you about being a cornball) of each and every one. I’m so grateful to Lazarus Letcher and shea martin for the meditations they provided on gender, of politics, of finding yourself in the past — or letting go of what’s there once you do. Without knowing each other, their pieces find a harmony, each picking up where the other let off. And if that’s the case, then Khalisa Rae Thompson turned up the heat! Once you read the line “When I was twelve or thirteen my mother caught me and a female friend dangling our vaginas” — you really can’t come back from that, in the best kind of ways. And today here I am, rounding out our group with some memories of my Aunt Lorna, who taught me everything about telling Black stories that I know.

There’s two days left in Black History Month. Make the most of it. Tell Black Stories. Encourage Black Storytellers. Don’t stop in February. Tell them every other day of the year, too.

Addendum

Thank You to Sarah Sarwar for being a friend, and for putting up with my terrible graphic design skills with a smile, patience, and flourish. Everything she makes is a treasure — and here’s some behind the scenes of what that looks like in practice:

Carmen’s Notes:

“I love how she looks with the starry night, I love the richness of the purple flowers. I love how it looks like a collage and multi-media art. I just LOVE  it. I can’t stop gushing… I’m also wondering what it looks like with the purple pushed back to the edges more so it is crowding her less? I made a very terrible mock up of what I mean.”

Sarah’s Final Version:

“I can DEF try this!!! great idea!”

Carmen’s Notes:

“shea (the author) has a lot of really great photos of themself on social media, I’m wondering if incorporating one or two of them will help fill the space and also take the singular focus off of Kamala? Don’t laugh at my ‘art’ LMAO but — does this make sense to you?”

Sarah’s Final Version:

“It does!!! Also I think we could add in images of Sojourner Truth? Also what if the pearls cover Kamala’s eyes? seems more aligned with what the essay conveys.”

✨

Everything That Matters Is Stuck in the Back of My Throat

“She died six months ago, and you still can’t say her name!”

In January, I was helping my mother pack up our Christmas tree. She keeps it up longer than most people would deem “OK” — in part because we’re Puerto Rican and that means Christmas isn’t over until January 6th when the Three Kings visit baby Jesus and bring him his baby presents. It’s a whole thing. And in part because… fuck what other people think, you know? Christmas is her favorite time of the year. And she should be able to extend it as long as she wants. Winter’s hard enough as it is.

We were taking down the bulbs, the oldest ones. Shiny and delicate with chipped paint at the temples, aluminum peaking through and dotted rhinestones that have long ago been rubbed dull but still manage to catch light. They were my grandmother’s and every year my mom tells the story of how my grandfather would wait until she was home for Christmas before putting them on their family tree. I try to imagine them in a cramped Brooklyn apartment. I try to imagine her young. These are ones we save for last, wrapped individually in crinkly reused tissue paper, stored away like gems.

I told mamí that I was worried about her. I’m always worried about her. I’d worry about a ladybug on a blade of grass if you let me. But my mom? She’s 64 and this past year has sometimes felt like watching her age ten more. She said she was fine. I didn’t believe her. She said she was worried about me, I scoffed. Don’t get me wrong — I’ve had some spells in the last eleven months; I haven’t always showered, I haven’t always gotten out of bed. But nearly a year into a pandemic that’s doubled as one of the worst years of my life, I also haven’t fallen into one of my trademark depressive episodes. I know what true darkness looks like. And I knew that this wasn’t it. So instead, we got louder. Each round a new one of who had the most right to be worried more.

I know she wasn’t screaming, but in my head it was the same:

“She died six months ago, and you still can’t say her name!”

The night my mother told me that Auntie Lorna’s cancer had returned, I laughed. I was heating potato skins in the oven, drenched with cheddar cheese and bacon. A treat two months into a pandemic for which it increasingly felt like there was no end in sight, I was going to pair them with a ice cold beer and a romantic comedy — comfort food to go with comfort television, Love & Basketball, I think. Her words kept echoing in my head, bouncing thisaway and thataway like a ping ball machine that had no lights, no bells, no prizes to win. “Auntie’s cancer has returned.” I elevated somewhere outside of myself, watching these hollow bones move my arms to pick at melted cheese from a cookie sheet. “Auntie’s cancer has returned.” It was the funniest four words I had ever heard.

There are two versions of Lorna C. Hill.

Lorna Curtis Hill was the founder and Artistic Director of Ujima Theatre Company, Inc. She founded the organization in 1978 in Buffalo, NY, and at 43 years old Ujima is currently oldest Black arts organization in Western New York — it’s one of the oldest Black theatre companies left in the country, period. My Aunt Lorna was the first woman to ever be accepted to Dartmouth, where she received a B.A. in American Intellectual History in 1973. She received her M.A. in Theatre in 1978 from Buffalo State. In 2014, she retired from the Buffalo Public Schools, where she taught theatre. She was the recipient of countless (and I mean countless) local and national recognitions.

I can recite all these things because I was tasked with writing her longform obituary. It was published in full by Buffalo’s local Black paper, The Challenger. My Aunt’s leaving of this earth was covered by every newspaper and television station in the city of Buffalo, because her imprint cannot possibly be untangled from the city itself. She was, in and of herself, Black History. For many people, that will be her legacy.

But when my Aunt Lorna smiled, it was the sun. She had a language and humor unto herself. She loved beer and cursing and playing cards and her garden. Her standards were exacting and her trust hard-earned, but my God her love was eternal. If you don’t know or didn’t grow up celebrating Kwanzaa, ujima is a Swahili word meaning “collective work and responsibility.” And from that tenet, she built my family.

My Aunt Lorna is not my mother’s biological sister. But they were sisters. Her children are not technically my cousins, but to fix my mouth and call them anything else would be a lie. What’s a blood relation when y’all are raised together. When your oldest memories are of each other’s faces and the sounds of your smiles. When you’re going through the very worst shit in your life, theirs are the names you first think to call. In 34 years, I have lived in five cities and no less than eight houses, but Auntie Lorna’s house is the one that I think of as a childhood home. It’s where my initials are engraved on a swingset, where I celebrated my 18th birthday, where I know by heart how many steps to the second landing or where to find the exact mug I love in the cabinet. The tucked away corner where I could read books in quiet and the table downstairs where you could always find someone willing to talk the hours away. The indentation of the couch where I’d fall asleep with the sound of Auntie Lorna and my mom playing Spades real loud carrying over from the backyard as my lullaby.

Her home was hers, but she also made sure that it was ours. You were never lost, there was always a home you could come home to. Collective work. Responsibility.

In my favorite photo of Auntie Lorna, we are in the backyard which was her favorite place. We’re celebrating her “One Year Cancer Free” party. Margaret (Margaret, Auntie Lorna, and my mom raised me) threw it. There was overflowing women everywhere, more women than chairs or steps or even sometimes it felt — places to stand. Music and speakers and sunshine and barbecue. I caught her laughing at the picnic table set up at the side of the house, she was smoking a cigar and just really making a show of it on purpose. She had long dangly red earrings that she made herself and a top in West African prints. I grabbed my camera. She winked at me and took a long drag inhale, making sure I got a good shot. There was nothing worth doing for Lorna Hill, unless you were gonna do it right.

She was small. Slender, not magnificently tall — though as a kid I thought she towered in her elegance. But no, she was small. And large. She was the largest woman I’ll ever know.

Once, when I was about eight, I got straight As on a report card.

Whew chile… you couldn’t tell me nothin! All As, you hear me? Not a B in sight — and those other letters of the alphabet? Never met them. Didn’t even want to know their names. That day I walked on water. My shit didn’t stink. I was but a small child goddess among mortals.

That night, we were working in the theatre. I ran up to Auntie Lorna, she was always person I most wanted to impress. We were inseparable during rehearsals, I’d sit in the chair next to her or behind her, reading off her script (I could barely read) and falling asleep in her lap.

“Auntieeeee! Guess what??” I was bouncing like a jack rabbit.

She raised her eyebrow, “Hhhhmmm?”

“I got! ALL! As!!!”

I had been imagining this moment all afternoon. My big reveal. The way her face would crack in two from smiling. That she would swoop down and hug me and ask for every detail. I was going to recite exactly how I did it! All the facts I had learned, how I could multiply now and how neat my penmanship had become. A one woman show, the burning bright lights of Broadway, starring Carmen — that’s me!

She quirked her eyebrows again and looked down. I stopped in my tracks. I had played this all wrong.

“Good. That’s what you’re supposed to do.”

Then she turned back to her work. My bruised eight-year-old ego left to be picked up in her shadow.

I tell that story often you know, pausing in all the right places for comedic effect. The build up, the let down. The lessons learned about not bragging over accomplishments. I told it again this summer to Auntie Lorna’s home health aide, after my mother and I packed up our lives and moved back to Buffalo to be with her in her last weeks. The aide whooped and laughed in all the right parts, but Auntie Lorna just smirked.

“I’m glad you remember that day.” She motioned for me to get in bed with her. I folded my body close, like when I was little. She held my hands in her own.

“It’s not that we don’t celebrate our wins. It’s that we don’t celebrate when there’s still more work to do. You were always smart Carmen, that was never the question. What were you going to do with those smarts, that’s what mattered.”

The first time Auntie Lorna was diagnosed with breast cancer, I was 24 years old. I wrote her a letter.

I wrote about a concert she and my mom took us to (myself and my younger cousin, her daughter) when I was about 10 years old. Sweet Honey in the Rock is a Black women’s a capella ensemble of folk singers. A capella folk music wasn’t exactly aligned with my music tastes in fifth grade (I was into Brandy, LL Cool J and the Spice Girls) but we had gotten dressed up, which felt special and unusual to hear music, and it was my first time in a fancy concert hall, so I was willing to play along.

But there was one song. I made my mom buy the CD. As a teenager, I downloaded it on my iPod. As an adult, I still stream it. My kid brain couldn’t describe exactly why, but “There Were No Mirrors in My Nana’s House” felt warm and all encompassing — like a hug. Gentle and sweet like a lullaby, but with none of the implied sleepiness.

“There were no mirrors in my Nana’s house,
no mirrors in my Nana’s house.

I never knew that my skin was too black.
I never knew that my nose was too flat.
I never knew that my clothes didn’t fit.
I never knew there were things that I’d missed,
cause the beauty in everything
was in her eyes (like the rising of the sun);
…was in her eyes.”

And you see, that song was us. The beauty of everything was in her eyes, and in her reflection I saw myself. As an adult it’s taken me a long time to unpack just exactly how anxious I was as a child. How terrified I was of making the wrong choice or saying the wrong thing or how exhausted I was from all the loud voices screaming all the time in my own head that I was going to somehow mess up. But in Auntie Lorna’s presence, I only felt calm. With her, I heard quiet. It was secure. Unwavering. And when you’re a kid who’s very insides feel like they are clawing away at you — the search for that quiet? It’s everything.

I sent her the lyrics, written in sharpie on a notecard. I told her, if people ever wanted to know the very best of what’s in me, they only needed to know her.

I was reading recently about how cruel it is not to be able to mourn in ritual. I feel guilty, because my aunt didn’t die of Covid and I don’t want to co-opt a narrative that isn’t mine to claim. But she did die this year. And because of this time we’re living in, my family was not able to have a memorial.

We were able to be together, which I know counts us as luckier than most. Having created a tight circle around her care in her last weeks, we were always only together anyway — before “pods” became an uptick in Covid related slang we may never soon forget. The night she left us, we drank beer and played Spades in her backyard until it was so dark we used our phones propped up against bottles for light. And I know, I know she was with us. But damnit —

Lorna C. Hill was larger than any one life. She was supposed to be sent home with drums at her feet. With the many, countless people who loved her being able to sing her name and hold each other out loud and in public.

And what comes for those of us who are left? Where does grief go, how can it work through our bodies, when it’s left unattended. I wish I was smarter, somehow, more poetic. I wish I knew how to be in service, the way that she taught me. To find a way to guide through. Instead I just feel… here.

Here is a really fucked up, angry, mundane, nothingness place to be.

I promised myself I’d write about Auntie Lorna for Black History Month when I saw a tweet that said something to the effect of, “the story of how your grandparents met, that’s Black history too.”

Lorna Hill was Black History in a literal sense that she did community work for Black people for decades and that will have an impact that outlives her in every capacity. She’s also my Black history in that you cannot tell the story of my being without her. I imagined that in writing about the woman who so loved Black people and so believed in Black stories — the woman who’s greatest gift to me was in loving those same things — during the unequivocal BLACKEST month of the year —  I’d have a better ending.

Instead, all I have is an ellipsis. Grief is a flat circle. And I never imagined I would have to live through grieving her.

My mom’s right. I haven’t talked about my Aunt Lorna. The funny thing is, I haven’t been able to bring myself to talk about pretty much anything else, either. I talk a lot. I mean every day, from the minute I wake up. I can fill almost any space with my voice. But I also don’t talk much at all, if you know what to look for. The trick of talking about everything is that you’re really talking about nothing.

Everything that matters is stuck in the back of my throat. I don’t know what to say. I still can’t bring myself to say that she’s not here. I was there. I watched them carry her away. I close my eyes and she’s still right here, she’s right here next to me.

But now I’ve said 2,644 words about Auntie Lorna. She remains the very best of me.

Queering Faith: Reclaiming the Holy of Sexuality

Welcome to Autostraddle’s 2021 Black History Month essay series. In their recent stirring multi-media anthology Black Futures, Black queer creators Jenna Wortham and Kimberly Drew ask, “What does it mean to be Black and alive?” And so, this Black History Month, Autostraddle is reaching past, and pushing forward, to explore realities beyond (the pain of) what we have inherited.

“Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference – those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are black, who are older – know that survival is not an academic skill…For the master’s tools will not dismantle the master’s house. They will never allow us to bring about genuine change.” ― Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

Even now I’m terrified they’ll read this.

Last week was Audre Lorde’s birthday. I am sitting in my lingerie with wine wondering how to write a response to her essay “Usage of the Erotic”.

She says, “The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling… For women, this has meant a suppression of the erotic as a considered source of power and information within our lives.”

I think about all the ways that just being herself was a risk. To be openly queer and Black was a radical act. Add being a person of faith? Something is always out to attack our intersectionality.

I’ve always wanted to write like Dorothy Chan and Tiana Clark, with the fierceness of Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Just this past week, I hosted a reading where I was the feature and all my poems were the best kind of raunchy. I listened to the work of Imani Davis and Raych Jackson and marveled at their vulnerability and honesty. I cried for days after wishing I could be that brave. The freedom that seemed to come naturally for them, was still awkwardly resting in my mouth.

And what about Tokyo at night and Ingres’ Princesse de Broglie
and whips and bodysuits and catsuits and handcuffs,
kinking it up, the whole boudoir
delivered to my doorstep, and in this sushi bar in Downtown Phoenix
when the whipped plum ice cream comes — Dorothy Chan

I longed to unburden myself of the Baptist shame I’d carried around for years. Growing up, no one besides Audre and Adrienne Riche spoke about their desire or the body, and being sheltered in private school and the weekly church functions didn’t leave much room for exploration. Nor did I dare to explore that side of myself. Thirteen years of Christian school uniforms, choir practice, and Bible quiz bowl every year. Secretly, I always wondered what the book of Songs of Solomon was about. I’d hide under my bed reading verses that painted vivid descriptions of a woman’s breast or the curvature of her backside. The pages my mother and school kept concealed.

Yes, the boy hovers
above you, a generic ruffle
of gasp & ohmygod. But let’s not
kid ourselves, shawty. We both know
to whom you really pray. Brooklyn’s sky
is too twitchy for stars, so this is all
you know of night: — Imani Davis

For years, I have been aching to write about sex and desire. Each time I do, it is a trip into a bear field, a walk on a tight rope, a risk that is always worth it but still terrifying. The first time I attempted, it just came to me. During a writing session one night, a repressed memory popped but up in my head and the words started pouring. I was recalling the trauma of my mother exercising the demon of my queerness. I was twelve or thirteen and her friend came over to visit her and brought her daughter. Our mothers told us to go to the room and play together so we occupied our time with babies and action figures. I’m not sure how we even started, but before you knew it we were talking about bodies and giving ourselves pleasure. I asked her if she’d been kissed before and we practice mimicking the motions on our hands. Then I told her I had discovered a new way that I thought was very innovative: rubbing my vagina on the bedpost. I asked her to try it with me. We were having a good ole time grinding until my mother and her friend walked in and caught us. What’s left with me now is the memory of being taken to the basement and being exorcised. The holy water, the oil, the scripture. They were convinced we were possessed. We never spoke of it again.

Looking back, I understand my mother didn’t know what else to do. God and the Bible, scripture was all she knew. After writing the poem, it made its way into my new book and into the play production, I wrote. I knew I’d have to read it on the opening night of my show. Who was dead front row center? My mother. I stepped on stage, started with a joke, then opened with the first sentence which gives the whole memory away. “When I was twelve or thirteen my mother caught me and a female friend dangling our vaginas.” She just smiled, but I’m not sure she understood the gravity. In that moment, I felt like I was flying and truly free. A memory that I had pushed down was being told with confidence and boldness in front of my mother almost twenty years later.

It wasn’t like my mom hadn’t seen me be wild on stage before. Just the year prior, I directed the Vagina Monologues at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and performed Eve Insler’s moaning triple orgasm scene with my mother in the audience, but she’d never heard my own explicit words. Never a true memory that she had encouraged me to repress, to bury so deep, I thought it was a bad dream.

After the show, she took me for pizza, and we didn’t talk about it. She said, “That was a really good performance — anything you want to tell me about it?” I replied, “Nope”. We just kept going. We never spoke of it again.

It’s that silence that makes me continue to write, knowing the risk. The things we never speak of. The queerness. I can count on my hand the number of times we have. The time I told her my friend and wedding officiate was gay, and she said “Maybe she’s confused.” I knew the conversation was pointless, so I said, “No, she’s been gay. I think her mind is pretty made up”. And that was the end.

As I become more comfortable with my true self and exploring my sexuality and sensual writing, I also become hyper-aware of the risk. Someone could read my poem and that would be the end of me.

The fear isn’t just of my mother or immediate family finding out about my double life through my writing. Last month, I hosted my monthly Women Speak poetry reading, and like clockwork, the panic set in that my in-laws would see it on Facebook and decide to come. Each of whom are pastors with no idea that I am queer and married to their son. I know they might eventually read my two books coming out this year that talk about queerness and desire, and that creates daily anxiety.

To publish books and stories about sex and desire make me feel more in tune with my spirituality, but that’s not something easily said to in-laws that you want to see you as wholesome. The taboo is always looming. Where I’m from, Black folks don’t mix the spirit with the flesh. The desire with devotion. Keeping up the act is exhausting. Hiding certain articles I’ve published on my website so people don’t click on them. Deciding not to announce that I’ve been featured in queer anthologies. The tinge in my stomach that someone will see my recent poem publication announcement and I’ll be outed.

How do you tell them your poem about pussy doesn’t negate your love for God? That your spirituality isn’t separate but an extension of you? Can you imagine the awkwardness at the next family gathering? I remember when my aunt saw the article I shared on Twitter about not feeling attractive to women, non-monogamy, and navigating the queer community while married. I told her it was just research for the story. My double life had caught up with me once again.

I love poets like Tiana Clark, Audre Lorde, Dorothy Chan. Their freedom and the queer representation they provide is greater than their fear. Audre Lorde talks about embracing the erotic because it allows one to more fully feel other aspects of one’s life, and to look at those aspects more carefully and honestly. In other words, accessing one’s sexuality fully and without shame means one can access spirituality more fully, too.

Somehow, these authors’ determination to live fully and truly themselves was worth the risk of disowning and fear.

Now, all my work hinges on that intersection of spirituality and sexuality. The dichotomy of desire and spirit. What I’m learning is they are connected. That every time I speak out my identity, I am freeing the shame that has followed me for so long.

Mackerel

when I was 12,
my mother caught me
& a” female friend” dangling
our vaginas on the
end of the bedpost
like live bait.

rubbing our maple wood
against the slippery pole
trying to catch a spark
on the cold, hard thing
between our legs
The mesquite of our innocence
roasting
over flames sent signals to the room
where my mother and her friend
sat talking,

And we were just at the point
of falling
off the bone,

the moment where the pink
of the Salmon is so tender,
when she opened the door,

doused our flame with holy

water & scriptures, made us bow
our head and promise to forget
the sweet communion of burning.

Years after she scrubbed the cedar
from our clothes, I learned
that my body is only alive
when it was free to choose
when & where it starts a fire, how
long it allows itself to be
wet & waiting.
The power comes in
knowing that your body is no tadpole,
nor fish to roast over hot coals,
it is the flame itself,
the blue and red ghost that
survives even after the smoke clears.

More of the author’s poetry: WAP as Wishing Wells, Through the Looking Glass, Eve Leaves Adam for Yvette, and also Mackrel in its original typed form.

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Wrestling With Kamala and Beyond: Reckoning With Blackness, Womanhood, and What Comes Next

Welcome to Autostraddle’s 2021 Black History Month essay series. In their recent stirring multi-media anthology Black Futures, Black queer creators Jenna Wortham and Kimberly Drew ask, “What does it mean to be Black and alive?” And so, this Black History Month, Autostraddle is reaching past, and pushing forward, to explore realities beyond (the pain of) what we have inherited.

I. Birthright

Akron, 1851. In a meeting hall full of both Black and white faces, a six-foot-tall woman with oiled leathered skin rises to speak. She is rumored to be man. She be too tall, too masculine, too Black to truly be woman. Her feminine birth name betrays the whispers – Isabella; her declared name signals that she is more concerned with a higher purpose. Sojourner Truth (meaning one who is seeking truth) addresses the room, giving a concise speech that would later be recorded and recited by Black scholars and activists alike for centuries to come.

“Ain’t I a woman?” she asks the crowd. “Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman?” Ain’t I worthy of being helped? Of receiving the best? Of being loved like white women? Of being cared for in this world? Ain’t I worthy of being seen in the most delicate ways possible?

150 years later, Black women are still asking the world the same question. We ask when Serena is ridiculed for arguing during tennis matches, when Michelle is compared to monkeys, when we are shackled during childbirth, when we are raped, when there are no marches when we die, every time there is another report of a Black trans woman killed, when Breonna is murdered while sleeping, when we breathe without asking permission:

Ain’t we women? Ain’t we worthy of being seen in the most delicate ways possible?

History tells us “no” and so we hunker down. We cling to ourselves, uplift each other, scrounge up ounces of #blackgirlmagic to make the world better and more bearable for the next generation who will ask the same questions of their world.

To be Black and woman is my birthright; to be loud in my defiance, fierce in my brilliance, magical in my resilience, beautiful in my melanin; to be sister, daughter, sis, queen, star, baby girl. It is all I have ever known — until now.

II. Womanhood

Vermont, 2020. My body, a Judas in all her forms, bled the day we won. Blood drenched my boxer briefs as my body celebrated a victory for womanhood, for Blackness, for a return to a democracy that pretends to care about folks like us. I sat on the toilet in our tiny mountainside bathroom and cried. When the blood comes, the tears most always accompany it. When my female organs remind me of my birthright, my stomach knots and my body contorts into an unfamiliar “she” that I used to be. She goes to buy tampons because she is always out. She washes her underwear, curses her maker, and informs her wife that the devil is visiting despite all of the cease and desist orders she has written to the universe.

I know that womanhood and periods are not synonymous. I have read the essays. I have reminded people on the internet — reminded myself — that not just women bleed, that gender and sex are not the same thing. When I was younger, I bled only once each year and considered it a gift of apology from a creator who made a mistake in assigning my organs. Unfortunately, my irregular periods were as short-lived as my femme stage of queerness. These days, my period reminds me that I cannot read and discourse my way to self-acceptance. Bleeding is one of the last things that connects me to a female-ness that makes Black womanhood almost unbearable.

In a meme-worthy video, Kamala Harris’ voice comes in a half-whine. “We did it, Joe.” She is smiling, dressed down in athleisure, outside in the sunshine. I watch the video again. I do not smile. There is no sunshine in my windowless bathroom.

Kamala Devi Harris — Black and South Asian, an AKA from the Bay would be our next Vice President. As usual, Black women did The Most. The best part about Black women is when we do The Most. On graduation day, we show up with noisemakers and signs and cheers even when they ask us to hold our applause. Can’t nobody tell Black women to hold our applause for our success. Mama gon’ scream for her baby no matter what. Kamala is ours and Black women make it known. So my body, clinging to Black womanhood, traded in air horns and applause for blood clots and cramps.

When I stand up and look in the mirror, I see my mother in my reflection: short hair, glasses, smirk, big eyes. I see my grandmother in my mother. See her mother in her.

“We did it,” my ancestors echo.
“Who is we?” my soul responds.

Over the next few days, Black women show out.

“You know she went to Howard, right?”
“Let me get my pearls out, chile!”
“They ain’t gonna know what to do with themselves now.”

In art, Kamala walks with Ruby Bridges’ shadow. She stands on the shoulders of giants, painted with John Lewis, Martin Luther King, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and John McCain. In essays, she becomes our heroine – the first, the holiest, the Blackest despite her South Asian heritage that is not honored as much as it deserves to be. She is not only our next vice president. She is woman. She is Black. She is worthy.

 Ain’t we women?
“Hell Yes,” we chant and promise to don pearls and Chucks in her honor.

For the victory of Madame Vice President Kamala Devi Harris suggests that Black women are now “worthy,” a cause for celebration. We — Black, women, and tired — have been chasing worthiness since before Sojourner asked that room in 1851; since they ushered us off of ships in shackles and priced us for auction; since they stripped us of our names, homes, and womanhood and called us Black.

In the “we” that won, I search for my own joy and came up empty. This is not my first rodeo. I know girls like Kamala. Those who are the epitome of Black girlhood in the best ways possible with light skin, thin frames, straight hair, pearls, and parents who got money so they could get all the degrees. The ones that get the world and say “you can, too,” reaching down to pull me up. I am too heavy though, too rough, too unpolished, not enough money, gold chain dangling instead of pearls.

The progress of Black girls and women like Kamala Devi Harris has never guaranteed progress for folks like me. I have spent my life mourning my inability to twist my spine, slim my thighs, soften my soul to be woman enough.

III. Girlhood

Virginia, 2007. In the picture, I am wearing a pink linen skirt suit. Draped in part-tablecloth, part potato sack, I smile flanked by my two best friends in high school. They are twin stallions, beautiful in both body and soul. We each hold a glass of water while posing for the photo. I really wanted a glass of punch, but when I saw the punch bowl, I also saw the future — red punch on my linen skirt suit that was my mama’s favorite outfit for me.

“You look so neat,” she had said when I came out of the dressing room months earlier. Neat was mama’s best compliment for fatness. According to my mother, there were three rules for fat Black girls:
1. Never smell.
2. Always watch your mouth — use correct grammar and act like you got sense.
3. Wear clothes that fit; be neat.

She never said this but from personal experience, I knew that fat Black girls were not as beautiful, as delicate, as woman as skinny Black girls. I knew that skinny Black girls were not as treasured as skinny non-Black girls. I knew that skinny white girls were the best. I knew that this worked for everything. I knew that my straight shoulder-length hair was my best womanly feature which is why my mother spent $40 every other week to get it done. Five years later, when I decided to cut my hair off, my mother sent me a two-page email begging me to reconsider. The fear between her sentences echoed the quiver in her voice I’d heard a few years prior when I told her I was queer. She was not afraid of who I was becoming, but how the world would treat me when I became it.

I don’t know why my mother thought linen would be a good idea for her tomboy daughter. I actually don’t know why anyone thinks linen is a good idea. It wrinkles within minutes and never looks as crisp in real life as it does on the plastic mannequins in department stores. The linen skirt suit came from Dress Barn. I’d outgrown the junior sizes back in elementary school and was forced into womanhood before I was ready. To be fair — I’m not sure I would’ve ever been ready for Dress Barn. The truth is I was born as queer as they come. I am queer boy, queer girl, queer being, queer beast, queer heaven wrapped in messy, rugged, caramel-coated melanin.

Looking back at the photo, I can feel my mother’s pride — of me, her daughter who won a scholarship she would later waste in a year of recklessness; her daughter who managed to keep Pepto-Bismol linen skirt suit wrinkle-free despite being crunched into an auditorium seat for an hour; her daughter who smelled good, used correct grammar, and was neat; who was beautiful, Black, and woman on that day.

Months later, I would wear the same linen skirt suit to a different function. The blood would come and spot the back of it. Instead of washing it out, I would throw it in the trash without telling my mother. When my mother died eight years later, my body bled for a month in clotted mourning that spoiled every pair of pants I loved (none of them linen nor pink).

IV. Reckoning

Inauguration Day, 2021. Kamala Harris is dressed head-to-toe in a purple outfit designed by Christopher John Rogers. She pulls it off. I imagine myself in the same suit and see only “Violet. You’re turning violet!” vibes. I do not watch the inauguration. I am worried that there will be another attack — on the proceedings or on my own soul. I cannot take another day of tears, isolation, and heightened gender dysphoria.

Later, I watch a recording and watch her raise her hand and solemnly swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; to bear true faith and allegiance to the same; to take the obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; to well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which she is about to enter.

Pause. Rewind. Play. Celebrate.
Pause. Rewind. Play. Grieve.
Pause. Rewind. Play. Rage.

We did not ask for this. We asked for revolution, for abolition, for a radical shift in our being and dreaming. We got Kamala and once again thanked a country for giving us less than we deserve. In America, being grateful for receiving less than we deserve is our birthright as Black women.

On plantations, Black women toiled day and night under white masters, spent their days in their master’s fields and kitchens preparing gourmet meals for others, and hoped to get scraps to nourish themselves and their own. Black women spend their lives twisting their forms and tongues in hopes of being worthy of the humanity we deserve. Centuries of years later, we remain malnourished in almost every way possible, still settling for table scraps. When you are hungry, the crumbs taste like heaven.

“Celebrate the progress, shea. Be grateful for representation. Be happy to be Black and woman and American today.”

I stopped believing in the lie of progress a long time ago. America sold us a promise of progress and said “just a little bit longer.” Ain’t nothing revolutionary about assimilation; about being just palatable enough for them to say “I guess so” and mark your name on the ballot as the lesser of two evils.

I will not downplay the success of Kamala Devi Harris, our first Black, South Asian female vice president. She is brilliant, strong, beautiful. An alum of the most prestigious HBCU, a former attorney general, and the daughter of scientists, she has a panoply of accomplishments. Her greatest accomplishment may perhaps be her appeasement to whiteness so much so that enough white folks found her palatable to vote her into office. 150 years later — they say Kamala’s win is their answer to Sojourner’s question, but what Kamala’s victory signifies is not a victory for Blackness or Black womanhood; it is a reminder that this white supremacist nation rewards those of us who are able to get as close as possible to whiteness, to womanness.

I don’t know Kamala personally, but I know her in the way that we all know someone who reminds us of someone. I’ve been chasing Kamalas (and their victories) my entire life. What I know for certain is that the progress of wealthy, well-educated, cishet Black women has never ensured the progress of folks who look and sound like me — fat, queer, fluid, loud, and not quite woman enough.

For months, my body has been mourning the faux revolution they sold us — crumbs disguised as a feast worthy of celebration. I am tired of settling for table scraps in both politics and life. I want the entire loaf I deserve — personhood that is elastic and brilliantly queer, a Blackness that is not judged by its palatability to whiteness, to be considered worthy and affirmed regardless of how I measure up to standards of womanhood.

V. Beyond

Today, 2021. When I wear a suit, my little sister smiles and tells me I look neat, a nod to my mother’s legacy of wanting us to feel worthy and safe in this world as Black women. I smile back and tell her I always look neat, that I am my mother’s child.

She asks me if I am still her sister. I tell her yes because it is all I know and brother feels too harsh for my kind of delicate. A friend stops mid-sentence to apologize for saying “girrrlllll” as she reads someone for filth. I tell her not to apologize. That I am okay with it. That “girl” feels like home uttered from her tongue. I do not say that I am scared. That sisterhood, girlhood, and womanhood feel like the only pieces of my mother and grandmother that I have left. That leaving it behind means going beyond what I know to be true. That I am afraid of answering my own “Ain’t I A Woman?” question with a resounding, “no” or “not quite.”

Two years ago, I sat in the backseat of a packed UberPool in Boston and composed a thread where I tried to make sense of being both a Black woman and non-binary. The thread was welcomed by a community and friends who would love me no matter what.

The truth is I haven’t felt like a Black woman for years. But it is all I know and I believe in the magic of Blackness so I committed to bending and breaking it, taking pieces that would make me feel included, affirmed, and part of what I know to be true. These days, though, the louder Black womanhood becomes, the less it resonates with my own being.

When we were little, they told us we were pretty. They said we could grow up to be whatever we wanted. They dressed us in the most beautiful dresses, spun us around, and called it magic. They said that Blackness was holy, womanness was the most wonderful thing in the world, said the combination of the two was the greatest gift God gave to this earth.

In their truths, we molded ourselves to fit the image of what is beautiful, magical, Black, and woman. My mama raised me to be a strong Black woman and perhaps the strongest thing I can do is release womanhood for something truer, an existence where the can never be enough “too much.” Where my too muchness, queerness, and ruggedness stretches into infinity and we call it beautiful, dope, and magnificent

With Kamala Harris’ inauguration and “success” as a Black woman, I am forced to make my own commitment – to asking my own questions and finding my own way; to reckoning with and dreaming of what comes beyond a womanhood that only ever felt as comfortable as a pink linen skirt suit.

Ain’t I a Woman? I don’t know.

What is beyond Black womanhood? Beyond the magic of Black girlhood? Beyond the connections of Black sisterhood? I don’t know.

What I do know is that I am ready to be fearless. To dream beyond Black womanhood and know that wherever I land, I — Black, queer, and not-quite-sure — am worthy, so worthy of all of the love, affirmation, and power the universe can muster.

I wish Kamala the best in this world. I wish us the courage to go beyond what has been defined for us. I wish us a world where Blackness and gender are as infinite and undefined as the night sky in the mountains. I hope that Converse comes back into style because they are timeless. I hope more people wear pearls because we all deserve to feel like royalty. And I hope that more of us feel comfortable with mourning and inaugurating ourselves into living authentically.

VI. Inauguration

I, shea wesley martin, do solemnly affirm that I will support and defend my right to explore and exist within, outside of, and beyond Black womanhood; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely but scared as hell, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the charge of being authentically and unabashedly queer, Black, and worthy of love; So help me God. Ashe.

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Gender Fluidity and the Black Atlantic

Welcome to Autostraddle’s 2021 Black History Month essay series. In their recent stirring multi-media anthology Black Futures, Black queer creators Jenna Wortham and Kimberly Drew ask, “What does it mean to be Black and alive?” And so, this Black History Month, Autostraddle is reaching past, and pushing forward, to explore realities beyond (the pain of) what we have inherited.

I don’t remember when I stopped calling myself genderfluid.

Looking at my digital footprint, especially around my early days of gender exploration, the word felt like such a home. At some point, I grew tired of constantly defining and explaining and settled in under the nonbinary umbrella as the word seemed to eclipse and encompass all things not man or woman. But I miss my watery home and the ways it makes me feel connected to my human ancestors, and more importantly the Atlantic. The way the label gives me the freedom to be solid and slippery and still — down to the molecules, me.

Both of my parents swam in big bellies on the Atlantic, the children of American parents born on European soil. Before that, it gets hairy — with orphans on both sides, the trauma of enslavement erasing any tribal or national identity, and the toll of addiction severing any knowledge of even the Irish county my ancestors immigrated from. For me, I’ve found great comfort in the deep and wide of the Atlantic, and the way the water connects me to kin, named or unknown.

I never quite know how to respond when someone asks where my family is from. I can typically tell by the tone and the face if they’re trying to place me in a racial taxonomy to figure out how to treat me, or if they’re searching for a line of kinship. I typically just say “Black Irish” and let all the double meanings and beings hang in the air.

I think I stopped defining my gender as fluid to make myself more palpable. I grew up as the fly in the buttermilk, the lone Black face in class pictures — chemically straightening my hair for most of my teenage years in an effort to take up less physical and social space. Coming out as a lesbian I felt a need to stay even more in line — when I fell in love with a boy, I kept him hidden not wanting to make any more waves in my community. When I first bound my chest and looked in the mirror and saw a body that looked like a home I hid behind booze and intentionally forgot this homecoming for many more years — thinking how difficult it already was to be Black, queer, and mentally ill, I couldn’t possibly add being trans to the list. Coming out as trans was hard enough, and while genderfluid was used more in the early days of my transition it seemed to fall to the wayside and nonbinary seemed a term that cis people could more readily understand. I recognize now that I stopped calling myself genderfluid to make cisgender people more comfortable. So often in my life, I’ve whittled down my truths to make them easier to swallow or understand. I understand who I am, and that’s all that matters.

I’m the last generation of trans people that didn’t’ have words for ourselves or our experience, but as early as I could remember I knew I wasn’t a girl or a boy. My dear and darling parents graciously let me wear boy clothes most of the time as a child. I would sometimes acquiesce to wearing a matching dress with my sister for photos or big church functions, but for the most part, I wore baggy soccer uniforms. The only trans people I saw were on Jerry Springer when I was at home sick — and lord knows that wasn’t the positive mirror I needed. The first trans masculine person I ever saw was Max on The L Word, witnessing the abuse he faced and the exile from his queer community scared me into the closet for another decade.

I came out as genderfluid when I moved to the desert. On Tiwa Pueblo land I found trans community and queer people of color for the first time in my life. I met people that used they/them pronouns, that changed their names. I learned that I could take control of my body with hormones or surgery, both or neither. I discovered that these terms, these in-betweens or refusals to be pinned down could mean different things to different people. I learned that there was no script for this life, this body, this gender. The freedom I felt reminded me of long afternoons floating on my back, weightless and present.

One of the things I love about being part of the queer and trans community is how often our language shifts and moves with the times. In the preface to Transgender Warriors, the wise and inimitable Leslie Feinberg says, “The words I use in this book may become outdated in a very short time because the transgender movement is still young and defining itself. But while the slogans lettered on the banners may change quickly, the struggle will rage on. Since I am writing this book as a contribution to the demand for transgender liberation, the language I’m using in this book is not aimed at defining but at defending the diverse communities that are coalescing.” While I sometimes get salty about trying to stay hip and with it, I also celebrate that the changing language and labels have always been a part of trans history and there is nothing wrong with us hunting for and choosing words like feel like home.

I roll my eyes at the idea that trans people or anyone that exists beyond or without the gender binary is new — or a trend. Embracing my watery genderfluid identity is embracing my Atlantic legacy and the ways my ancestors might have understood my existence.

Water plays a big part in many West African cosmologies, from what I can glean from diving into voodoo and Santeria and what they were able to hide and keep from Yoruba beliefs. I’ve always been enthralled by the orisha Olokun. I’m not initiated in any of these traditions but have drawn great strength from learning from these living archives what enslavement tried to erase — especially around gender and sexuality. Depending on where you stop along the coast of West Africa or dock along the diaspora, Olokun has a different gender — but what tracks across the different belief systems and geographies is Olokun’s link to water.

I like to think of Olokun taking care of all the ancestors we lost to the sea, by force or by choice. Sharks knew to follow slaver ships because there was always blood. In the Wake, Christina Sharpe interviewed a physics colleague Anne Gardluski to ask about the presence of these ancestors in the ocean — she says that 90% to 95% of organic material in the ocean gets recycled over and over again, “no one dies of old age in the ocean.” The Atlantic, like many Black scholars have already noted, is quite literally an ancestor.

I always wonder what words my ancestors had for someone like me, what my role would’ve been in society. Until we recover these, I’ll stick with what I have. Here, holy and wholly, genderfluid.

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Six Black Queer Travelers Share How They Attempt to Locate Community Around the Globe

After my girlfriend and I had to cancel holiday plans to Tanzania back in 2019 because we couldn’t guarantee our safety as an openly Black lesbian couple, I knew I never wanted to feel that despair and helplessness again. These feelings were spurred, not only from a safety standpoint, but also from simply not knowing how to connect with Tanzanian queer communities despite knowing that they very much exist. We constantly kept thinking that there must be something more than a cursory Google of ‘LGBTQ+ rights in Tanzania’ and that there must be other Black queer people who have been faced with this quandary before.

As a result, over the last year and a half, I’ve been working on the Black Queer Travel Guide (BQTG), primarily an app to help Black queer travelers navigate the world as safely as possible, with specific advice, information and local experiences. The project takes into account our whole selves and, while very much in the early stages, we’re building a digital resource that will offer more than white cis gay hotspots; one that takes into account the nuances of visiting the place your parents call home while knowing that your gender and/or sexuality could be the impetus for unprovoked violence.

Beyond an app or an organisation, BQTG is looking to build and develop community links. Last year, I carried out research through a survey on Black queer people and travel. With 93 participants, 90% shared that they are interested in connection with other Black queer people when they travel. The remaining question is ‘how?’ — one that we hope to answer with BQTG over the coming years.

Despite having this desire to connect, there are a whole host of reasons as to why finding other Black queer people on our travels can be tricky. I spoke to six Black queer people about why that is, alongside their personal experiences with travel and attempting to locate community around the globe.

A.I.D.

For A.I.D., the destinations they choose are often influenced by familiarity. “I’m a fairly infrequent traveler, usually choosing destinations that I’m familiar with (because I’ve been before) or know someone who lives there that can show me their version of the area.”

With Twitter, Instagram and Facebook as their main resources, the Black non-binary queer creative seeks out accounts, people, collectives and events that centre Black queer and trans folks. “In preparation for a now Covid-derailed trip to the West Indies that was planned for 2020, I had searched for and reached out and connected with some queer people living on the island I was visiting on through Twitter.” While finding these accounts online is relatively easy, they’ve found that the more challenging part is attempting to start a relationship with a stranger online in a way that isn’t overbearing or invasive.

Mila*

Traveling up to four times a year, holidays are all about simultaneously connecting with a new space and disconnecting from day-to-day hubbub for Mila. “Living in a small, predominantly white city in Canada – travel is how I remain connected with my friends as well as with more of a global Black and racialized communities. As someone that’s an immigrant as well, the journey of migration and being mobile keeps that drive in me to keep connecting.”

While the likes of Twitter and even Airbnb activities have been useful for scouting out what’s available in her chosen destination, Mila admits that locating other Black queer folks has been tricky. “It hasn’t been the easiest because most times, I don’t know where or how to start.”

Jed

Bad experiences with a solo trip at 16 coupled with the fears that come with being a Black queer trans man mean that Jed’s relationship with travel has been nothing short of complicated. “I started transition in my mid-twenties and had a fear of being detained or humiliated at customs. In 2020, I started traveling again – first to Europe with friends and then to Morocco by myself.”

This renewed zeal for exploring the globe has also sparked Jed’s interest in finding other Black LGBTQ+ folks when the world opens up again. “I’m excited to do it in the future. In Marrakesh, it seemed that the wealthier creative people felt free to be queer but I didn’t see any Black people among them.”

“I’m quite ignorant on what’s out there, however I’m not so sure it’s easy to find Black queer community while traveling simply because in many countries around the world queer people are not tolerated and therefore do not celebrate their community as openly on social media as we might do in the UK,” he adds. “It seems you’d need to know where to go or already have a connection to find Black queer community while traveling in a lot of places. I could be very wrong, of course.”

Christania

A bonafide explorer, Christania has been traveling since she was 2 years old, after her family relocated to Nigeria for a few years. “I was born in Jamaica so I prefer warmer climates and particularly enjoy traveling to hot countries where the pace of life is a lot slower and calm compared to the rat race in the UK. I went to Cuba with my partner in 2019 and having no internet access for 10 days was absolutely glorious.”

When it comes to holiday research, Christania turns to Google. “I usually Google the life out of the destinations that I want to visit,” she shares. “I purposely seek out travel blogs/Instagram profiles by Black women. I used to check Facebook groups as well to hear about the experiences of Black queer women in different countries.”

Finding Black queer communities on her travels has proved quite easy and Christania puts this down to the accounts she follows. “I follow non-UK/US Black queer people on social media. Once I find one person, I’m able to go down a bit of a rabbit hole and find the information I’m after.”

Imale

Being pushed outside their comfort zone is how Imale describes traveling, with Black majority countries being their favorite destinations. “I’m also open enough to venture as far as China to see just how different ‘different’ can get.”

Normally taking one big holiday to an African country alongside city breaks within Europe to change things up, Imale’s big holiday is normally decided off the back of rigorous research on YouTube and social media. “I have discovered that going to art events will turn up one or two queer people who are then welcoming into their world — I have connected with some amazing queer people in Zambia and Rwanda this way.”

Though Imale’s inventive arts world tactic has yielded success, it has only been as a result of recently changing their approach. “I think the difficulty lies in the fact that homosexuality is still criminalised in a lot of countries — for the purposes of safety, community members tend not to be as visible unless you are already a member of that community.”

Sadé

A lover of traveling, the queer non-binary photographer headed out on holiday at least twice a year before the pandemic. “I love city breaks but also warm coastal areas where the beach is easily accessible. I also love visiting places where there are stark cultural differences however these places are usually homophobic and/or racist.”

Much like many Black queer folks, Sadé’s main travel guide has been google ‘____ LGBT+ laws’ or trawling Twitter for peoples’ experiences. “I’ve never found a queer Black LGBT community abroad although I would love to, just like here you kinda need to know someone to get you in/know where the hotspots are. My partner and I went on our first holiday together last year to Lisbon, Portugal and the only Black queer people we found on the trip were a lovely older couple who took this photo of us.”

“I’m excited to use the Black Queer Travel Guide in future to help navigate new holiday destinations and also hopefully to connect with black queer communities abroad.”

As more of the population gets vaccinated and we begin cautiously looking ahead to the world opening up again, that world needs to prioritize Black queer travelers. The Black Queer Travel Guide project is well underway, with a web app now live and demonstrating the first stage of what will eventually become an easily downloadable phone app. We’re also still fundraising on the Black Queer Travel Guide’s GoFundMe page to help get the project off the ground and begin commissioning Black queer creatives and writers, alongside applications for grants which will no doubt take up much of our year.

With the growth of Black queer-led initiatives and projects, an exciting and more accessible future lies ahead for Black queer and trans folks and Black Queer Travel Guide plans to be a part of that.

Making Amends with Valentine’s Day

Sometime in between potty training and the prom, I learned I was unworthy of the love that brought roses, candy grams, and absurdly large bears on Valentine’s Day. I haven’t liked roses since middle school, I learned to buy my own candy, and I have come to terms with the idea that I was born an absurdly large bear – brown, cuddly, and thick in all the best ways. I’m not a Valentine’s Day hipster. I won’t harangue about how roses and overpriced chocolates fuel capitalism. Love is love is love and Valentine’s Day is a day that many in this world shower their chosen ones with the love they deserve. Buy that boi his roses. Buy your girl her chocolates. Buy yourself that new vibrator, baby. You deserve it. I believe in love the way that queer folks believe in astrology – without reservation and probably more than I should.

In our house, music was how we said “I love you” in the deepest way possible. My parents swung us around in our family room dancing to their favorite songs. Years later, I would visit their graves playing those same songs while tears streamed down my face.

I was a fat nerd in high school (we are the best type). While the cool kids spent lunch eating pizza and playing hacky sack on the lawn, I spent mine taking extra band classes. After school, I sat in front of my computer surrounded by cassettes, blank CDs and sharpies, illegally downloading songs and making mixtapes for my crushes. I hid behind instruments, computers, Whitney’s voice, Prince’s guitar and awkwardly whispered “I love you more than I know how to explain and I’m scared so here’s a tape I made you.”

Fifteen years later, I no longer whisper; I shout it. Life is too damn short not to tell your people you love all pieces of them: I LOVE YOU and I MADE YOU THIS PLAYLIST.

This playlist honors the messiness of our journeys. It welcomes you with Syd’s “Drown In It” and ends with Corinne Bailey Rae’s “High,” a tribute to love that makes you want to keep it all to yourself (and also to my beautiful partner, Jane). Between the start and finish, you’ll find songs about family, new crushes, old lovers, heartbreak, and the most radical self-love we can muster. Some songs have words, others just provide a backing track for your own thoughts.

Like the best sex, I’ve decided to give it to you slow and deep in some parts and fast and rough in others. This playlist is verse and in it for the long haul. Play it top to bottom, bottom to top, on shuffle, repeat, softly while you soak in the tub, loudly when you first wake up on Sunday morning. It is ours.

I believe in making playlists like I love — with fierceness, exuberance, and intentionality. There are more than two hours of love songs for your ears and soul. In lieu of roses, candy, and a large bear, I offer you 40 tracks and an “I love you” that stretches into eternity.

On some of my favorites…

For Our Family (Chosen, Blood, and Imagined) — Mereba’s “Kinfolk”

It’s been almost a year now without family holidays, birthday parties, visiting grandparents, and reunions. Much of the world has mourned these as they come, trying to replicate the moments virtually — zoom meetings, packages, letters, and drive-by celebrations. Nothing feels the same and you find yourself missing your most-loathed relative, longing to have your cheeks squeezed by aunts, feigning a smile when you’re asked about potential kids, spouses, and career shifts again. There is no doubt that the isolative rotation around the sun has left many of us wishing for connection with those we hold closest. For some of us, this is a familiar feeling. We have been mourning the loss of those connections, events, hugs, obligatory intrusive questions for longer than we would like to admit. Maybe it happened when we came out, when we began to perform our queerness just a little too loudly when we brought our “friend” home for the last time. We queers know something about losing, about mourning, about searching to fill what once was. We also know a lot about finding our people and creating kinship. We know about loving deeply and staying.

I am learning to master grief and loss in ways that so many are around the world. In practical terms, I’m an orphan. My mama died six years ago this month, my dad just only last month. These days, family is a patchwork quilt of blood relatives, longtime friends, and people I have never met in real life. A haunting ballad and love song to the ones who matter, Mereba’s “Kinfolk” is a tribute to us. In her chorus, she reminds us that “we got what no money could measure” and while we could all use some more money right now, her voice brings a warm, loving serenade.

For more family love, facetime your family and dance to “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” by Whitney Houston or “Before I Let Go” by Maze and Frankie Beverly.

Tell That Crush You Love Them Today – Brittany Howard’s “Georgia”

If you close your eyes real tight, perhaps you might imagine yourself like me in high school: an apprehensive teenager walking home from the bus stop, jean jacket, shabby converse, walkman on your ears, and listening to “Georgia” on repeat while you think about the day you’ll muster up the courage to tell your crush how you really feel: “Is it cool? I wanna tell ya that I love you.” This track is for the cute queers who need some courage to jump into the unknown. Just do it already. Love is waiting.

Further listening: “U Should” by CHIKA and King Princess’ “1950,” and “Make Me Feel” by Janelle Monae for more courage.

In Honor of Loving Ourselves Enough to Reckon with Our Shit — “By You” by Oompa (Featuring Anjimile)

Oompa’s Cleo was one of my favorite albums to drop in 2019. Her lyrics are raw and honest in ways that make you reckon with yourself, too. On “By You,” Oompa pairs brilliant lines like “I’m just here because my girl said I can’t blow up / And therapy is how I tell her that I am grown up” with the gorgeous vocals of Anjimile and gives us a heart-wrenching ballad about facing your demons and unpacking your shit in order to love and be loved.

We ain’t always ready to be in relationships. This is a song for us working on us. Those who love/hate our therapist. And those of us who are learning to love our truth (no matter how ugly it looks). After a year in isolation, I think all of us just “wanna be loved” right now.

Take care of yourself some more while listening to Jamila Woods’ “Holy.“

For Those of Us Who Chose Ourselves — Wafia’s “Pick Me”

For a long time, I was a hardcore giver. I gave up my dreams and ideas to make those around me feel comfortable. As a fat, Black, queer person, I learned to shrink, to be quiet, to take up as little space as possible. For some of us, giving to others (and up on ourselves) is easier than picking ourselves.

Wafia’s “Pick Me” is a battle cry of self-love, confidence, and preservation. Over an acoustic guitar, she is fierce in her proclamation, she picks herself, “every day, every night, every single week.” No matter where you are in your journey of self-love, you deserve to dream, exist, and be affirmed in all your ways. You deserve to be prioritized, held tightly, and picked first. It’s okay to pick yourself. Ain’t nobody gon’ love you like you love you.

Need more encouragement: Play Lizzo’s “Scuse Me” on repeat and belt it out.

Because They Never Deserved You No Way — “Tights on My Boat” by the Chicks

The guitar that backs Natalie Maines’ voice on this spellbound “fuck you” track sounds like a hard slap on the cheek of the ex who left your heart in pieces. . The Chicks’ music has always given us permission to stay mad, wish our haters the worst, and sit in our emotions; this track is no different. Each second of “Tights on My Boat” is soaked in controlled rage and disdain From the first line until the last, Maines sings a drag for the ages: “I hope you die peacefully in your sleep (just kidding), I hope it hurts like you hurt me; I hope when you think of me, you can’t breathe.” At the 22nd second of the track, Maines lets out an exhale that tells us we’re gonna be alright despite the heartbreak. At its core, Tights on My Boat is an anthem for those who’ve loved hard and gotten our hearts broken, burned, and tossed to the wind. Listen to this song on repeat and drink your favorite drink. Toast to your freedom. They didn’t deserve you, boo. Keep your head up and keep loving, baby.

See Also: “the 1″ by Taylor Swift and “GodSpeed” by Frank Ocean

You May Not Have a Date, but Do You Have Cleaning Supplies? — “W.A.P.” by Cardi B and Meg Thee Stallion

Meg spits “if he fuck me and ask, ‘Whose is it?’ / When I ride the dick, I’ma spell my name.” Let’s be honest. Some of us have been spelling our own names for eleven months (or longer). COVID-19 has made in-person dating, hookups, and relationships difficult for a lot of us. Eating your crush out is virtually impossible through an N-95 mask and many aren’t willing to risk our lives for it – no matter how good it is. When this anthem dropped in the summer, it set off the conservatives and male hip hop heads alike – how dare these hot women talk about their pussy and its power? It’s 2021 fam. How dare they not? Although the song has twinges of cishet normativity, Cardi and Meg never gender WAP. They open the box and the drip is real.

A solo Valentine’s Day prescription: Grab a bucket, mop, your favorite toy and play this on repeat at least 9 times before bed. With partner(s)? Also see: “Lavish” by TT the Artist and “Naked” by Siena Liggins

For the Socially Distanced New Lovers in 2021 — “A Long Walk” by Jill Scott

I’ve had a crush on Jill Scott since this song came out in 2000. I didn’t know what it meant to be queer yet, but I knew I loved Jill Scott and I would walk with her wherever she wanted to go. Her voice is one in a million, wrapping us with all of the warmth we’re missing in isolation this winter. Last year, Jill gave us one of the greatest displays of love. Her Verzuz battle with the incomparable goddess Erykah Badu was a breath of fresh air; hours of affirmation, joy, and music that tasted like your mama’s cooking and sounded like your most sensual lover. Dating is hard in a pandemic so I’m dedicating Ms. Scott’s 2001 classic, “A Long Walk” to the new socially-distanced lovers who are masking up, going for walks in the winter, and getting COVID-19 tests to get laid or find love. May your walk bring your soul the elevation you seek.

For Post-Walk Activities, see: “Cyber Sex” by Doja Cat and “Lying Together” by FKJ

For the Lovers of Justice — Tracy Chapman’s “Talkin’ Bout a Revolution”

Donald Trump’s presidency exposed a long-standing undercurrent of disgusting racism and white supremacy in our country. It also brought Tracy Chapman back to late-night television to perform her evergreen classic anthem, “Talkin’ Bout a Revolution.” Last summer, Pride was canceled and despite a raging pandemic, we flooded the streets to protest police brutality. We screamed names of folks we didn’t know but loved enough in memoriam to risk our lives in the name of justice. In All About Love, bell hooks writes, “the moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.” We’ve been choosing love. We’ve been moving toward freedom. Despite the obstacles in their way, organizers, educators, and leaders haven’t given up on revolution – on the possibility of a liberated world. Last month’s inauguration brought a glimmer of hope. It feels like “finally the tables are starting to turn.”

Also see: “Rise Up” (Andra Day)

To Our Pasts (Who Deserve Love Too) — Joy Oladokun’s “Younger Days”

Isolation brings introspection, introspection brings growth. We’ve all done a lot of growing up since our last Valentine’s Day. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my past as a younger queerdo – late nights at my favorite bar in DC, bad hookups, broken promises, and lost connections. “I wish I was at the club tonight,” I said back in August. I haven’t been to a club in three years. Just the idea of being up until last call makes me sleepy. It’s easy to be hard on ourselves when we reflect on what should have, could have, and would have been. In “Younger Days,” Joy Oladokun tells us to cut our past selves some slack. Send the past you a love note this Valentine’s Day.

An Ode to the Ultimate Love — Prince’s “Call My Name”

Whether you’ve been with your partner(s) for two weeks or twenty years, Prince’s “Call My Name” is the soundtrack for the “can’t-eat, can’t-sleep, reach-for-the-stars, over-the-fence, World Series kind of” love (shout out to the Olsen twins circa 1995).

The world hasn’t been the same without the presence of Prince Rogers Nelson. Listening to his music still takes me to a higher plane where love is always queer, Blackness is always abundant, and being our truest selves is the holiest prayer we can offer the universe. In “Call My Name,” Prince belts his heart out for a real love that changes his world. All-consuming, Prince “just can’t stop writing songs” about his love.

This ballad is made for a good two-step with your favorite dance partner. Like the truest love, Prince’s voice lifts you off your feet. Don’t be scared though. The drums and bass cradle you for three minutes. This is that good shit – That Prince Rogers Nelson kind of art. We might not have Prince’s songwriting talent, but we still have the ability to show the people dearest to us that they are seen, affirmed, and loved. When’s the last time you called your lover by their name? When’s the last time you held their name on your tongue and offered it to them as a gift of admiration? Speak your love into existence. Name it and tell them how you feel.

The entire playlist is on Spotify and on Apple music.

Follow Prince’s example and take your time – with this playlist, love, and your growth.

I love you in all your forms.

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Foolish Child #90: It’s Black History Month, I’m on Break

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Sundance 2021: “My Name Is Pauli Murray” Shines Brightest When Pauli Murray Takes the Lead

For the first time ever, Autostraddle is at Sundance (at least virtually)! Drew Gregory is coming to you daily for the next week with all the LGBTQ+ movies and panels you’ve always wished you had access to from one of the most prestigious film festivals in the world. Today, she’s giving the hot seat over to our Interm Editor-in-Chief Carmen Phillips to discuss My Name Is Pauli Murray, a documentary about the Black queer trans icon.  Follow Drew Gregory on Twitter for more our Sundance coverage.

If you’d never heard of Pauli Murray and I told you their life story, you wouldn’t believe it.

It’s pretty myth making: Having survived their 20s stealing away on freight cars during the Great Depression and joining early labor movements, Murray was arrested for refusing to sit in the back of a bus in 1940 — 15 years before the activist demonstration of Rosa Parks began the Montgomery Bus Boycott (in Murray’s words, the labor movement helped them “relate this whole concept of freedom and dignity to being a Negro in America”). In part due to those early experiences, Murray went on to study law at Howard University and while there in 1944, they developed the legal theory that’s later argued in front of the Supreme Court by Thurgood Marshall to win Brown vs. the Board of Education (it was Murray’s senior thesis, no big deal). In 1971, Ruth Bader Ginsburg credited Murray with developing the precedent of applying the 14th Amendment to gender discrimination, a cornerstone of Ginsburg’s argument in the 1971 Supreme Court case Reed vs. Reed, legally codifying gender equality (Ginsburg cited Murray in her brief of the case, the two were colleagues at the ACLU).

Think about it — the same one singular queer Black trans person so willingly gave of their talents, and therefore left footprints on the social movements and quite simply historic (and even that’s an understatement!) legal cases that changed the course of… well, everything.

And yet, we — and by “we” I largely mean non-Black, non-queer, non-trans people, and the systems and institutions built around us — rarely, if honestly ever, give Murray the proper recognition and overwhelming gratitude that they have long been overdue.

In Julie Cohen and Betsy West’s documentary My Name Is Pauli Murray, premiering this week at Sundance, Dolores Chandler, the former coordinator of the Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice said it plainly and best: “We’ve been taught to believe that people like us don’t exist. So, when I came to know and learn about Pauli Murray, I was so amazed and wanted to hold it so tightly. And also, I was angry. I was angry that I felt in some ways that I had been robbed of my history.”

Which is why I desperately wanted to love Cohen and West’s (both of RBG fame) work on this film. It’s Black History Month and the Sundance premiere of a documentary about a Black queer trans elder who long ago earned their rightful place center stage, but instead was relegated — like so many of our Black queer and trans ancestors were — to the shadows of history. Because they didn’t a mold, they were told to make themselves smaller. And so they did — they fought and gave all they had and then they stood back and let the cis, straight people, who went on to become the icons of the time, have the mic. They did that so that we, their Black queer trans children, could run this next leg of the race in the shade of a tree they used their seeds to root. It was sacrifice, service. Because there is no Martin Luther King without Bayard Rustin. There is no Thurgood Marshall, no RBG without Pauli Murray. This weekend should have been a crowning. It should have been a reckoning. Instead, I found that My Name Is Pauli Murray left me wanting.

Not the least of which because Murray is consistently misgendered throughout the film. I empathize with the difficulty and delicate line of correctly naming or describing the gender of someone who lived in time periods far removed from the language of our own, especially when that person still has living loved ones who perhaps have a different preference. However, I believe that misgendering a trans person is an act of violence. In this case, given the length of time (nearly a quarter of the movie by my watch! If not more!) dedicated to discussing in significant detail the ways that Murray understood their own masculinity and how that effected their mental health, their love life, and the far extent that Murray went to find language to describe their gender to doctors all the way back in the 1940s — along with an already years long, active discussion among trans historians and activists asking those of us who uplift Murray to do so reflecting their expansive, and clear gender identity (it’s my generous assumption that the production of this film predates some of these ongoing conversations) —  it was particularly hurtful and stupefying that the filmmakers continued to use feminine pronouns throughout.

Ahead of the film’s premiere lawyer and activist Chase Strangio, who is featured in the documentary multiple times, wrote online: “I hope everyone gets to learn about Pauli Murray — one of my heroes. I also think it is wrong to refer to Pauli with she/her pronouns. I hope we move away from that. We owe Pauli the respect to hold the capaciousness of Pauli’s experiences in the world.” Writer and activist Raquel Willis expresses a similar sentiment within the film, “Being Black and queer myself, I refer to Pauli as ‘they’ or simply ‘Pauli,’ to acknowledge their expansive gender experience.” With so many trans people, both on camera in My Name Is Pauli Murray and off, sharing their desires and wishes for Murray so clearly — it’s not hard to imagine how the film’s pronoun choices might isolate, if not harm, trans audience members who press play hoping to learn more about the icon.

I also found My Name Is Pauli Murray to be rich in detail, but lacking in spark. RBG is a documentary not without its controversies, but Cohen and West’s reverence for Ginsburg was palpable throughout. It invoked awe from behind the lens. Comparatively, My Name Is Pauli Murray felt somehow distant. The difference between writing a love letter and writing an (appropriately award winning) thesis statement.

I’m thankful that Julie Cohen and Betsy West leveraged their own privilege and the success of their previous documentary to finally have Murray’s story told. I’m almost certain that without them, a film like this would have an infinitely harder uphill battle to receive Sundance bonafides (if it even found funding to be made at all). And by choosing to center both Murray’s own voice via recorded audio and video, along with on screen written applications of some of their most famous poetry and legal doctrine, there are some true moments of intimacy that are stunning.

Pauli Murray was unspeakably brilliant, and their intelligence looms large, but they were so warm. Their kindness, vulnerability, yes even their depression and certainly that megawatt handsome smile is best captured on their own terms, and with over 141 boxes of writings, 800 photographs, and dozens of tapes — My Name Is Pauli Murray absolutely shines brightest when it lets Murray take the reigns.

Dr. Martin Luther King and the Ferocious Possibilities of Black Liberation in Our Darkest Hour

I’ve been staring at this blank screen all day. For the past five days, actually. Traditionally on Martin Luther King Day, I write some form of a reflection. It’s ironic that in a time we’re facing that has never more closely mirrored King’s — I find myself most adrift from his words.

I say his words because it is his words that have so often been called upon in to soothe a nation that still searches for its soul. Familiar words taught to me in childhood that once brought solace — “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you have to do, you keep moving forward” — now leave me cold and distant. I know “the arc of the moral universe is long” and was certainly never naive enough necessarily to believe in a Dream, but damn I didn’t know it would hurt like this.

I don’t mean to sound self-pitying. The Civil Rights Movement itself was defined by uproar and awakening. There’s nothing — not a pandemic; not nationwide uprisings after the continued state-sanctioned murder of Black people by the police; not seven-hour waits at ballot boxes and legal elections being questioned and irreparably damaged by a white supremacist who stokes racial unrest; not even insurrection — that’s worse than what Black people have fought and faced down and banished before. But I’d hoped by now that we’d at least be fighting newly cloaked battles in new ways, not a flat circle of the exact same battles in the same exact ways. King said “we’ve got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end,” a mantra he proved true with his own life. 12 days ago I watched as a Confederate flag marched through the Capitol, a feat that wasn’t even accomplished during the actual Civil War, and even though I know (I know) it’s awful, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking: What the hell did he give it all for?

Less than six days before this Martin Luther King Day, Ayana Pressley, a Black woman representative from Massachusetts, one of the most powerful advocates for Black and brown people speaking up in Congress right now, announced that in the days before a lynch mob descended on the U.S. Capitol, all of the panic buttons in her office had been ripped out. Her Puerto Rican colleague, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who much like Pressley has become somewhat infamous in hate mongering white supremacist circles, openly feared for her life. And here’s what I can’t stop replaying: Representative Pressley’s response to this violence? These experiences “were harrowing and unfortunately very familiar in the deepest and most ancestral way.”

The deepest and most ancestral way. Latosha Brown, one of the fierce Black women organizers in Georgia who just finished a momentous feat overcoming white supremacist tactics of voter suppression with her organization, Black Voters Matter — a cause King laid down the blueprint to fight for over 60 years ago — reminded us on Dr. King’s birthday just this Friday: “The same energy that killed him is the same energy that we witnessed at the Capitol.”

It’s feels impossible not to see this Martin Luther King Day as one of grief and mourning.

But Black liberation politics is one of turning impossibilities into stubborn realities. I mean, someone once told enslaved people it was impossible they’d be free. And so, while I am immensely grieving how clear it is now how much work is actually left, how little it feels like we’ve come as nooses are hung outside the Capitol building and Twitter threads are full of Black people warning each other to “stay at home, stay safe” like we’re whispering into the wind, I’ve realized that the reason I couldn’t write this essay was that I was looking in the wrong place. We don’t need Dr. Martin Luther King’s words — we need his actions.

On Wednesday there will be a new President, and he will be a Democrat. That is no reason to rest; it’s only a reason to push harder. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 happened under a Democratic President. The original Voting Rights Act of 1965 happened under a Democratic President. Dr. King and was a never-ending thorn in Lyndon B. Johnson’s side — an exceptional political organizer and strategist — and so too, should we. And even that will only be a start.

The good news, the best news even, is that we have already been doing that. The key is in not letting up. To recognize these newest waves of vitriolic flames of hatred as also a marker of our work. Dragons breathe the hottest fire when they feel threatened. And good. Let them.

This morning, I thought a lot about another Black organizer, a mentee of King who was only 23 when he was not only one of the lead organizers, but spoke at the March on Washington. Who was 25 when police brutally beat him on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, in a march for voting rights which he led. Another giant lost in this agonizing year.

John Lewis left us on July 17, 2020 — in the middle a summer defined by uprisings for Black Lives — but his final goodbye was not published until the morning of his homegoing service. In it, he wrote a public letter to Black Lives Matter organizers: “Emmett Till was my George Floyd. He was my Rayshard Brooks, Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor. He was 14 when he was killed, and I was only 15 years old at the time. I will never ever forget the moment when it became so clear that he could easily have been me. In those days, fear constrained us like an imaginary prison, and troubling thoughts of potential brutality committed for no understandable reason were the bars.”

Of course, those days are also now, he realized. But unlike me, he didn’t become brokenhearted. Instead, he found peace knowing the work would continue. It will always continue, as long as we don’t let the fire die out.

“While my time here has now come to an end, I want you to know that in the last days and hours of my life you inspired me. You filled me with hope about the next chapter of the great American story when you used your power to make a difference in our society…

That is why I had to visit Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, though I was admitted to the hospital the following day. I just had to see and feel it for myself that, after many years of silent witness, the truth is still marching on.”

It’s funny. So often we talk about how Dr. King — or John Lewis, or Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, so many who others have walked before and are now immortalized — are more than their black and white photographs and grainy newsreels. But we’ve never less needed paper doll cutouts of revolutionaries than we need right now.

In our upheaval, soft words will not save us. Look to the playbook instead.



Foolish Child #88: Insurrection

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Reading List for the Revolution: Angela Davis & Radical Inspiration for 2021

“It is in collectivities that we find reservoirs of hope and optimism.”

I first learned about Angela Davis as an undergrad student. I knew that my activism and political engagement were underdeveloped, and my late teen self was desperate to be as informed as I possibly could. After years in a tight-knit, Catholic bubble (somehow denying the fact that I was, myself, a queer woman of color), I remember consuming more and more feminist, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist texts, and resonating with their messages in an invigorating way. I read Davis’ Women, Race, & Class, not always understanding every word of it, but being driven by the notion that all of these things were intertwined. It was one of my first encounters with intersectionality, and it informed my understanding of oppressive systems in a way that’s stayed with me years later. Retrospectively, my lateness to social justice was also a reflection of privilege, and my whole political awakening was pretty cliché, but in the moment it felt special. Knowledge gave me a drive to act. It gave me hope –– something I’ve struggled to hold onto, but that feels important, if not necessary. I think that’s why I recall this period of late adolescence so fondly. I was angry and activated, furiously learning and determined to take down the system!

via Bettmann/Bettmann Archive

In 2020, watching videos of Davis speaking on panels or at protests has been grounding and mobilizing. She continues to guide me, and all of us who hope for change, through the often hellish terrain. And of course, this isn’t new. Davis has been a pillar in the feminist abolitionist world for decades, and excels at directly addressing the myriad of oppressive systems in our culture. She’s advocated for issues before they were even close to the mainstream discussion, and she’s been firm in her beliefs throughout. The legendary Alice Walker wrote: “Angela Davis has stood her ground on every issue important to the health of our people and the planet. It is impossible to read her words or hear her voice and not be moved to comprehension and gratitude for our incredible luck in having her with us.”

As Davis says herself, “freedom is a constant struggle.” This simple phrase captures a heavy but critical truth. Among the many painful lessons that 2020 has taught us, a recurring one is that shit is bad. This also isn’t new. American society is and has been corrupt on a deep, systemic level since its inception, and attempting to reform, agitate, reorient, and redistribute are honorable but undoubtedly tiring tasks. Beyond that, attempting to be plugged in to the urgent issues, on both a national and global scale, leaves one in a constant state of lack; there’s always more to fight against, there is always another violence, scheme, or deal on the table. And in this mix of fatigue also lies hesitation –– folks who feel unequipped to advocate for something, because they think they don’t have enough knowledge around a certain issue.

While the internet makes information readily available, it can be difficult to become fully versed on every conflict and law spurring contention in the world. (Like, do I fully understand campaign finance reform? Or the way that internet usage is environmentally destructive? Or the breadth of historical violence against LGBTQ folks in my father’s Arab homeland? Admittedly, no.) But we can try. We must! The duty of explaining deep, historical traumas or contemporary calamity cannot fall solely on those who have the first-hand experience. Without a doubt, these voices must be listened to (the last thing we want is a “woke white people” echo chamber), but we have to be conscientious of adding labor to bodies who are already trudging through barriers of oppression, merely to exist.

A (Brief) Guide to Reading Angela Davis

With such an expansive collection of material, Davis is helpful in tracing the evolution of various global social movements. But where to start!? Her book Freedom is a Constant Struggle is my recommendation (although all of her texts are undoubtedly necessary; Add Are Prisons Obsolete? next on your list.) Freedom weaves several of her interviews, speeches, and writing from the last ten years, offering an intersectional lens that is consistently accessible, thoughtful, and anti-racist. Although more contemporary, she never fails to engage with deep history. The book’s subtitle is “Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement,” and indeed, she does create ties between these topics, like explaining how Israeli police have been involved in U.S. police training or how military presence in Ferguson, after the killing of Michael Brown, mirrored daily life in Gaza. She contemplates: “Initially, intersectionality was about bodies and experiences. But now, how do we talk about bringing various social justice struggles together, across national borders?” This question, and the manners through which the book attempts to answer it, are why I consider it an excellent entry point.

In Freedom is a Constant Struggle, Davis also breaks down complex structures, like G4S, the transnational security mega-company responsible for the “maintenance and reproduction of repressive apparatuses” including, largely, prisons. She explains how notions of security “blur the boundary between schools and jails” as well as create a palpable hostility among civilian life: “The wall, the concrete, the razor wire everywhere…before Palestinians are even arrested, they are already in prison.”

This is a global phenomenon, and a global militancy –– Davis brings to light that “the most profitable sector of the prison-industrial complex is immigrant detention and deportation,” which G4S manages in the United States. In the chapter “Feminism and Abolition: Theories and Practices for the 21st Century” Davis unpacks the disproportionate levels of violence against trans women of color, and also includes her own recommended reading on prison abolition from a number of trans scholar-activists. She sees feminism as something less tied to a specific object or body, and more as a methodology to approach “racism, the prison-industrial complex, criminalization, captivity, violence, and the law.” Basically, add this book to your shopping cart.

If you’re looking to get more familiar with Davis, also check out this somewhat famous clip of her speaking from jail in San Francisco (which is part of the Swedish documentary The Black Power Mixtape 1967 – 1975 .)

And more recently, Davis was interviewed by Ava Duvernay for Vanity Fair (what a magical sentence to write.) They talk about capitalism, isolation, COVID, and what true, radical change might look like.

Further Radical Reading for 2021

Whether you’re a seasoned or novel activist, there are always ways to grow our thinking. The good news is there’s a multitude of literature by radical thinkers, writers, and artists (including Davis) that can help! With these texts, we can continue to get out there and do the work. (Plus, it’s a great way to support your local bookstore, which is, unfortunately, probably struggling this year.) Without debating the legitimacy or effectiveness of New Years’ Resolutions, I wonder –– what if we all committed to a revolutionary reading list for 2021? What would we learn? And with this, what would we do? Here are some texts that have particularly moved me in recent times.

Glitch Feminism by Legacy Russell

Self-described as a manifesto, this book speaks directly to the generation of young adults who grew up on the internet, or who found themselves turning to the internet as a source of self-formation. What I mean by this is: if you had a cringe-worthy AIM account that consumed your days and felt like a magical avatar through which you could say and achieve and embody selves beyond your self, this book will feel relatable. Russell theorizes on technology and queerness, asking how “glitching” can be a site of possibility and whether or not our cyberselves can be catalysts for social change. Dive in for some brilliant anecdotes on corporeal art, celebrating failure, and decolonizing the digital landscape.

JUST US by Claudia Rankine

JUST US came out earlier this year, but if it hadn’t, one of Claudia Rankine’s other books would definitely be on this list. Citizen and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely are texts I’ve returned to again and again. Rankine is a master at capturing what we often refer to as micro-aggressions––the racist underbelly of so many of our daily interactions. She renders these incidents through beautiful, lyrical prose and poetry. She is always in conversation with other documents, histories, and works of art, and is a brilliant testament to the notion of the personal being political. JUST US examines whiteness and provokes a deep, ongoing interrogation of white guilt and white denial in the last several years.

Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown

I always offer this text to friends (or to myself) when nihilism begins to creep in. adrienne maree brown’s approach to organizing, social change, and true transformation are rooted in the belief that our individual, day-to-day conversations actually have an effect, while also making room for the very human, ever-changing emotional whirlwind of being a person that wants to create a better future. Every page bubbles with potential, inspired by the work of Octavia Butler, and the way she theorized on the human relationship to change. Think of this as a guide for intentional, mindful, but actionable pathways to sparking radical change across communities.

Carceral Capitalism by Jackie Wang

If you’ve ever wanted to read a book that thoroughly examines the prison-industrial complex and predatory policing, but also feels personally motivated, and then also maybe ends with some absolutely stunning pieces of poetry, then this book is for you. Wang, an abolitionist and scholar who recently completed a Ph.D at Harvard, has crafted a book that feels incredibly urgent and unlike anything I’ve ever read on the topic.

ALLIES from The Boston Review

I believe so firmly in art’s potential to meaningfully contribute to activism. And so does this anthology! Collected here are essays, stories, and poems that question what it means to be an “ally” or, if allyship is even really possible. It returns to inquiries around how we situate difference, and how we relate to each other across global catastrophes and violence.

Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz

Ok, maybe it’s not an “activist text” per-se, but it feels pretty radical to read gorgeous poems about lesbian love, Indigenous history, and intergenerational trauma. The poem If I Should Come Upon Your House Lonely in the West Texas Desert is just…wow. I won’t say more as a tender encouragement for you to pick up the book and see for yourself.

Experiments in Joy by Gabrielle Civil

And just like art, poetry, and mindful interactions can be radical, so can joy. It all goes together, really. Gabrielle Civil is a Black feminist performance artist and writer, who asks: “What can people do together that we can’t do alone? What can we discover in ourselves only by way of other people?” Through essays, letters, performance scores, and other forms of writing, Civil’s book offers so much insight into the magnificent potential of collaboration, and how through this lens, we can arrive at a place of internal reckoning that drives us to be more whole, genuine, and able to take on both personal and sociohistoric challenges.

There are countless others besides these. I’ve learned and continue to learn from Audre Lorde, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Patrisse Cullors , and many more individuals, collectives, movements, and organizers. I’ll end by returning, though, to this notion of hope, which I think many of these works make room for, if not insist upon. When I say we should have hope, I don’t mean it in a naive, “ignorance is bliss” type of way. Rather, when I say that hope is vital, I say it knowing that having hope is crucial to being a successful activist.

Angela Davis, as always, seems to have formulated the language long before my mind knew how to put it: “Sometimes we have to do the work even though we don’t yet see a glimmer on the horizon that it’s actually going to be possible.” The work is heavy, and hard, and continual, and although a book won’t save us, it can get us in the right direction. We are never alone in our work, in our healing, in our fighting –– go into the new year sustained by pages that remind you of this.

Year of Our (Audre) Lorde: December’s Prologue

Feature photo of the author credit: Camilo Godoy

Year of Our (Audre) Lorde is a monthly analysis of works by queen mother Audre Lorde as they apply to our current political moment. In the spirit of relying on ancestral wisdom, centering QTPOC voices, wellness, and just generally leveling up, we believe that the Lorde has already gifted us with the tools we need for our survival.

I’d been hoping that by the time I reached the end of this experience I would have some sort of profound realization to share with you. There’s a comfort from epiphanies and tidy endings that I crave even though life keeps revealing the impossibility of that wish. Like so many other people I’ve been chirping about the end of 2020 as if the transition from one year to the next will magically suture the open wounds from this year. If anything, this year has made the unresolved issues from other difficult years resurface in spectacular fashion. There has been grief for the actual lives lost, but there has also been grief for the growing pains and the relational shifts occurring with loved ones, as I leave behind a self that was no longer serving me.

This year, one of the hardest of my entire life, was made so much brighter by reading and immersing myself in Audre Lorde, and by having this space to share with you all. As I’ve said before, reading Audre Lorde is a continuous reckoning that is always loving but not without its frictions. I’ve circled around the poem “Prologue” for months, unsure how I was meant to engage with it, but compelled by a larger force to not put it down. Even the beginning of the poem might give a clue as Lorde wrestles with her own tensions:

Haunted by poems beginning with I
seek out those whom I love who are deaf
to whatever does not destroy
or curse the old ways that did not serve us
while history falters and our poets are dying
choked into silence by icy distinction
their death rattles blind curses
and I hear even my own voice becoming
a pale strident whisper

Part of what Lorde is contending with is her work as a writer, the issues of voice and community that come up for each of us who have truths to share that, by nature, are inconvenient and uncomfortable. The pressures of those communities — chosen or otherwise — so often lead to the sort of icy silencing she mentions, because of how exhausting it is to keep holding tight to that truth.

One of the things I didn’t and couldn’t have expected was the blowback I would get for not traveling to be with my family of origin during this still ongoing pandemic — that a decision made out of deep love and concern for everyone’s health has been seen by some as selfish and self-serving. I’ve been called on repeatedly to defend myself and the choices I’ve made. It’s more painful than surprising, and while the hurt is still tender, this has also led to much deeper understandings of all the things we’re each carrying and how this pandemic has caused us all to grapple with the things we try to bury.

At night sleep locks me into an echoless coffin
sometimes at noon I dream
there is nothing to fear
now standing up in the light of my father sun
without shadow
I speak without concern for the accusations
that I am too much or too little woman
that I am too black or white
or too much myself
and through my lips come the voices
of the ghosts of our ancestors
living and moving among us

In writing this essay it’s occurred to me that maybe this particular poem was waiting for me to be ready for it. I had to get to the point of not merely analyzing Lorde’s words but attempting to live them. Looking over this year’s previous selections, there’s a recurring emphasis on resilience and on using your voice and your work in service of what you know to be right and just. This is part of Audre Lorde’s larger ethos, but it’s also what I most needed to receive.

The above lines resonate in an acute way — one of my greatest fears is that I’m “too much.” Insert whatever adjective you’d like and it would probably be something I worry about. Lorde’s focus on “too much or too little woman,” and “too black or white” get at the core of the matter. I think about all the ways that we’ve been taught these lessons of too much and not enough, and how we reinscribe the refrains on ourselves and on one another. And it was hard to fight the impulse that, in going against what others wanted me to do and who they wanted me to be for them, that I was wrong to make the choices I did. But as I sit with the pain of transitioning through the paradigm shifts of 2020, there is joy in knowing this pain feels better than the pain of the old world order.

Hear
the old ways are going away
and coming back pretending change
masked as denunciation and lament
masked as a choice
between eager mirrors that blur and distort
us in easy definitions
until our image
shatters along its fault

For me, “Prologue” maps out Lorde’s traumas and vulnerabilities, both in the moment of writing in the early 1970s and their roots in her early childhood experiences. Her crystalline ability to pierce through to the core of any issue shines through here, as she remains firm in the righteousness of her chosen path.

The pain Lorde feels is evident; but so, too, is the understanding that she’s a part of something bigger than the present moment. I always sense the spectre of death when I read the following lines, but I don’t find it morbid so much as communing with life’s many cycles and the import of our actions during our limited time in this realm.

Hear my heart’s voice as it darkens
pulling old rhythms out of the earth
that will receive this piece of me
and a piece of each one of you
when our part in history quickens again
and is over:

This is where I understood the futility of wanting a neat ending to this series.

There’s no way to wrap this up pretty nor orderly. Much like the many revelations and past traumas unearthed by these last 12 months, what I’m left with is mostly jagged edges and realizations that there’s so much more work to do, so much more to learn.

Somewhere in the landscape past noon
I shall leave a dark print
of the me that I am
and who I am not
etched in a shadow of angry and remembered loving
and their ghosts will move
whispering through them
with me none the wiser
for they will have buried me
either in shame
or in peace.

There’s much I will carry with me in the aftermath of this experience, and this lasting image of the dark print, “the me that I am and who I am not” is certainly one of them.

Lorde’s declaration here is one of her clearest reminders that what comes after us is not what others proclaim our works and our lives to be. Instead it’s our ability to live out our truths, to raise our voices in service of what needs to be said. Others can and will say what they want, but if we’re able to muster even part of Audre Lorde’s resolve, then we too will rest easy.

As we leave each other, I want to say that the opportunity for this column could not have come at a better time. When I began with a sort of simple desire to deepen my knowledge of one our queer ancestors, there was no way to know where this experiment would lead. More than anything, I’m grateful to those who read and engaged with Lorde’s words — and with me, as I’ve attempted to grapple with them this year. Thank you for journeying with me. I hope that this final column, this “prologue,” speaks to the new beginnings and also the continued lessons we may receive from Audre Lorde’s incomparable legacy.

Viola Davis Towers in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” Giving Life to a Black Queer Legend

To be completely honest with you, I was supposed to write this review last week. I had it planned for nearly a month, since I first saw a press screening of Netflix’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom right before Thanksgiving. Then an unexpected promotion came with new stressors, and my second and third family members came down with Covid (no one reading this needs a reminder of the astronomical racial and economic chasm of this disease), and like so many of us trying to survive this global pandemic — the depression that’s been prickling behind the corners of my eyes threatens to overtake me every day that I fight to get out of bed. I know you didn’t open this piece about Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom to read a journal entry about my life, but just hang on for one second.

Last Thursday, on the eve of Ma Rainey’s Netflix premiere, I collapsed into a pool of panic and exhaustion — scrapping by to make deadline. At my very wits end, I was reminded by someone I love very much, trying to knock some sense into me: “Ma Rainey didn’t spend herself and her career to carve out authentic creative space for Black queer artists so you’d be out here in 2020 with your own mental and physical health suffering just to write a review of Viola Davis as Ma Rainey to keep pace with Twitter!”

Or to put it in the words of Ma Rainey from the film herself, “We’ll be ready to go when madam says we ready to go. And that’s the way it go around here.”

Viola Davis as Ma Rainey, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Netflix, 2020)

August Wilson’s 1982 Tony-nominated play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom happens to be one of my favorite pieces of Black theatre. I’ve worshipped August Wilson’s words for about as long as I’ve loved theatre, which is to say my entire life. Across his ten plays, “The Century Series,” one for each decade of the 1900s, August Wilson traces the majesty and impact of the Black communities in the United States. He dedicated his life to a singular project, creating, in his words, “the world of Black America… so that you [Black people] are fully clothed in the manners and a way of life that is uniquely and particularly and peculiarly yours.” I say dedicated his life in a very literal sense, August Wilson’s last play of the series, Radio Golf, was first performed in 2005 at the Yale Repertory Theory, the same year that Wilson died.

With numerous Drama Critics Circle Awards, a Drama Desk Award, a Tony, and two Pulitzer Prizes — Wilson is easily one of America’s most distinguished playwrights. More than that, the feeling watching or reading August Wilson as someone who’s Black — it’s indescribable. It’s as if he’s reflecting back a story that’s long been bubbling within you, just waiting for someone, anyone to excavate it and set it free.

Wilson had very little use for writing about celebrity, the majority of his protagonists are working class or poor Black people — that neighborhood Uncle who talks Real Big at the corner store, your mother sitting over bills at the kitchen table, your brother whose eyes used to shine so bright when y’all were kids but became muted as a teenager, the ghosts of your great-Auntie who haunts the walls. They’re all accounted for.

That Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom focuses in part on one of the most successful Black women of the 1920s (who recorded over 100 songs between 1923 and 1928 alone, and famously performed in a tiara and $20 gold coins as her necklace) is a bit of an anomaly, but its central themes — the white theft of Black talent, PTSD stemming from white violence in Black communities, the specific entanglement of anti-Black racism and sexism faced by Black women — certainly are not. In fact, they’re the entire point.

Viola Davis as Ma Rainey, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Netflix, 2020)

As this Ma Rainey (in Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s exquisite adaptation of Wilson’s work), Viola Davis’ performance stuns in its magnitude. She’s towering. A woman whose stubborn assurance, wisdom, and refusal to shortchange her own self-worth is larger than life. On stage, she captures the imagination — smiling and writhing, dipping her hips low with emphasis like she’s a Grammy-winning pop star and not the two-time Tony Award wining, Academy Award winning GOAT of her moment. With her close confidants, Davis taps into Rainey’s quiet beats. She’s fiercely protective, harsh and difficult, but not without tenderness or vulnerability. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom has never been a work — in play or in film — solely about its namesake; it could most readily be described as a case study of her band. But in Davis’ hands, it also becomes a complex portrait of a queer Black woman hurricane whose footprints loom over the last 100 years.

There’s Ma Rainey the woman, and increasingly there’s become Ma Rainey the interpretation, the character. The legend exists somewhere between the two.

Gertrude “Ma Rainey” Pridgett was born on April 27, 1886 in Columbus, Georgia. By 14 she was already a traveling performer, singing in cabarets and tent shows around the South, her tours dotting across the region as sharecroppers worked harvest. At 18, she married William “Pa” Rainey in 1904. They traveled together performing as “Ma and Pa Rainey” (after their divorce Ma Rainey kept the moniker, but told people that Ma was now short for appropriately diva-esque “Madam”).

As an adult, she spent decades touring the country, becoming a stunning showstopper. In addition to her famed tiara, feathered headdress, and $20 gold piece necklaces, she often performed in full length gowns, rings on every finger, and carrying an ostrich feather in one hand or a shotgun in the other — all topped off with her gold-capped smile. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom opens with Davis catapulted into one of Ma’s famous numbers for good reason, it’s impossible to capture the full breadth of the Mother of the Blues’ talent via her recordings alone. She was the archetype of the modern Black Diva — just barely squint your eyes, and it’s not hard to see Patti LaBelle or Lizzo or Rihanna walk in her wake.

Ma Rainey threw at least one illegal queer sexy party broken up by the cops (that we know about). In Chris Alberston’s academic biography of bisexual blues icon — and Ma Rainey mentee — Bessie Smith, Alberston writes that Rainey “and a group of young ladies had been drinking and were making so much noise that that neighbor summoned the police.” Of course the cops showed up, ahem, “just as the impromptu party got intimate.” Rainey was arrested with the charges of “running an indecent party” (emphasis my own) and Bessie bailed her out the next morning.

Paramount Ad for “Prove It On Me Blues” (1928)

Quite a few historians agree that Paramount appears to be referencing that infamous night in their ad for Ma Rainey’s signature number, “Prove It On Me Blues.” In the ad, Rainey’s wearing a three-piece suit and tipped fedora. She’s hitting on a group of women while the police watch from the shadows. The text of the first sentence reads “What’s all this? Scandal?”

In their article “Mackdaddy, Superfly, Rapper: Gender, Race, and Masculinity in the Drag King Scene” queer studies scholar Jack Halberstam references this same Paramount ad, noting that it “suggests the popularity… of a particular form of lesbian drag.” Ma Rainey was hardly the only Black woman to wear masculine clothing in the era, Harlem cabaret singer and pianist Gladys Bentley often performed in tuxedo (a style that’s referenced by director Dee Rees during her own interpretation of Ma in 2015’s Bessie), as did Moms Mabley. Both Bessie Smith and Rainey were known to play with masc and femme gender performance at different stages of their respective careers.

“Prove It On Me Blues” also became a key feature in Angela Davis’ Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, a preeminent study of the queer legacies of Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday. Of course even one glance at the lyrics and it’s hard not to see why:

“They said I do it, ain’t nobody caught me
Sure got to prove it on me
Went out last night with a crowd of my friends
They must’ve been women, ’cause I don’t like no men
It’s true I wear a collar and a tie…
Talk to the gals just like any old man.”

Ma Rainey was many things, but subtle certainly was not one of them.

Mo’Nique as Ma Rainey, Bessie (HBO 2015)

So we can presume why it’s “Prove It On Me Blues” — and not “Black Bottom” — that’s the backdrop of Dee Rees’ depiction of Ma Rainey in Bessie, which Davis’ outstanding performance aside, is easily my favorite interpretation of her to date. There’s still nothing quite like watching a queer Black woman director bear witness to an infamous queer Black legend in her own right. In the film, Ma serves as a gateway for a young Bessie Smith, teaching her the world of underground speakeasies, sex clubs and gambling rings — both women remarkably handsome as Black femmes in lingerie and flapper dresses hang off them. At first Queen Latifah’s Bessie finds herself timid, but Ma Rainey’s (Mo’Nique, in a staggering performance) bravado coaxes her out of her shell — “Who’s goin tell? They’ve got to prove it on ya, babyyyy. They gots to prove it on you.”

Ma Rainey has been translated on screen by two Academy Award winners in the last decade, the first being Mo’Nique, and that now brings us back again to Viola Davis.

Viola Davis as Ma Rainey and Taylour Paige as Dussiemae, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (Netflix, 2020)

The original 1982 August Wilson play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom settles for implying Ma’s sexuality, but in the film there’s one scene that continues to live in my head rent free. After a morning of withstanding scandalized glares from the Black upper middle class at her hotel and outright racism at the hands of white Chicago police and her record producers, Ma finally has time alone with her girlfriend Dussie Mae (Taylour Paige), a dancer in her band.

Dussie, having freshly applied red lipstick, is dancing by herself in the corner while Ma’s nephew plays piano. Davis’ Ma Rainey looks on, arms crossed, her face a mixture of appreciation and lust, her tongue slightly poking out above her gold capped teeth. She purrs a command to Dussie, “come over here and let me see that dress.”

She wraps Dussie in her arms, slightly caressing the underside of her breasts while both women sway to the music. “I want you to look nice for me, hmmmm…” Davis all but whispers into Dussie’s neck, her voice as much a moan as it is any other sound. She keeps going like that for a while, saying words that are technically words but feel like they’re kisses. Each next one more hot than the last.

It’s as commanding, as controlled, and yet also — as tender, sexy — as I have ever seen Viola Davis. A century’s worth of queer legend about one Black woman coming down to bear in a single moment. Even sitting at home I had to look away, embarrassed by my blush.

Ma Rainey died in 1939 of heart failure in Rome, Georgia. Her death certificate labeled the most notorious Black woman of her time as a housekeeper.