Yelling His Name: Black Trans Mourning and the Murder of Tony McDade
George Floyd was murdered on May 25, 2020, and we stand in unequivocal support of the protests and uprisings that have swept the US since that day, and against the unconscionable violence of the police and US state. We can’t continue with business as usual. We will be celebrating Pride as an uprising. This month, Autostraddle is focusing on content related to this struggle, the fight against white supremacy and the fight for Black lives and Black futures. Instead, we’re publishing and re-highlighting work by and for Black queer and trans folks speaking to their experiences living under white supremacy and the carceral state, and work calling white people to material action.
I wasn’t going to go to the protest, but there I was. I wasn’t going to take the streets, but my feet found the pavement. I kept telling myself that I was allowed to turn back at any time. I’d left the house in a daze, hastily writing his name on the back of a bubbly water box torn asunder, feeling driven to make the name known. I wasn’t going to take the mic, but there I was speaking. “I appreciate y’all being here for George Floyd, and I need you all to know Tony McDade.”
I’m not sure how many die ins, vigils, or marches I have done for Black lives, but I know none have been organized specifically by and for my Black trans siblings that we lose to white supremacist violence. I spent a year of my life on a master’s thesis exploring the rites and rights of mourning trans lives in this country and the history of Transgender Day of Remembrance. I tracked the steady but sure reality that every year in this country over 80% of names we read are trans people of color, a vast majority of them Black trans women and femmes. I know the lists are forever incomplete and we hold space for those we don’t know. I watch LGBTQ+ organizations with lily white executive boards somberly dash the words “intersectionality” and “anti-Blackness” in relation to transphobia, paying lip service for truths they don’t have to live.
Every year I wonder why the crowd isn’t bigger at these vigils.
My relation to Black violence and death at the hands of police shifted as my gender presentation did. No Black body is safe from police brutality, but the coverage that Black cis men get makes it seem that they are the most at risk — and I am grateful for folks finally bringing Breonna Taylor’s story to light three months after her murder at the hands of police. It took one day for George.
When I began taking hormones to align my body with my spirit, my father’s concerns were deeply rooted in our history. His first concern was that they were not in fact giving me testosterone, but pumping me full of chemicals for a medical experiment — the legacy of medical violence against Black people in the name of science follows me into every doctor’s office and checkup. As I tried to convince him that my medicine was safe he sighed and said, “you know it’s not going to be easier making people think you’re a Black man in this country.” I assured him that twenty-five years of Black androgyny in the Midwest had girded me well for whatever the world was about to throw at me.
George Floyd was murdered by the Minneapolis police department on May 25th and we’ve seen protests unfold in all fifty states with folks wielding his name on signs along with his final words, “I can’t breathe.” I non-consensually watched his final moments on film as it autoplayed again and again on my Facebook page — the number of my people lynched on film that I have witnessed never ceases to infuriate me. I will never see a white person murdered as I absentmindedly scroll through Facebook, but I doubt this is the last time I watch a Black person beg for their Mama as tiny heart reactions bubble up the screen. I proceeded with my time-honored grieving practices that carried me through Trayvon, Michael, Ahmaud Alton, Philando, Sandra, Freddie, Botham — people I never know, but whose fate lingers with fear around the edges of my every interaction. I listen to music about Black weariness that is close to a century old but still relevant, I read poetry that reminds me I’m still alive, I go to actions if my anxiety or grief allow it — and then I continue my daily checklists to prevent myself from being the next name on a sign. The next body turned hashtag.
Do my tail lights work? Will someone open my front door as I eat ice cream and open fire? Is my running outfit gay or femme enough to make me seem less of a threat? Is it safe for me to wear a hoodie in this neighborhood?
Tony McDade was shot and killed by Tallahassee PD on May 27th and I learned the news from a single twitter screenshot that originally misgendered him. The poster was complaining that they’d seen no news on this murder because the victim wasn’t a Black cis man — when they learned he wasn’t a woman they seemed to lose interest while trans celebrities became the main voices demanding justice. Janet Mock, Indya Moore, and other BIPOC trans voices made sure Tony’s story got spread. The fundraiser created for his memorial service and to support his family has almost reached ten times the original goal – largely through the effort of the Black trans community. Slowly some mainstream news outlets began picking the story up. But still, every time I go to an action his name is rarely on the posts promoting it, in the mouths of the organizers, or on other people’s signs.
Friends and family lovingly called him Tony the Tiger and recalled that he was big hearted. Tony is not the perfect victim — no Black person is in this nation’s eyes. The further we are removed from white supremacist’s heteropatriarchal value-based system, the less our death seems to matter and being Black and trans is a double affront to white supremacy. Kimberlé Crenshaw, the badass theorist and activist that gifted us with the model of intersectionality decades ago, created the #SayHerName to highlight the disparity in mourning only Black cis male victims of police brutality — highlighting this gap in recognizing victims other than Black cis men. Crenshaw launched the hashtag to highlight, like intersectionality, the interplay of racial and sexist violence and original reports of Tony’s murder used the Crenshaw’s hashtag. I found myself wanting to use the hashtag “SayHisName” for Tony to capture the matrices of violence that led to his murder, and to try and push back at all of the deadnaming and misgendering that added to the violence of his murder — but it didn’t feel enough. So again and again I add #BlackTransLivesMatter to every post and plea I make.
They’ve rolled out Tony’s rap sheet, the Facebook videos promising retaliation for the men that jumped him the day before his death, and posited that there was allegedly a knife or other weapons at the crime scene. Still. How many white boy mass shooters have we seen calmly escorted from blood drenched schools, churches, and markets? Witnesses of Tony’s shooting say the Tallahassee officer gave no warning.
Some say they called him the n-word. We don’t know the name of the officer, but he of course is bearing the weighty punishment of “administrative leave.”
I quickly swing from exaltation to exhaustion within a headline. The images of thousands packing the streets and chanting “Black Lives Matter” while ripping down statues of slave traders and setting police precincts alight stirs something so deep inside my soul I think it must be the exhalation of my ancestors’ holding their breath.
At the same time, I feel the exhaustion of well-intentioned white people that I don’t know well ask me how I’m doing without really being able to handle the weight of my worry. Or worse, the call to educate on top of mourning always makes these moments extra tiring. But I keep pushing and tell anyone that will listen that Tony’s life mattered.
At one of the actions I attended last week, I called Tony’s name into the space. I reminded people that Black Lives Matter was originally coined by three Black women, two of them queer — with the very clear intention that all Black Lives Matter — especially us on the margins. Liberation is not trickle down — as Black trans people we can’t just “wait our turn” for the police to stop killing Black cis men before we address the violence we face. We need to acknowledge intracommunal violence as our Black trans sisters like Iyanna Dior get attacked at rallies that are meant to celebrate and uplift all Black life. We need to practice what we preach and light candles and hit the streets for Tony like we do for George, we need to pack Transgender Day of Remembrance for our Black trans siblings like we do the victims of police brutality. I keep trying to get chants started for him at the marches and vigils I attend. It hasn’t caught on yet, but I have hope.
How to Talk to Your White Friends and Family About Racism
George Floyd was murdered on May 25, 2020, and we stand in unequivocal support of the protests and uprisings that have swept the US since that day, and against the unconscionable violence of the police and US state. We can’t continue with business as usual. We will be celebrating Pride as an uprising. This month, Autostraddle is focusing on content related to this struggle, the fight against white supremacy and the fight for Black lives and Black futures. We’re publishing and re-highlighting work by and for Black queer and trans folks speaking to their experiences living under white supremacy and the carceral state, and work calling white people to material action.
Author’s Note: This article is primarily to help white people talk to other white people about racism and white supremacy. Non-Black people of color will likely find it useful as well. Black people: unless, like me, you have white family members, this is probably not your job. Read on if you like, but I never do this kind of labor for free and I don’t suggest you do either.
One of the most powerful ways you can be a part of the current uprising against white supremacy is by having frank, difficult conversations about racism with your white family and friends.
Police violence sparked the latest wave of this movement, but policing won’t change until racism and white supremacy change. Because police violence is part of a system built on white supremacy and is perpetuated and enforced largely through white complicity, it won’t change until a critical mass of your families, friendship circles, institutions, and hearts are no longer complicit.
Your job is to be a part of building that critical mass within your sphere of influence. It’s not enough to not be racist. You have to be actively anti-racist, which means using your relationships with other whites — many of whom are recalcitrant and resistant to change — and working on changing them.
It will be difficult. They may not want to listen. You may end up forever poisoning your relationships with your racist relatives. But it will be worth it. As Allyn Brooks-LaSure (and countless others) have made plain:
“If courageous people of color can brave dogs in Birmingham, horses and billy clubs in Selma, fire bombs in Florida, tear gas in Ferguson and Minneapolis, lynch mobs in Georgia — then well-meaning white people can brave awkward conversations on family Zoom calls, in work conference rooms and at Thanksgiving dinner.”
Also, you’re not in it alone. Here are some tips, tricks, and suggestions for making it happen, from someone who trains people on the basics of privilege and oppression professionally and has a degree in persuasion (really). You can do this!
How to Talk to Your White Friends and Family About Racism
1. Prepare — A Lot. And Check Your Expectations
Read this article, and then read 10 more like it, and then 10 books. Do a ton of research. Especially read Black people’s ideas and perspectives. Have a stack of links to reputable sources outlining hard data. Here’s a place to start.
You also might need to check your expectations. Some activists argue that now is the time to make white people uncomfortable, that we shouldn’t coddle them, that y’all need to be confronted with the harshest truth of your complicity in racism. I agree that y’all don’t deserve to be coddled or have your hands held through this process. But in my experience, that’s the only way for the vast majority of white people to actually shift. You can’t get people to agree to be part of a solution until they agree that there’s even a problem to be solved.
People’s minds are rarely changed when they are confronted with a lot of information that conflicts with what they already know and/or believe. They usually have to be guided carefully and gently out of their comfort zones, hands held by someone with whom they have an existing relationship, toward understandings that conflict with their current beliefs.
When I was in graduate school getting my teaching credentials, we learned that children have a “zone of proximal development,” or ZPD. I think it applies to adults too.
Click image for full size.
First are the beliefs someone has currently. Then, the beliefs they can come around to with support (their ZPD). And finally beliefs they simply won’t accept right now, even with support. You can’t get them to jump from the green zone (racial hatred is bad, maybe) to the pink zone (I am complicit in and need to fight systemic racism). You can, possibly, get them from green to blue (racism is widespread in American societal institutions) though! And then, maybe what was once a pink idea can become a blue one. Their ZPD keeps moving as their beliefs do. It would be incredible if you were able to radicalize the adults in your life, but it’s very unlikely. You can, however, get them to recognize that racism is real, is a systemic problem, and maybe even that they should do something about it.
The point is, with support, most people can accept new beliefs, as long as they’re not too far a leap from what they already believe. But they need support. You’re that support. This will be emotionally taxing. Nobody likes hearing negative truths about themselves; they will likely resist and it will be frustrating. But it’s crucial.
That’s also why this is your work, not ours. If you’re quick to anger, like to interrupt, or need to be “right” or to “win,” those approaches are unlikely to work. This is going to be a marathon. It will go slowly. You’ll need to be satisfied with baby steps, especially at first.
2. Some Basic Tactics and Reminders
Be as empathetic, compassionate, and kind as you can—take breaks or change topics when you can’t. Don’t have this be the only thing you talk to them about. Try not to get angry or yell. Statements like, “I hear what you’re saying, but have you considered…” or “It sounds like you’re worried about / afraid of / trying to say …” can build rapport and lower defenses, which you need. Guilt is a huge barrier to learning; it tends to shut down critical thinking and puts people into defense mode, where it’s very difficult to learn. You will have to concede some things, leave some things on the table, and tentatively agree (or refrain from disagreeing) with some things in order to make a point and find common ground.
Repeat their own words back to them, ask clarifying questions, and/or rephrase what they said and ask if that’s right. Make them defend their own words instead of disagreeing outright! Watch your tone, though; be genuinely curious.
Control extrapolations. Don’t let them get too ahead of themselves. Just like supporting “gay marriage” doesn’t mean supporting bestiality or whatever, acknowledging that George Floyd should be alive doesn’t necessarily mean you hate all white people. If they start extrapolating too far, don’t get sucked in. That’s a rhetorical control tactic. Bring the conversation back to what you were originally discussing.
Be generous! If they concede a point, allow it. Maybe even celebrate your agreement! This is not about winning or being right, it’s about graciously and slowly moving their understanding in the right direction. Small wins are still wins.
You may have to depersonalize things as much as you can, at first! They might not be ready to be implicated yet. Eventually you can help them see how they’re part of the problem, but if that’s not in their ZPD, then don’t force it too early. Eventually, use examples from your own life to show them that being vulnerable and admitting your complicity in the system is OK.
Focus on slam dunks. If they bring up something that’s tricky/nuanced, you can defer. “You know, I want to look more into that, because that doesn’t seem right but I don’t know enough about it yet” is fine! It can also be useful to use this as an opportunity to learn together: “Hmm, do you want to read an article or two about that with me?” You also can’t prove that “a white person wouldn’t have been treated this way.” For now, stick to things you can prove, like disparities in traffic stops, drug arrests and convictions, housing, hiring, and banking, where plenty of studies have compared people who are “equal on paper” but are treated very differently.
Did you already have to have a conversation with them about oppression based on gender or sexuality? You can build off of that. What worked then? Racism is NOT the same as transphobia or homophobia, so don’t make a complete equivalence — but there are many similarities they might be amenable to if they came around on those issues.
3. Build On Their Values And Beliefs
Values, largely unchangeable by adulthood, are the foundation upon which a successful argument must be built. Your goal is to help them to realize that racial justice already aligns with their values, not to get them to accept new ones. What’s important to them? If you can identify their values, then you can build from there.
Adults also have core beliefs about race and racism. These aren’t as strong, because they are learned — and thus can be unlearned. You will likely hear some of them come up in the course of your conversation. If you hear one, that’s another great opportunity to connect and build.
Here are some common values and core beliefs about race that can impede someone from accepting anti-racist ideas. Find a place of agreement and commonality and build from there.
Values you can somewhat agree with and build off of:
Strict law and order is essential for a functioning society
Agree that things like due process are important. Build by discussing how George Floyd, Eric Garner, and other Black people who may have committed a crime deserved a fair trial, not the immediate extrajudicial death penalty. You can even eventually get to things like disparities in sentencing, qualified immunity, corruption in courts like in Ahmaud Arbery’s case, and more (especially if you have local examples).
Ownership of property is an unalienable right
Agree that people should feel safe in their homes and be able to defend them. This one is especially relevant to critiques of “looting.” Build by talking about people like Breonna Taylor, or things like the MOVE bombing, or Tulsa’s Black Wall Street, or Seneca Village, or the Wilmington Massacre. Talk about how most property owners today have insurance, and how property can be rebuilt but lives can’t (if you use one of those examples, it also might be worth mentioning how Black property owners frequently DIDN’T have insurance, because insurance companies refused to insure them. This persists to a degree today as well).
Truth and/or facts are more important than feelings
Agree that facts are important, and have some at the ready. This is usually where people quote crime statistics (usually wrongly and from memory). Build by using actual facts — remember to focus on slam dunks. If they insist on talking about crime, there are facts disproving “Black-on-Black” crime myths, but you might be better off going back to talking about due process.
We’re all human and/or colorblindness/tolerance is an important virtue and/or love is stronger than hate and/or we should focus on what we have in common, not how we’re different
Agree that we are all human, love is powerful, and we have a lot in common. Build by asking if they believe that American society operates with these values by actually treating us all the same. If they say yes, use some of the facts you researched above to show this isn’t true. If they say no, then ask whether we shouldn’t honestly acknowledge this reality and work to make this true in society, not just in our hearts.
America is a meritocracy i.e. If you just work hard, you’ll get ahead
Agree that hard work is important and should be rewarded. Build by asking if they believe America has always been a meritocracy. If they say yes, ask them about slavery. If they concede that America hasn’t always been a meritocracy, but is one now, then you can go to “Racism is a thing of the past” and build from there.
Everyone should just be treated equally
Agree that everyone should be treated fairly and justly. This is a place where you need to know the difference between equal and fair, but it might not be time to get into that yet. Similar to “We’re all human,” ask whether they believe society currently treats everyone equally. Build by using your research.
Riots don’t help progress; protesters need to be more patient, nonviolent, and respectable like MLK
Agree that riots could potentially turn off some allies. Build by talking about or sharing the Martin Luther King, Jr. speech in which he says: “The riot is the language of the unheard,” especially if they name drop MLK. While not in complete support, he was sympathetic. Ask whether they believe that protestors’ anger is justified, if not their tactics. If so, focus on THAT and build. Ask, perhaps, what the appropriate response is after years of nonviolent protest and little to show for it? To keep asking nicely? It also might be worth noting that after six days of rioting and tens of millions in property damage following MLK’s murder, the 1968 Civil Rights Act was passed. Look into how much has been accomplished in the last few weeks because of the uprising.
Core beliefs you can slowly shift through compassionate conversation:
Racism is a thing of the past or happens elsewhere
Agree that things have gotten better in some respects, and things are different in some places. Build by pointing to some of the slam dunk facts you researched, especially if you have local examples. It can also be useful to ask them when exactly they think racism ended, and whether there’s been enough time to eliminate its lasting effects on society since then. If they concede that not everything is better, you might build by asking: what is the appropriate level of racism to have in a society? When is the right time to stop trying to make things better? Whose responsibility is this work?
Individual racists are terrible, but you can’t blame a whole system because of a few “bad apples”
Agree that police forces, universities, HR departments, hospitals, schools, and other institutions have “bad apples” within them, and individual racists should lose their positions of power. See if you can get them to agree to that point, and if not, try discussing that first. Build by asking whether someone can still be considered “good” if they have power to stop “bad” people from doing bad things but choose not to. Ask what percentage of a group has to be “bad” before it’s acceptable to write off the group wholesale. Muhammad Ali’s statement about rattlesnakes might be appropriate here, or James Baldwin’s explanation of institutional racism on the Dick Cavett show.
I don’t personally hate Black people, so I’m not part of the problem
Agree that they don’t personally hate Black people. Build in a similar way to “Bad Apples” by talking about bystanders; using the example of the other three cops who didn’t prevent George Floyd’s death could be useful. Maybe, talk about a time someone told a racist joke and you didn’t challenge them, and how by not saying anything they likely thought you were agreeing with them. How you felt like part of the problem. Don’t they think people who allow racists to do their thing without challenging them are part of the problem?
4. Ask Questions, But Don’t Interrogate
So far I haven’t mentioned how to actually start the conversation. Your best option to start is just to ask questions, and you should continue doing that throughout. Try your best not to pontificate. “What do you think about these protests going on?” or “Did you read what Obama said?” Could be a good start. Or you can foreground your own feelings: “I’m so sad about what’s going on and I’m not sure what to do.” Then let them respond and see where they go. Asking questions, and giving them time and space to figure out answers to them without telling them what you think or believe (unless you’re asked) can be very effective.
Simply asking them to explain what they mean by the things they say, and asking follow-up, clarifying questions, can be very disarming and reveal beliefs they don’t even realize they hold. Try to remember the following, though, to prevent it from becoming an interrogation. If people feel like you’re asking biased or loaded questions, they might put their defenses up. That’s not what you want.
You’re not an expert.
Unless you’re Black, at a certain level you can’t truly understand what’s going on or what this is all about. This is an opportunity for y’all to both learn some things. This includes conceding points and trying to get to the truth, not winning the argument. No matter how many articles you read to prepare for this, you’re not an expert. Be humble.
Keep it conversational.
If you have any intention of having a “gotcha!” moment, they’ll probably sniff it out. Try not to even seem like you’re accusing your folks of being racist—for true transformation, they’ll have to come to that conclusion on their own. You’re just having a conversation. You’re much more researched and prepared for it than they are, but it’s still just talking with a friend or family member. There has to be some love or caring present or it will feel accusatory.
Insist on grounding ideas with evidence.
If they say “Well, Black people _______,” ask for evidence. “Oh, I haven’t heard that, where did you read it?” Don’t allow for “conventional wisdom” or “Hannity said.” Don’t allow for anecdotal evidence! Insist on sources. If they don’t have any, it can be useful to say “That’s interesting, because this report I read …” and provide the source. If they don’t want to read evidence that conflicts with their worldview, ask them why that is. If you anticipate this, make sure you find some conservative voices that back up your points.
5. Conclusion
As annoying as it is, probably, to hear it, you really have to lead with love. It’s not our responsibility to love people who hate us or wish us ill, but if those people are your friends or family, it is yours. If you genuinely care about your family and want them to be and do better, let that ground your conversation. If they’re your parents, remember that they raised you and probably tried to do the best that they could — they have just been brainwashed by a system much older, bigger, and better funded than any of us. You’re having this tough conversation because you love them and because you love humanity.
The ultimate goal here might just be for your folks to even acknowledge that racism exists. It might be for them to finally see themselves as complicit in it, and it might be for them to realize that it is their duty to fight against it. Maybe for them that’s voting differently, or donating money, or taking to the streets. Maybe you’ll be able to get them to understand institutional oppression, or embrace socialism, or anarchism, or anti-capitalism. Maybe they’ll realize that the entire system needs to be torn down, and both policing and the prison industrial complex need to be abolished and replaced with community-based alternatives. Probably not, but that’s OK. Regardless, it is your duty to try to get them to move away from denial and complicity and toward allyship and solidarity. Good luck.
Appendix: Some Definitions That Can Be Helpful
Are your family or friends interested in justice and liberation in a general sense, or agree with the ideas of, say, #blacklivesmatter, but seem to miss the mark or don’t see how they’re implicated? Who think being personally not racist is enough? The following might help you get them to the next level.
Appendix 1: A VERY Basic Definition of Racism
Click image for full size.
Racial Prejudice + Power = Racism.
This basic framework applies to most all forms of oppression, as in the above graphic. It’s very simplified but is easy to understand and convey. The main appeal is that it takes racism out of an individual person’s beliefs and into the realm of power dynamics and systems. It’s not as important whether an individual “is a racist” (though that’s accounted for under “interpersonal” oppression). What matters more is whether the ways they wield their relative power have racist impacts. Baldwin on the Dick Cavett show, again, expresses this well.
Note that prejudice can be implicit — you don’t need to have active racist beliefs to be prejudiced. And prejudice doesn’t just mean hate, it means any generalized judgement based on a lack of information. Literally any belief applied to an entire, diverse race of millions of individual people fits this definition, by the way.
This is also a springboard to understanding why “reverse racism” doesn’t exist. People of color may have interpersonal power, but we don’t have the collective power to enforce and spread anti-white ideologies throughout our culture for centuries or shape major institutions to reflect our prejudice.
The Four I’s — ideological, institutional, interpersonal, and internalized oppression—are important because they get at the scope of the issue. The first one is often left out, but it’s one of the most important. The ideology of white supremacy is baked into American culture and has been promoted and normalized through every media outlet in this country for centuries. If you’re going to discuss these, make sure to research examples of each to show how they function and how they support each other.
Appendix 2: A VERY Basic Definition of Privilege That Can Be Helpful
Click image for full size.
I’ve found that this is a good framework for explaining privilege, especially to white people who don’t feel privileged or when you’re worried people will feel guilty and shut down.
Privilege is a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group of people. When I teach this, I focus on “special right”— because that’s a contradiction in terms! Rights by definition are granted to all. That means that privilege is when only one group of people has access to something that everyone deserves, or when they’re shielded from something that nobody deserves, because of their real or perceived membership in a certain group.
This is helpful for many who feel, or were taught, that acknowledging privilege would mean they don’t deserve what they have, and might have to give up what they have so that others can get access to it. It doesn’t necessarily mean either of those things (white lives don’t have to not matter for Black lives to matter, for example). Justice would be everyone getting access to the things we all deserve by being human — not that white people have to give those up. See the examples of privilege below to see what I mean.
It can be crucial to let white people know that privilege is not usually their individual fault. When we talk about privilege, it’s easy to put up barriers to understanding because of how uncomfortable white guilt can be. When you recognize that privilege isn’t necessarily your fault, it helps break down that guilt barrier (white supremacy is y’all’s ancestors’ fault, though, but only acknowledge that if it helps, not hinders). Most white people didn’t ask for it, but it still benefits all of you.
I also like to acknowledge that privilege is contextual. White supremacy and anti-Blackness are global, but whiteness carries different amounts of power depending on context and circumstance. I usually teach briefly about intersectionality before this, and won’t get into it here, but regardless it can be a useful point.
I usually give four examples of privilege to help cement people’s understanding (and to create some symmetry with what I said about oppression). Ideological and representative privilege are frequently understood, while privilege of selfhood and privilege of oblivion are rarely. Privilege of selfhood means you are able to be seen as an individual, not just a member of a racial group, and you’re believed when you say who you are. Any Black person called a “credit to their race,” mistaken for waitstaff, or met with surprised faces when they drop their educational or career credentials knows this one.
And privilege of oblivion has been incredibly obvious since 2016, as we’ve seen white women, especially, come out to protest for the first time (even older white women who were around during the civil rights movement). Y’all’s obliviousness to our reality is on purpose, though; white supremacy set the system up so that it’s incredibly easy to never have to confront or care about the reality of racism because it doesn’t affect you in obvious ways. White queers are notorious for this one.
Privilege can be tricky to discuss, but I’ve found this approach helps ease people into understanding it, and then they’re able to go deeper. It’s also useful in supporting people to accept ideas in their ZPD, and then continually supporting them as their ideas shift.
Showing Up For Black People Is a Duty, Not a Transaction
George Floyd was murdered on May 25, 2020, and we stand in unequivocal support of the protests and uprisings that have swept the US since that day, and against the unconscionable violence of the police and US state. We can’t continue with business as usual. We will be celebrating Pride as an uprising. This month, Autostraddle is focusing on content related to this struggle, the fight against white supremacy and the fight for Black lives and Black futures. Instead, we’re publishing and re-highlighting work by and for Black queer and trans folks speaking to their experiences living under white supremacy and the carceral state, and work calling white people to material action.
My life wouldn’t be what it is without Black people.
I am a Vietnamese trans woman. Without the Civil Rights Act of 1964, there wouldn’t be laws protecting my family from discrimination (though these laws are unequally enforced). Protesting the war in Southeast Asia, Black activists called out the hypocrisy of the U.S. government for claiming to free Vietnamese people while Black and Indigenous people were being murdered by both police and the public. My family wouldn’t even be in the United States without the advocacy of Black activists who fought for Southeast Asian refugees to be admitted into the country.
During the same period as the anti-war demonstrations, Black trans women were among those who famously rose up against police brutality after years of abuse, leading to the Compton Cafeteria riots in San Francisco and the Stonewall riots in New York City. Black and brown trans women subsequently launched the first Pride march, which sought justice for sex workers and incarcerated trans and queer people. Their actions laid the foundation for the LGBTQ movement. While the abuse of trans communities continues, their rebellion helped establish more resources for descendants of their legacy.
In more ways than one, my life as a trans child of refugees was made better because Black people chose to fight for freedom. But I don’t fight for Black lives simply because Black people have fought for me.
In more ways than one, my life as a trans child of refugees was made better because Black people chose to fight for freedom. But I don’t fight for Black lives simply because Black people have fought for me.
I choose to defend Black life because Black life is under attack. I defend Black life because Black people deserve to be safe, at the very least. Because Philonise Floyd should not have to mourn his brother, George. Because Breonna Taylor should have been blowing out birthday candles last week with her mother, Tamika Palmer. Because Wanda McDade should not have to be raising money for her son, Tony’s, funeral.
We shouldn’t need a personal incentive to show up. We should be there for Black people simply because of their centuries-long mistreatment that continues unabated today.
For many non-Black people, knowledge of what Black people have done for the world is scarce. We were raised in a system that deliberately downplays or omits the contributions of Black people. Many children grow up listening to music that originated from Black communities — almost every genre of American music had foundations in Black artistry. I went to public schools that wouldn’t have been desegregated without the work of Black movements.
We must educate each other about the countless ways Black people have transformed the arts, science, culture, and the law, itself. But we can’t do that without grounding ourselves in the simple truth that our care for Black people must be unconditional.
Our solidarity should be unanimous and absolute, without an explanation about what Black people contributed to our communities. Solidarity is not a transaction. Compassion should not be given only when we receive something in return.
Our solidarity should be unanimous and absolute, without an explanation about what Black people contributed to our communities. Solidarity is not a transaction. Compassion should not be given only when we receive something in return.
Conservatives have discredited protesters as violent looters and criminals, even while there have been reports of white supremacists hijacking protests, destroying property to frame the protesters — and the police actions that preceded these protests are far more violent and criminal. There are people committed to suggesting Black people don’t deserve the international acknowledgment they’re receiving.
Among progressive circles, people have shed light on the relationship between Black people and other communities of color as a call for unity. It’s true, Black people have devoted themselves to the struggles of all kinds of people, from Central American farmworkers to the fishermen of New Orleans, from Palestinian refugees to Puerto Rican revolutionaries. But when we share messages of our connection to Black struggles without rooting ourselves in unequivocal support for Black people’s right to live, we unintentionally make our support transactional. We end up creating conditions for why Black communities are worthy of our support.
While different from the anti-looting messages, narratives of Black worthiness diminish the value of solidarity: they communicate the idea that Black people are only worthy of defense because they have given us something.
In a country hellbent on individualism, unconditional solidarity is something we’re trained not to believe in. During our ongoing pandemic, the government blames the U.S. death toll on individuals’ health, rather than the canyon-sized gaps in the healthcare system.
We must work against the grain and shift our approach to solidarity, so we can begin to shift our culture, too. We should be able to rely on one another to hold up our dignity for no reason at all, being able to trust the interdependence among us.
Solidarity easily becomes conditional when a transaction is at play. The movement for Black lives has shifted the status quo to the point where people saw how much they’d lose by staying silent — in their reputations and their businesses. Corporations examined the transaction in front of them and saw that there was more to gain in speaking up on issues they would have been uninterested in prior. They knew this was their chance to rack up their diversity points and clean up their track record. We can’t operate like businesses that only act in their own best interest rather than in the service of a better world.
People are beginning to see their connection to Black communities, but they have yet to understand their stake in Black trans lives.
One question Black trans activists have been asking is why there hasn’t been due solidarity to the police murder of Tony McDade, a Black trans man killed in Tallahassee, Florida the same week of George Floyd’s death. Much of the public doesn’t even know Tony McDade’s name. Black trans deaths remain forgotten except in the margins of society.
People are beginning to see their connection to Black communities, but they have yet to understand their stake in Black trans lives. They have yet to learn what Black trans people have done for their people. The result is selective empathy. Real commitment to Black lives requires us to consider why we’re fighting and for whom. When our commitment hinges upon our own perceptions of what Black people contributed to our community, it becomes about us. Our support centers around our feelings and our history.
When our solidarity is about us, we fall into the harmful cycle of momentary outrage, wherein people speak out to join the momentum of the masses. When our solidarity is about our compassion for others, there is no rhetoric required, no convincing words shared with those who are on the fence. Our solidarity becomes about the undeniable humanity of Black people — all Black people.
It’s true that our liberation is connected as human beings. As many have stated, all lives can’t matter until Black lives matter. But it’s time we ask ourselves: if our liberation weren’t intertwined, if your well-being weren’t tied to that of Black people, would you still defend Black life? The answer to that question should tell you where your work lies.
As a Queer South Asian, “Never Have I Ever” Been So Let Down
I watched the trailer for Mindy Kaling’s Netflix original Never Have I Ever with trepidation. I have a love-hate relationship with high school dramas. When they’re done well, I adore them; when they aren’t, I’m forced to relive the misery of high school while gaining nothing in return. Now, here was this genre with… a South Asian protagonist. I would either cherish or loathe Never Have I Ever. Given how close this show was going to hit home, there really was no room for anything in the middle.
Never Have I Ever tells the story of fifteen-year-old Devi Vishwakumar (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan). In the previous year, Devi’s father suddenly died from a heart attack. Her mother, Nalini, is now raising Devi as a single parent. Living with them is Kamala, Devi’s cousin from India, who is completing her PhD at CalTech. The family is clearly well-to-do, and their community betrays all the markings of the wealthy: house parties at mansions, sixteen-year-olds driving expensive cars and parents hiring private counselors to get their kids into Ivy League colleges.
So… South Asian teen living in a well-off, college-obsessed suburban community. This show was tapping into more than a few aspects of my own high school experience.
As I progressed through the episodes, I found myself growing increasingly agitated. Kaling has a clear skill in creating a world I easily identified with, without hiding any of its shortcomings. But, she has no interest in examining those shortcomings for what they are. Instead, Never Have I Ever falls back on easy storylines that erase the painful realities of so many communities — including the one the series showcases.
Many critics found Never Have I Ever’s high school setting relatable, but Kaling’s depictions traffic far too heavily in damaging stereotypes for my taste. It seems like every character other than Devi and her two love interests are flat caricatures. What’s more, I can’t believe that in 2020 we’re still making fatphobic and ableist mobility jokes on TV, like the ones told about Devi’s classmate Eric and her entire backstory of being temporarily paralyzed.
I found the show’s queer representation to be full of problems. One of Devi’s best friends, Fabiola (Lee Rodriguez), comes out during the season. Fabiola’s growing awareness of her sexuality is handled thoughtfully enough, but her character is largely sidelined. In episode one, Devi picks out boyfriends for herself, Fabiola and their other best friend Eleanor as part of her quest to improve their social standing. As Fabiola goes through the motions of dating this boy she’s clearly not interested in, another classmate, Eve, catches her attention. In the first three episodes, Rodriguez masterfully shows Fabiola realizing the disconnect between her actions and her feelings, but these moments are eclipsed by Devi and her story.
Fabiola’s coming out to her friends and family in the next several episodes continues to be overshadowed, this time by the storyline with Eleanor’s mother and Devi’s abandoning her friends in pursuit of boys. While it’s refreshing that Fabiola’s central story isn’t about being rejected by her family for being queer, it’s hard not to feel like Fabiola is short changed. Fabiola and Eve eventually start dating, but NHIE does no work to develop their relationship, instead taking it as a foregone conclusion for the only two queer girl characters.
The irony of Never Have I Ever breaking ground with its South Asian representation is that Kaling takes a largely colorblind approach to every other racial identity, and this, too, bogs down Fabiola. Even though Fabiola is Afro-Latina that aspect of her identity is never broached, even in passing.
With this omission, the show’s presentation of queer culture is incredibly white washed. The only other queer characters are Eve and Jonah (who Fabiola and Eleanor befriend after Fabiola comes out). Eleanor aptly describes Eve as “Kristen Stewart in Charlie’s Angels.” (The other option Eleanor gives Fabiola when she asks “her type” is “Kristen Stewart in Twilight” — as if the very white Kristen Stewart solely embodies the multitudes of queer women worldwide.) Jonah is your standard straight-person caricature of a cis white gay man — I’m not even sure in what universe Jonah’s character passes as a teen.
Even worse, by tokenizing Fabiola, NHIE perpetuates anti-black racism. From the first episode, we’re thrust into a years-long rivalry between Devi and her classmate Ben that is entirely predicated on the zero-sum game of college admissions. Fabiola is clearly a genius – she’s built an interactive robot and is studying Latin and French at the AP level as a sophomore (whether she speaks Spanish never comes up). Why, then, does Fabiola not factor into Devi and Ben’s competition? Like far too many black women, Fabiola’s brilliance goes unseen by her white and Asian peers.
In her real life, Kaling has a problematic close proximity to this relentless pursuit of elite post-secondary degrees that has led too many Asians to pursue the anti-black racist claim that race-conscious admissions causes colleges to discriminate against them. Overwhelming data points to the contrary, but the claims persist. (Swathes of underqualified white students are accepted as legacies, at the expense of highly qualified Black and Latinx students.) In fact, NHIE delves right into this mess when a college counselor tells Devi that “schools don’t want another Indian try-hard.” The show cleans it up by having the counselor deflect to “colleges want kids with unusual stories.” Kaling may not repeat the racist lie verbatim, but she certainly skirts it.
Kaling’s depiction of Indian community isn’t as superficial as her other representations, but it’s equally thoughtless.
Never Have I Ever portrayed a Hindu-Indian community I immediately recognized. It’s most apparent in episode four when Devi’s family attends Ganesh puja, which is part religious observance, part social gathering. Nalini is expecting pity from the other women because she is now a widow; her expectations are met in encounter after encounter. I found the community dynamics incredibly familiar: the back-handed compliments, the veiled braggadocio, the endless one-upping. But Kaling doesn’t stop there. She doesn’t shy away from laying bare the Islamophobic underbelly of Hindu-Indian community.
At the puja, the family runs into a woman who was ostracized for marrying a Muslim. Nalini’s disdain for Muslims and Kamala’s shock at that particular detail are clearly evident. Yet, the show moves forward without skipping a beat. Meanwhile, while NHIE was in production, India stripped the only Muslim-majority state of its constitutionally-guaranteed autonomy and implemented a communications blackout that’s lasted ten months and counting, started building Muslim detention camps and passed a citizenship act that could lead to the deportation of Indian Muslims.
That now-divorced woman’s assessment of her situation? “I wish I had just listened to my family and married the guy that they chose.” This is more than a missed opportunity. By showing a Hindu-Indian community engaging in casual Islamophobia while simultaneously erasing Muslim-Indian communities, Kaling is normalizing the bigotry that has led to increasing degrees of systemic violence over the past several decades in India.
Never Have I Ever similarly tramples through the minefield of arranged marriage. Arranged marriage is actively practiced by South Asians across socioeconomic classes. In an effort to sanitize the practice for a globalized world, many middle class South Asians point to matrimonial websites and the (relative) agency they provide. To me, this emphasis on “semi-arranged” marriages glosses over persistent and gendered problems that also transcend class.
One of my cousins had an arranged marriage that was a “good match” (both families are incredibly wealthy), and the couple had some liberty (they went on a handful of supervised “dates”). It’s become increasingly clear, though, that my cousin has had to completely curb her playful enthusiasm to match her husband’s quiet reserve. It’s difficult to see her so changed; as my sister put it, “A part of her soul has to have died, right?”
In NHIE, Nalini is pushing Kamala into an arranged marriage on behalf of Kamala’s parents in India. In episode two, Nalini preps Kamala for an upcoming conversation with her potential in-laws by forcing her to present more traditionally feminine and emphasize her skills as a homemaker, rather than talking about her research. The show wants us to believe this is just temporary to reel in the catch. But I can’t help but think of my cousin: Will her act ever be up?
Later, in episode nine, Kamala dumps her East Asian boyfriend because the stranger her parents chose turns out to be hot. With Kamala’s story and the story of the woman who had married and divorced a Muslim man, the show reinforces the morals around marriage most of us are raised with: family knows best. Which really means: when children, especially women, exhibit independence and true agency in their relationships, they are setting themselves up for a lifetime of shame and misery.
Perhaps most upsetting, Kaling exposes the abuse that goes unquestioned in too many South Asian families but refuses to question it. In episode two, Nalini threatens to smack Devi for calling her a “bitch.” She immediately defends herself to her white neighbor, saying stridently, “Smacking is still an acceptable punishment in many minority cultures,” and the show moves on. While Nalini’s statement might be true, that doesn’t make it ok. This is an issue that divides the community, and Kaling clearly doesn’t want to take a stance. But not taking a stance is taking a stance when you only show one perspective.
Nalini’s emotional abuse gets passed off as an aspect of her personality, her exacting Indian standards and her coping mechanism for grief. The show makes clear that her behavior predates her husband Mohan’s death through a flashback of Nalini berating Devi. At one point, Devi overhears a particularly painful exchange between her parents:
Nalini: You are too easy on her.
Mohan: No, I’m not. I just have a different approach.
Nalini: Okay, great. Then why don’t you raise her? Because I give up. I am done. She’s too headstrong and doesn’t listen. Whoever this child is I am through with her!
Mohan: Nalini…
Nalini: No, no, no. That’s your child. She’s no daughter of mine.
First, I’m tired of watching the limited representation of South Asian families perpetuate the lie that South Asian fathers are kind and understanding while South Asian mothers are – in the words of Devi – “a bitch.” We see this play out in Bend It Like Beckham, I Can’t Think Straight, Ackley Bridge and Four More Shots Please. This dynamic isn’t as prevalent as Western media makes it seem, and it’s time for more narratives that show the reality of the patriarchy so many of us grow up with.
Second, Nalini never acknowledges how she’s hurt her daughter and, worse, rationalizes her toxic behavior. Nalini visits Devi’s therapist who asks Nalini why she thinks Devi doesn’t like her. Nalini replies, “Because I’m tough on her” rather than admitting those painful words Devi overheard. She then justifies her harshness as stemming from being “scared all the time [for Devi].” The show engages in the gaslighting that is characteristic of too many Asian families: I don’t have to show you that I love you. You should just believe that my yelling and being hard on you means I care.
The closest we get is at the very end when Devi and Nalini make up. Even then, Nalini fails to take responsibility for Devi’s pain, saying instead, “I know you think it was your father who was the only one who cared about you, but that’s not true. I love you. You’re my whole family.”
What do those words even mean after everything that’s happened between them that they still haven’t actually talked about?
In an interview with the New York Times, Kaling acknowledged that, with such limited media representation, her show would be expected to represent everyone in the South Asian community and that would, inevitably, lead to disappointment. But the reason I didn’t like Never Have I Ever wasn’t because I didn’t feel seen. It’s because Kaling and I are clearly looking at the same world, but Kaling is expecting me to overlook all of its pain.
Resistance 101 Reading List: A Crash-Course for Aspiring Revolutionaries
Feature image via wikimedia.
This piece was originally published on 3/6/2017.
George Floyd was murdered on May 25, 2020, and we stand in unequivocal support of the protests and uprisings that have swept the US since that day, and against the unconscionable violence of the police and US state. We can’t continue with business as usual. We will be celebrating Pride as an uprising. This month, Autostraddle is suspending our regular schedule to focus on content related to this struggle, the fight against white supremacy and the fight for Black lives and Black futures. Instead, we’re publishing and re-highlighting work by and for Black queer and trans folks speaking to their experiences living under white supremacy and the carceral state, and work calling white people to material action.
Every time the Trump administration does something particularly enraging (so, about five times a day), I watch a gif of white supremacist Richard Spencer getting punched in the face. It reassures me that I’m not the only one at a personal boiling point with conservative rhetoric and policies, nor am I the only one ready to resort to unpopular tactics to get my point across.
With so many civil liberties under threat, it can be tempting to let our impatience for change push us to recklessness. To sign on to the first idea that’s presented, without necessarily considering whether it is truly inclusive. One of the main criticisms toward the Women’s March, for example, was that many attending had never felt compelled to stand beside underprivileged groups in the past. Many argued that creating a new movement instead of lending support to existing ones only further silenced disenfranchised groups. Education is the only way to understand this criticism and be a true accomplice in these movements.
The following list provides background on some of America’s resistance movements and resources to help us move forward in a more inclusive manner.
Civil Disobedience and Other Essays by Henry David Thoreau
Written in outrage against slavery and the Mexican-American war, Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” essay inspired leaders like Ghandi and Dr. Martin Luther King to carry out non-violent tactics against their oppressive governments. A fairly short read, this essay collection is a great place to begin your studies. “Walking” has since been recognized as one of the pioneering documents in the conservation movement.
Freedom’s Daughters by Lynne Olson
One of the primary criticisms of the Civil Rights movement has been its lack of recognition towards the women who helped make their progress possible. Despite their integral place in launching movements like the Montgomery Bus Boycott, women were rarely given the stage to speak their truth. In Lynne Olson’s “Freedom’s Daughters” she tells the stories of women that history often overlooks, dating pre-Civil War to 1970.
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
If you’re having trouble understanding the far-reaching consequences of systemic oppression and how it weaves its way through every facet of American life, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander is a good place to start. The book explores how the prison industrial complex and the War on Drugs have legalized the persecution of POC and explains why tasking Obama with dismantling racism was an impossible errand.
The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race, edited by Jesmyn Ward
Inspired by James Baldwin’s seminal book The Fire Next Time, National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward shows a new generation how true his words still ring more than 50 years later with her collection of essays and poems, The Fire This Time. The text is split into three parts that tackle our history, current predicament and hopes for the future, with contributions from social critics like Keise Laymon, Isabel Wilkerson and Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah.
Freedom Is a Constant Struggle by Angela Davis
Released this year, renowned civil rights activist Angela Davis’ latest book, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle, dissects the legacies of past resistance movements and reflects on how they can inform our current efforts. Though heavy with research and statistics, the book clocks in under 200 pages, making it a reasonable jumping off point for understanding the intricacies of systemic racism and how far it reaches. Whether you’re a seasoned protester or just joining our ranks, Davis breaks down how you can assist movements on an individual level.
Forcing the Spring by Jo Becker
By no means a comprehensive account of the fight for marriage equality in America, Jo Becker’s Forcing the Spring zeroes in on one of the most defining court cases of our generation. She follows the aftermath of California’s Proposition 8, which failed to pass in 2008. It provides a behind-the-scene look into the five-year legal drama that ensued and reflects on how quickly public opinion shifted.
Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danicat
Brother, I’m Dying is a powerful family memoir that honors the sacrifices immigrants are so often forced to make and the tragedies they incur along the way. Avoiding sentiment, the biography places a microscope over an immigration case that made headlines when author Edwidge Danicat’s Uncle Joseph was detained by US customs en route from Haiti.
Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serano
Julia Serano takes so-called feminists to task in her personal manifesto Whipping Girl, which chronicles her experiences as a lesbian transgender activist and professional biologist and reflects on how those paths shaped her life pre- and post-transition. Serano’s background as a professional biologist allows her to seamlessly bridge the gap between social and biological perspectives on gender, where she criticizes our artificial use of “feminine” and debunks persisting myths about transsexuality.
Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive by Julia Serano
After you’ve finished Whipping Girl, be sure to pick up Serano’s follow up text Excluded, which criticizes queer activists for policing gender and sexuality and reflects on where these assumptions stem from. In Excluded, Serano advocates new ways of approaching sexuality, gender and sexism inclusively.
The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service by Laura Kaplan
From 1969 until the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, a brave group of Chicago feminists provided illegal access to abortions for thousands of women under the pseudonym “Jane.” Laura Kaplan, who joined Jane in 1971 as a counselor, draws from personal recollections and interviews with Jane members and clients and the doctors who performed the abortions to provide a comprehensive history of this radical group. Understanding the important role Jane played in women’s history will prepare us as we continue to fight for women’s right to choose.
Criptiques by Caitlin Wood
Criptiques is a thought-provoking collection of essays from a diverse group of disabled writers who offer their experiences on gender, sexuality, disability culture, ableism, and more. Featuring the work of writers like Elsa S. Henry, Ibby Grace, Leroy Moore, Anna Hamilton, Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg, Criptiques is a great resource for learning more about disability activism and justice.
By no means exhaustive, this list is a great primer for understanding the nuances within our current resistance movements and how to be an effective ally. Is there anything you’d like fellow protesters to read before joining the cause? Drop a link in the comments below!
Black Rage as Catharsis
George Floyd was murdered on May 25, 2020, and we stand in unequivocal support of the protests and uprisings that have swept the US since that day, and against the unconscionable violence of the police and US state. We can’t continue with business as usual. We will be celebrating Pride as an uprising. This week, Autostraddle is suspending our regular schedule to focus on content related to this struggle, the fight against white supremacy and the fight for Black lives and Black futures. Instead, we’re publishing and re-highlighting work by and for Black queer and trans folks speaking to their experiences living under white supremacy and the carceral state, and work calling white people to material action.
As I sit at my desk preparing to write this, all I hear are the overhead sounds of helicopters circling my neighborhood, monitoring the protests below. I live in Pittsburgh. This is the third night of protests in response to the killing of unarmed Black man George Floyd in Minneapolis. While marching, protestors also said the name of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old woman who was killed by police while sleeping in her home. In Pittsburgh, protestors marched through downtown and on Monday June 1, through East Liberty, a historically Black neighborhood that has been devastated by the effects of gentrification. I keep my eyes glued to a live feed and listen to the cries of “hands up, don’t shoot” that accompany the large mass of moving people through my neighborhood. This cry has been on replay in my head for days, the same with “I can’t breathe,” the last words of both George Floyd and Eric Garner.
To be Black in America is to be perpetually breathless, is to have hands around your throat, is to be mad as hell.
I’m mad as hell. Every day since George Floyd’s murder I have had to show up to work at a job that doesn’t care. When police in East Pittsburgh shot and killed unarmed Black teen Antwon Rose Jr., my company sent out an email encouraging us to take alternative routes to and from work to avoid traffic due to protests. While I’m incredibly fortunate to still be employed and making a paycheck during a global pandemic, my skin is hot at the fact that capital is valued higher than human life in every facet of American living. Black life, in particular, has no value to America. Not when a man can be choked to death for over 8 minutes and only see the officers responsible arrested after a Target was looted. Black people have influenced and shaped what is profitable, what is cool, what is popular for decades, only to have that culture snatched, chewed up, and spit out as some morphed, digestible form to the rest of America. We have been told that we have no culture, that our entire legacy has been slavery and struggle, that we need to forget the past and be successful like other minorities. Black people have been physically abused and gaslit for centuries. We have reached points when we have had enough in the past, and right now is another one of those points.
Let me correct myself, to say that I am mad is an understatement. I am filled with rage.
My skin is hot at the fact that capital is valued higher than human life in every facet of American living. Black life, in particular, has no value to America.
Rage is a touchy subject, even for me. I grew up in a house where I wasn’t encouraged to feel my own emotions. Feelings were bad. It was “shut up and stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.” So, when I got angry, I became afraid of myself, what I was capable of doing. I wrote in my diary about my anger and swiftly put it under lock and key, forgetting it once it was on the page. I didn’t want to be angry or rageful because I thought those things were equal to physical violence and people I love getting hurt. It has been a long road of coming into my emotional body. I have to feel things now, I get to have feelings thanks to the work I’ve done with countless therapists and friends. There is a grief behind my rage that has to be allowed to breathe as well, but at the forefront is that rage, leaving an almost metallic taste in my mouth. My mind and eyes feel sharpened with a focus that came to me once before, after the acquittal of the killer of Trayvon Martin. I was a sophomore in college then and I remember being at the gym and immediately going to the nearest heavy bag, hitting it with an onslaught of fraught, rage-filled punches.
I think many Black women struggle with rage because of the myth of the angry Black woman, I know that I did. Much of my young adult life was dedicated to not being a stereotype. I didn’t want to be the Black woman with the perpetual chip on her shoulder, mad at everyone, even the people who try to love her. Myths like these have kept Black people away from the right to their feelings and emotions. Trying to stay calm and respectable in the face of injustice is one way that we rob ourselves of our full humanity; we try to dodge people seeing us as less than human by treating ourselves as less than human. Feeling that rage is a part of the scope of our humanness, it must be addressed, I have learned this the hard way.
Trying to stay calm and respectable in the face of injustice is one way that we rob ourselves of our full humanity; we try to dodge people seeing us as less than human by treating ourselves as less than human.
In the wake of the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and George Floyd, Black people are ready to address their rage. One way that rage may manifest is a riot. I’m using the word riot intentionally here to talk about the purposeful use of property damage and violence as a means to draw attention to and overthrow oppressive systems. The damage a riot causes is nowhere near as devastating as state sanctioned lynching Black people have endured for centuries. A riot is an expression of rage and exhaustion. An expression that we have the right to. Of the protests that have erupted over the past few days, let it be known that in every case, the police started the violence. When a crowd of however many shows up in jeans and T-shirts and police are present in riot gear, armed with rubber bullets and tear gas, mounted on horses, only one group of people have come truly prepared for a riot. To be a police officer is to be steeped in a legacy of violence, to be a cop is a violent act. Protesters who destroyed property were only responding to the force they were determinately met with. If you’re reading this and you know a cop, or maybe you are a cop, you’re probably upset right now. The truth of the matter is I don’t care. Your father or uncle or friend that is a cop is of no concern to me. They may be a nice person to have a drink with or maybe they are sweet to you, but once they put on that uniform they become agents of the state hell-bent on protecting property above Black lives. You might think you know a “good” cop but as long as they continue to put on that uniform, that cop is my enemy.
Many cities across America have also seen protests of the stay-at-home orders that have been imposed in response to Coronavirus. When white, right-wing, gun-carrying men and women showed up to state capitals and yelled in the faces of officers, they weren’t met with rubber bullets or tear gas. Officers instead showed remarkable restraint, turning the other cheek. This show of restraint is only reserved for white skin or photo ops of white officers dancing and hugging black teens, the same ones they’ll profile when the job calls for it. This is why many of us say there are no good cops. Because they hide their badge numbers and turn off their body cameras, because they protect their own when they know they’ve done something wrong. How could my response to this be anything but rage?
This is why many of us say there are no good cops. Because they hide their badge numbers and turn off their body cameras, because they protect their own when they know they’ve done something wrong. How could my response to this be anything but rage?
One of the reasons I sat down to write this is because I saw something that scared me. And that is the sanitization of Black rage. As protests continue, there will be a focus on “peace” and a call for actions that don’t look like what we’ve been seeing these past few days. They will want to see us silently kneeling only to still find issues with that form of protest. They will want to see us singing songs of unity and togetherness, but when the time calls for real unity, they are nowhere to be found. They will say we are animals and apes and thugs even when we’ve done nothing, but fight for our breath. Sanitizing Black rage is at its heart, an attempt to get the white majority to see us as human. But, as I said earlier, we rob ourselves of our humanity by trying to cut off our sharpness, to sand down our edges. They will find holes in every method of disobedience because they want us obedient.
At a protest in Pittsburgh on May 30, 2020, a cop car was set on fire. I would be lying if I said that not only the symbolism, but the real, tangible visual of a cruiser burning did not touch me somewhere in my heart. Something about that old method of policing going up in smoke, burning to ashes, felt right. Many people disagreed with the act and others like it that occurred throughout America on those nights, but for many of us, it was cathartic. Narratives started popping up that only white people wanted to see cop cars burning and only white people were involved in the retaliation, that “outside agitators” and anarchists were to be blamed. These narratives are agency-robbing and also ignore the fact that there are Black anarchists. Of course, in some situations, there have been white people that have co-opted the Black struggle to live out their angst fantasies, there are undercover cops sent in to instigate violence. But if and when there comes a time where Black people do take to the streets en mass and start an uprising, these narratives will only serve as detractions from our rage. To quote Martin Luther King Jr.’s “A riot is the language of the unheard” speech and then turn around and say that there were no Black people involved in riots or that we would never engage in such activity is antithetical to the point you are trying to make. Great care has been taken to hide the faces and identities of many of the protestors during these demonstrations, but it would be wrong to say not a single one who rebelled was Black. Black people have a long history of revolt and violent revolution, not every war has been won by sitting calmly as tear gas and hoses are turned on us. From Stonewall to the King assassination riots, it has been proven that uprisings work.
Black people have a long history of revolt and violent revolution, not every war has been won by sitting calmly as tear gas and hoses are turned on us.
I would never disparage the merit of peaceful revolution, it has its place in the struggle. Sanitizing the struggle by insisting everything must be peaceful is a disservice. I understand that we don’t want bloodshed or more lives lost, but there was bloodshed and lives lost when we were peaceful. There have been so many innocent lives lost even as we have reacted in a calm, measured way. Let us not forget how many peaceful civil rights leaders were assassinated. They will always find a reason to resort to violence, anything that we throw back is a matter of self-preservation.
This is not a call to riot, it is an attempt to legitimize and validate those who do as a form of protest. I want Black people to be able to feel the entirety of their pain, to let it manifest in ways that don’t harm us instead. Without feeling the extent of our rage, we can’t truly imagine the scope of our joy. In a world where we are begging to survive, we must allow ourselves whatever emotions come with that struggle. Whether we lay quietly in the streets or run through them, we cannot let the establishment convince us that any of those things are more violent, more atrocious than the centuries of oppression we’ve endured. White supremacy thrives on keeping us obsessed with respectability when there is nothing respectable about kneeling on a man’s neck while he cries for his life. Right now I feel called back to the young woman I was after Trayvon Martin’s death, I want to punch and scream, to break the nearest thing to me. There has to be a place for that fire along with a place for meditation and calm. There is a time for everything, and right now is a time for rage.
What’s Stuck In Your Mind: An Open Thread for BIPOC Folks
It’s been 12 days since George Floyd’s murder. The past few weeks have been unbelievable. There have been BIG thought discussions everywhere about what the uprisings mean this time, on what ways we’re not going back (whether that will ever be true?), and at what cost to whom. As someone not Black, I take seriously my role to hold tightly to hope and expectation for change and transformation, but it’s not lost on me that the birth of every new world we enter, that every piece of progress that we gain from protests is at the cost of Black lives — and that even in fighting to dismantle white supremacy, we’re building off of Black pain, grief and beautiful lost lives.
I know a lot of people are exhausted. I know a lot of people are dealing with microaggressions, in addition to the macroaggressions led by the police and the National Guard.
There are also plenty of things to talk about that are not big things: the meetings you’re invited to where white people waste everyone’s time expressing their false helplessness; the people from your high school that you know are 100% invested in white supremacy and OF COURSE posted a black square on Tuesday to pretend otherwise; the kinds and scents of candles that are bringing you the most peace right now; the big maternity pillow that you bought for quarantine that offers a sense of relief. These might sound like small things, but they’re important too!
So this is a thread where you can share whatever is stuck in your mind. I want want open up this space for the intense grief, mourning, PTSD, trauma, and all the other wounds that the most recent murders have opened up in the Black community, if you need room for that. Please bring your personal gems and gripes or your big-picture questions and feelings to the comments, everything is welcome — as long as you’re Black, Indigenous, or otherwise POC, and know that this is a Black-centered discussion.
How To Post A Photo In The Comments:
Find a photo on the web, right click (on a Mac, control+click), hit “Copy Image URL” and then…
code it in to your comment like so:
If you need to upload the photo you love from your computer, try using imgur. To learn more about posting photos, check out A.E.’s step-by-step guide.
How To Post A Video In The Comments, Too:
Find a video on YouTube, copy the URL, and paste the link on its own separate line in your comment. You no longer need to use the “embed” code!
Stop Asking Me If I’m Okay
George Floyd was murdered on May 25, 2020, and we stand in unequivocal support of the protests and uprisings that have swept the US since that day, and against the unconscionable violence of the police and US state. We can’t continue with business as usual, which includes celebrating Pride. This week, Autostraddle is suspending our regular schedule to focus on content related to this struggle, the fight against white supremacy and the fight for Black lives and Black futures. Instead, we’re publishing and re-highlighting work by and for Black queer and trans folks speaking to their experiences living under white supremacy and the carceral state, and work calling white people to material action.
I envy people who can open their eyes in the morning and stay away from their phone for over five minutes. Sadly, like most millennials, the minute I wake up I go to check my notifications. Since quarantine, I tend to wake up in the late afternoon. Usually I have a couple missed calls, some Snapchats, and different text messages from the same five friends.
Last week I opened my phone after opening my eyes and one text message stood out to me.
“Have you seen the news?”
How do you avoid headlines surrounding Black death when you’re Black? How would I not know what was happening? How could I ignore it? I was not upset at her, for reasons her and I already talked about, but the next three days my messages were flooded with “How can I be a better ally?” “I’m sorry the world is f’d up.” and “Are you okay?”
Are you okay
Three little words that were supposed to be full of love enraged me. Was I okay? Am I okay? Am I supposed to be okay? How could I be okay, all things considering. Those three little words were thrown at me continually over the weekend and into the week following.
Are you okay?
No. I am not okay. I am the farthest thing from okay. My PTSD is acting up. I have to actively remind myself my existence isn’t damned as a black queer woman. I can barely focus on other personal matters at hand without remembering all the people being locked up and harmed because of one simple thing — they don’t want to be killed. Wanting to live is a luxury for those with fair skin, apparently.
Thus, no. I am not okay.
Well-meaning white folk are just that, well-meaning. They want to help. They want to do better. They’re sitting at home climbing out of their skin because they want to do something and they don’t know what to do, so they text their closest Black friend “Are you okay?” not realizing how harmful a question that can be.
I need allies to stop asking me if I am okay, because I am not okay. I am the farthest thing from okay and there is nothing I can do about it other than post my feelings on the internet and sign petitions begging a government and country built on the backs of my ancestors to cut us some slack. Stop asking me if I am okay, when people are sharing videos of people who look like me, my brothers, my cousins, and my friends, being killed in cold blood. Stop asking me if I am okay when there are people out there more concerned about a dog than they are about attempted murder.
Ask me anything else. Ask me my feelings about Lady Gaga’s new album. Ask me what I want for dinner tonight. Ask me my opinions on Prince versus Michael Jackson, even. Ask me anything you want.
However, do not ask me if I am okay. Anything but that.
A Black, Queer Reflection on The Civil Rights Movement and the Unfinished Project of Freedom
This piece was originally published on 01/15/18
George Floyd was murdered on May 25, 2020, and we stand in unequivocal support of the protests and uprisings that have swept the US since that day, and against the unconscionable violence of the police and US state. We can’t continue with business as usual, which includes celebrating Pride. This week, Autostraddle is suspending our regular schedule to focus on content related to this struggle, the fight against white supremacy and the fight for Black lives and Black futures. Instead, we’re publishing and re-highlighting work by and for Black queer and trans folks speaking to their experiences living under white supremacy and the carceral state, and work calling white people to material action.
“Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
It’s not the most famous Dr. King quote, the one that get dusted off year after year. That honor goes to those three little words that we can all recite by memory, “I have a dream…”. It’s not even the quote that I’ve used most often in my own life, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that”.
No, this quote is hard. It isn’t popular to remember that change is not inevitable. It requires unrelenting struggle and work. It’s not sexy. It’s not even particularly optimistic. There is no Happily Ever After. Instead, Dr. King only promises a future in which we must bear down, straighten our backs, and keep carrying our load. This quote challenges me, it sticks to my bones. I’m not sure that I like it.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was not a perfect man. He was someone who fought hard for racial and economic justice. He gave his life for it. And for that, he became immortalized. He became stuff of legend. My first grade teacher made my entire class memorize the opening paragraphs of his “I Have A Dream” speech, we delivered it at a school assembly. My high school required that we spend our day off from school honoring his birthday by completing community service projects. As I type this short essay, my neighborhood’s annual “MLK Day Parade” is happening outside my window.
I once tutored a college freshman, this black kid who was a rookie star on the football team and in serious danger of failing his “Intro to African American History” course. At the start of our first session together, I asked him what he had learned in his 18 years about black history. He replied, “Well, we were slaves, and that was bad. But, then Dr. King freed us and ended racism”. Dr. King freed us and ended racism.
I was stunned. He knew that racism wasn’t really over in this country. He was an 18-year-old black boy who grew up in the South. Of course he knew that. But, he also didn’t know where else to look or who else to point to. It broke my heart, because I knew that was by design.
After a long and difficultly fought battle, Dr. Martin Luther King Day was first celebrated as a federal holiday in January 1986. Since then, every third Monday in January, posters are hung in civic center windows and children are let out of their schools. Politicians who otherwise never spend a day pondering racial justice in America have their speechwriters hastily throw something together. I’m thankful that we take time to honor a racial justice leader in this country at all, but the danger of Martin Luther King Day is that it erases the flawed person behind the legend. It also erases the remaining work that each of us has to roll up our sleeves and complete, because the prophecy of King’s “beloved community” is far from coming to fruition.
Bayard Rustin
Those erasures can be particularly fraught for black queer women and queer folks of color. Martin Luther King did not treat all the women in his life with respect, it’s well documented that he habitually cheated on his wife. Many black women in the civil rights movement found leadership roles in King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and similar organizations, but have also testified to the difficulties of working around the accepted patriarchal social norms of the time period. There were two out black gay male leaders at the SCLC, most famously Bayard Rustin, who was the lead organizer of the 1963 March on Washington. Despite enjoying a close working relationship, King eventually distanced himself from Rustin at the urging of other civil rights leaders. To consider the full breadth of his legacy, we must grapple with these, and any other, shortcomings.
But, we also must keep King’s memory free from those who wish to pacify him and use him to uphold conservative values against the ongoing fight for social justice in this country. In recent years, Republican and Democrat politicians alike have invoked King’s words to chastise the Black Lives Matter movement. This year alone, we have to look no further than the current President of the United States signing the 2018 Martin Luther King Day proclamation less than 24 hours after spewing disgusting, hate-filled, racist remarks aimed at black and brown diasporas. The national observation of Martin Luther King Day often works in service of those in power. If King’s work is seen as completed, then those who pick up the fight towards freedom are seen as disrupting, or worst, besmirching, his legacy. It’s a dangerous, ahistorical rhetoric that ought to be be upended at every turn.
King himself reminds us that change will not come without the labor of never ending hard work. Change will not come while we wait for someone “perfect” to lift the hammer. He spoke of the radical notion of a “beloved community”, that people should band together in the name of equality, regardless of race, gender, sexuality, representation or ability. Anyone who has been a part of a family, blood or chosen, knows that communities take real effort. They require listening to ugly truths, and fighting, and be willing to humble yourself. They require not putting your individual conveniences ahead of the larger group, the most vulnerable among you.
“Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom.”
– Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
They also require constant maintenance. You cannot wash your hands of your community and declare the project done. There will always be another battle, another family member who needs your help. It’s exhausting, but restorative. Taking care of each other — putting in that sweat together — is how King believed we would curve the long arc of history towards justice.
Fannie Lou Hamer
The community that King surrounded himself with included fierce, brave, warriors of women like Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer. A former sharecropper, Fannie Lou Hamer famously stood up at the 1964 Democratic National Convention and testified that she was tired of working in service of an unfinished project of America that she questioned more than she believed in. Still, she never gave up. Ella Baker, a mentor of Rosa Parks, was the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s first full time staff member. She went on to become one of the founding members of SNCC (the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee). She also ran an essential voter registration campaign across the south, called the Crusade for Citizenship. Her career as an activist spanned five decades. She never gave up.
Ella Baker
By the time Bayard Rustin was recognized for his work in the civil rights movement, with a Presidential Medal of Freedom, he had long passed away. His loving partner, Walter Neagle, accepted the honor on his behalf and listened as President Obama declared that at a time, “when many had to hide who they loved… Bayard Rustin became one of America’s greatest architects for social change and a fearless advocate for its most vulnerable citizens”. He never gave up.
Today, I honor Dr. Martin Luther King by also honoring their work. The work of civil rights history is queer and feminist. It’s bigger than one man. It’s a hard, rough, incomplete project. And so, we must lock our knees, we must straighten our backs. We must never give up. We must keep working, always working, for our freedom.
Black August: A Feminist and Queer Syllabus for Black Liberation
There’s a good chance you’ve never heard of Black August before.
The month-long dedication to focus, study, and discipline undertaken by many black activists honors black radical traditions and the ongoing fight against the prison industrial complex and criminal (in)justice systems. It’s also a time of deliberate celebration – an uplifting of black life, black art, and the tenacity of our continued existence against the backdrop of a systematic white supremacy that would much rather snuff out our flame.
George Jackson
Black August began in California’s San Quentin in August 1979 to honor the 1971 August murder of imprisoned black intellectual and Black Panther member George Jackson (many still mark the occasion by re-reading his iconic work, Soledad Brother), as well as the murder of Jonathan Jackson (George’s 17-year-old younger brother), the San Quentin 6, and the birth of the modern prison rights movement. They wanted to pay tribute to the rich history of prison protest in our country and shine a light on the ongoing American failure of freedom that remains out of the grasps of far too many black people. They also sought to commemorate the high number of historically significant events in black freedom struggles that have taken place in the month of August.
You see, August has a fascinating, looming presence in black history. The very first slave ship that came to the American colonies came on shore August 1619. The Haitian Revolution happened in August – along with the Independence Days of Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago. Nat Turner’s infamous 1831 slave rebellion happened in August (over a century later, so did the 1965 Watts Rebellion). Black Panther Fred Hampton was born in August. Black scholars and political leaders WEB DuBois and Marcus Garvey both died this month. So did Emmett Till. In the world of black queer arts, James Baldwin and Whitney Houston were both born in August. It’s also the month where we lost both Aretha Franklin and Toni Morrison – just a little over a year apart.
The murder of Emmett Till, the March on Washington, and the day that Barack Obama became the first black man to accept the nomination for President of the United States all happened on the same date – August 28th. Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans one day later on August 29th.
This month is rooted in the sacred tradition of black survival. It’s celebrated in a variety of ways, but most use this time to practice and instill self-discipline. Some fast or abstain from illicit substances; in some black communities there are block parties (in my hometown of Detroit this month they did a bus tour of local Black Panther sites and re-telling of local black radical histories), but most take time to practice serious study. It’s about learning about structures of oppression so that we are better able to fight them, but also about working together to imagine a different kind of world altogether – one that’s broken free from racism and anti-blackness.
The problem? Most of the voices most talked about during Black August are those of cis men. While there’s obvious significant importance to the roles that black men have played in the ongoing quest for black liberation – including the incarcerated black men who founded Black August to begin with – there has been literally no movements of black activism, black politics, or black art that did not have black women, most often black LGBT women, at its backbone!
As we close out the month of August, I wanted to put together an interactive syllabus that brings the labor of some of those women to the forefront. In keeping with the tradition of Black August, this list primarily focuses on women I wanted to highlight who either have direct connections to August, or who have participated in a genealogy of black political movements surrounding criminal injustice/prison abolition. It also doesn’t include everyone! But I hope it’s a start and gives us all something to reflect on, act on, or at least learn something new.
May we continue to honor our ancestors and heroines today, tomorrow, and always.
Angela Davis
If we’re going to talk about prison reform and abolition of the prison industrial complex, then we have to start with the great Angela Davis. Not only is the queer professor and activist an expert on the topic who has been working towards prison abolition for decades, her infamous run from the law in the 1970s started with the Soledad Brothers. She was a fervent supporter of their release and purchased the firearms used by Jonathan Jackson in their attempted escape. For that, she was put on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List. She became the third woman ever listed, and after several months on the run eventually spent nearly two years incarcerated while awaiting her trial before being found not guilty by an all-white jury.
Read:
+ Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis (PDF)
+ The Autobiography of Angela Davis
+ “The enormous revolution in black consciousness which has occurred in your generation, my dear sister, means the beginning or the end of America. Some of us, white and Black, know how great a price has already been paid to bring into existence a new consciousness, a new people, an unprecendented nation. If we know, and do nothing, we are worse than the murderers hired in our name. If we know, then we must fight for your life as though it were our own—which it is—and render impassable with our bodies the corridor to the gas chamber. For, if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.” – An Open Letter to My Sister, Angela Y. Davis by James Baldwin
Watch:
Marsha P. Johnson
Continuing in the Black August tradition, August 24th is the birthday of trans liberation activist Marsha P. Johnson. I sincerely believe there is no form of advocacy for an entire generation of the gay rights movement that cannot be traced back through Marsha P. Johnson. We owe her EVERYTHING. She was a prominent figure in the Stonewall uprising (some say that she even threw the first brick). She was a founding member of the Gay Liberation Front. Alongside her close friend Sylvia Rivera, Johnson co-founded S.T.A.R. (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries). She’s rumored to have modeled for Andy Warhol! She took care of queer and trans sex workers and homeless queer youth. She became an AIDS activist with ACT UP. There’s nothing she couldn’t do.
Watch:
+ Happy Birthday, Marsha! by Tourmaline Gossett
Act:
+ Sign this petition to make Marsha P Johnson’s birthday a national holiday
+ Donate to the trans advocacy organization, The Marsha P Johnson Institute, which was founded by black trans woman activist Elle Hearns.
CeCe McDonald
CeCe McDonald is a bisexual trans woman prison reform and LGBT rights activist. She came to national attention following her June 2012 plea bargain of 41 months for second-degree manslaughter of a man who had attacked her in a racist and transphobic hate crime in Minneapolis and against whom she defended herself. Although a woman, McDonald was housed in two separate men’s prisons before being released in 2014 after serving 19 months. Since her release, Cece has been active working toward prison reform and economic justice for other trans women.
Watch:
+ Free CeCe! a documentary produced by Laverne Cox
Read:
+ “I’ve started and stopped many letters to you, never knowing what to say. I sent books, instead. Books you requested, books that could probably impart more joy and wisdom and strength than I ever could. What exactly does one write to a woman who has influenced them during such a pivotal shift in their life?” Because of You: My Letter to CeCe McDonald on Her Release by Janet Mock
Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi and Charlene Carruthers
Top Row, L to R: Patrisse Cullors // Charlene Carruthers. Bottom Row, L to R: Opal Tometi // Alicia Garza
Two of the three founders of the Movement for Black Lives (otherwise known as the #BlackLivesMatter movement) are queer: Patrisse Cullors and Alicia Garza. Though Cullors and Garza – along with third founder Opal Tometi – began the grassroots movement following the 2012 death of Trayvon Martin, one of the impetuses for the nationwide (and later, global) traction of BLM came from the murder of black teenager Mike Brown at the hands of a Ferguson, Missouri PD Officer on August 9th, 2014 – once again another bloody date marking Black August that serves to remind us of the state violence excused and upheld by white supremacy that comes at a cost to black and brown bodies.
At the same time as the Black Lives Matter movement began to grow, queer activist and community organizer Charlene Carruthers became the founding national director of the Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100) in 2013. The BYP100 is an activist organization helping black young adults build transformative leadership skills through development, direct action organizing, advocacy, and education – all through an explicitly black queer feminist lens.
The work of queer black women in movements for black liberation is obviously not new (and that’s what this whole list is about!), but what’s changing rapidly is the prominent centering of black queer and black feminist voices and frameworks, as opposed to having queer activists work in the shadows. These are the women that are changing the very way we think about collective work and grassroots politics in real time, right now in front of our faces.
Read:
+ When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Cullers
+ Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements by Charlene Curthers
+ “We are expansive. We are a collective of liberators who believe in an inclusive and spacious movement. We also believe that in order to win and bring as many people with us along the way, we must move beyond the narrow nationalism that is all too prevalent in Black communities. We must ensure we are building a movement that brings all of us to the front.. The call for Black lives to matter is a rallying cry for ALL Black lives striving for liberation.” – The Black Lives Matters Mission Statement
+ A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement by Alicia Garza
Act:
+ Donate to Black Lives Matter
+ Donate to the BYP100
Assata Shakur
If you’ve been at a protest any time in the last ten years, you’ve probably heard it:
“It is our duty to fight for our freedom.
It is our duty to win.
We must love each other and support each other.
We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
That quote comes from the autobiography of Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army member, Assata Shakur. After being involved in a multiple person shootout involving police officers and members of the BLA – in which an officer was killed – Shakur was convicted of multiple felonies before escaping prison in 1979 and eventually making her way to Cuba, where she has resided since 1984. Remember that FBI’s Most Wanted List that Angela Davis made history on? Yeah, Assata is on it, too. And she remains on it to this day.
If you are seriously about studying militancy and political discipline, there are few texts of more interest than Shakur’s memoir. She planned her own escape while pregnant and eventually giving birth behind bars. That requires a level of focus, sacrifice, and commitment that’s humbling to even think about.
Read:
+ Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur
Listen:
+ 3 tracks of Assata Shakur, speaking about black liberation in her own words:
Miss Major Griffin-Gracy
Miss Major Griffin-Gracy (often referred to as Miss Major) was also at Stonewall the night of the uprising. She was a leader in the fight that night before getting struck in the head by a police officer and taken into custody. A few years later she began doing activism work with Sylvia Rivera until she was sentenced to a five-year incarceration at Clinton Correctional Facility. There she met fellow prison activists, some of whom had been involved in the Attica Uprising, and began to learn about prison liberation. Upon her release in 1974, she had hope and plans for her community.
Miss Major moved to California and became involved in providing HIV-AIDS services throughout the ’80s and ’90s. In 2003 she joined the TGI Justice Project (TGIJP), which provides legal and social services for transgender and gender variant/non-conforming people, including those currently or formerly incarcerated within the California prison system. There Miss Major began as a staff organizer and eventually became the Executive Director of the Transgender in Prison Committee (TIP), the community organizing arm of the TGIJP, until her retirement in 2015 after over 45 years of service to otherwise forgotten trans and queer communities.
Watch:
+ Major! a documentary
+ The Personal Things a short film by Tourmaline Gossett (full short below)
Act:
+ Donate to Miss Major’s monthly giving circle; Miss Major suffered a stroke earlier this summer and is depending on our community care to cover her medical bills and living necessities.
+ Donate to the TGIJP
Toni Morrison
There is no liberation without art – and of this I am certain, there have been few black artists like Toni Morrison. Losing Toni Morrison this year was a bittersweet beginning to 2019’s Black August. Her utmost belief in the inherent value black humanity, her love for black women, is singular and unparalleled. Losing her is still too fresh to have any real perspective, so I’m finding myself at a loss for words, but if you haven’t yet made time this month to sit with her words – please PLEASE do so.
Watch:
+ Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am (not yet available for streaming, but you can pre-order it)
Read:
+ EVERYTHING (but I would start with The Bluest Eye, Sula, or Beloved)
+ “They look at white women and see them as the enemy — for they know that racism is not confined to white men, and that there are more white women than men in this country, and that 53 percent of the population sustained an eloquent silence during times of greatest stress. The faces of those white women hovering behind that black girl at the Little Rock school in 1957 do not soon leave the retina of the mind.” – What the Black Woman Thinks About Women’s Lib (1971)
+ “So scary are the consequences of a collapse of white privilege that many Americans have flocked to a political platform that supports and translates violence against the defenseless as strength. These people are not so much angry as terrified, with the kind of terror that makes knees tremble.” – Make America White Again (2016)
+ “Ms. Morrison taught me and an entire generation of black writers to recognize that we are rich places to write from. She showed us that we must matter first to ourselves if we hope to matter to anyone else. She demonstrated that there is no shame in writing that is both work and a necessary political act.She taught me that you can write about black girls and black women, unapologetically, and say necessary, meaningful things about our lives in a world that often tells us that our lives do not matter.” – The Legacy of Toni Morrison by Roxane Gay
Toni Morrison walking with Angela Davis in New York.
Aretha Franklin and Whitney Houston
We lost Aretha Franklin last August and Whitney Houston was born in August – two of the most powerful voices of black women in the last century, now tied together in their immortality. Aretha Franklin’s fame ricocheted at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, and later, the rise of black nationalism in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Her music was quite literally the soundtrack for a revolution, and that was a responsibility she took seriously. Aretha Franklin invested in black owned businesses, she stayed in black hotels and ate at black restaurants. When Angela Davis was on the run, she offered to pay her bail. In cash.
One of the sweetest journeys to witness in the last few years since Whitney Houston’s passing has been the purposeful reclaiming of her legacy by black queer and trans people. Whitney Houston wanted to dance with somebody who loves her, and even though she wasn’t able to live her truth fully in life, we have made sure that all the somebodies we dance with in her death are for in honor. We haven’t lost her joy, even as her pain ate through her last years. We make sure she lives on.
Watch:
+ Amazing Grace a documentary about Aretha Franklin
Listen:
Read:
+ ‘Black People Will Be Free’: How Aretha Lived The Promise Of Detroit by dream hampton
+ “‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ came on. I lit up and smiled, someone noticed, we danced, and then I had my first out queer makeout session in the middle of a bar full of my people singing their hearts out to Whitney Houston. No other experience I’ve had touches the beauty of that moment.” – How Whitney Houston Taught Me the Greatest Love of All For My Queer Black Self by Reneice Charles
Works by Black Women about Black History in Black August
And finally, I wanted to close this by acknowledging two critical pieces of film and journalism, both of which were created by black women. In 2011, dream hampton (who many know as the Emmy award nominated director of Surviving R. Kelly) made a documentary about the Black August Hip Hop Project – an over a decade long benefit concert held annually in New York for black political prisoners.
Then, just this month, Nikole-Hannah Jones curated a special edition of The New York Times magazine dedicated to exploring the last 400 years of anti-blackness, race, and racism in America starting with the first slave ship that came on the shores of Virginia in 1619. The final product is one-of-a-kind, with illustrations, fiction, poetry, and reported long form journalism all centered around the question: What happens if we reframe the history of the United States by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans as the focal point of our national narrative?
This is the work of Black August, to recenter black liberation not as an auxiliary part of American history – but to understand that without black liberation, none of the rest of it matters to begin with.
Watch:
+ Black August Hip Hop Project (full documentary below)
Read:
+ 1619 Project, curated by by Nikole-Hannah Jones for The New York Times. A hard copy is also available for purchase (although unfortunately currently sold out!).
74 Bail Funds You Can Absolutely Support Right Now
George Floyd was murdered on May 25, 2020, and we stand in unequivocal support of the protests and uprisings that have swept the US since that day, and against the unconscionable violence of the police and US state. We can’t continue with business as usual, which includes celebrating Pride. This week, Autostraddle is suspending our regular schedule to focus on content related to this struggle, the fight against white supremacy and the fight for Black lives and Black futures. Instead, we’re publishing and re-highlighting work by and for Black queer and trans folks speaking to their experiences living under white supremacy and the carceral state, and work calling white people to material action.
On Sunday, Autostraddle traditionally compiles a “Sunday Funday” link roundup. Instead, today we’d like to ask that if you can, donate to a bail fund.
Donations for bail funds have trended across social media over the weekend as protestors are arrested for participation in the ongoing nationwide rebellions against police violence and the state sanctioned murder of Black lives. However, bail funds like the ones listed below are not new by any means. They have long been a grassroots activist tool to support our own in Black communities.
While we’re here raising funds for bail, it’s important to note that the United States’ cash bail process is inherently a broken capitalist system that’s designed to purposefully feed the mass incarceration of (in particular poor) Black people and other people of color. That being said, raising bail for those who cannot afford it — especially, though not only, during a viral pandemic like Covid-19 — is absolutely a matter of life or death. We already know that the United States is a global epicenter for the virus, and thanks to our criminal (in)justice system, prisons and detention facilities are left without the proper PPE and the necessary sanitary conditions to mitigate spread, which is something that a lot of activists are working tirelessly to fight.
So yes, bail funds save will lives by releasing protesters from jail as quickly as possible. But also, you can (and should!) donate to bail funds even when it’s not time of mass protest.
Tomorrow is June 1st, officially marking the beginning of Pride, and now more than ever we will not forget that Stonewall was a riot. It was a rebellion. Our movement was born from black and brown trans women throwing bricks at cops. That’s the catalyst, the spark, the bravery that makes up the marrow of our community. It’s a debt that cannot ever be fully repaid. And we know that work is still not done.
Alabama
Birmingham Community Support Fund
Arizona
Tucson Second Chance Community Bail Fund
Phoenix — Black People’s Justice Fund
California
Los Angeles — Peoples City Council Freedom Fund
The Bay Area Anti-Repression Committee Bail Fund
Colorado
Denver — Colorado Freedom Fund
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Miami — Fempower’s Community Bond Fund
Jacksonville Community Action Committee
Tampa Bay Community Support Fund
Georgia
Hawaii
Illinois
Champaign County Bailout Coalition
Iowa
Des Moines – Prarielands Freedom Fund
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisville Community Bail Fund
Louisiana
New Orleans Safety and Freedom Fund
YWCA Greater Baton Rouge Community Bail Fund
Maryland
Baltimore Action Legal Team Community Bail Fund
Massachusetts
Michigan
Detroit Justice Center Bail Project
Minnesota
Minnesota Freedom Fund (*Note: The Minnesota Freedom Fund has also asked that donors consider using their resources towards other BIPOC led organizations in Minnesota, Autostraddle can help get you started)
Missouri
Kansas City Community Bail Fund
#ICantBreathe KC Solidarity Fund
Columbia — Race Matters Friends Community Bail Fund
Nebraska
Neighbors For Common Good Bail Fund – put “Bail” on memo line
Nevada
New York
Albany Bail Fund For Black Lives
Brooklyn Community Bail Fund (This group has been funded and is no longer soliciting donations.)
New York City — The Liberty Fund
SURJ Buffalo Bail Fund (Fund has been closed after reaching goal)
New York City Emergency Release Fund (*Note: Focused on helping with the bail of LGBT and specifically trans people)
North Carolina
North Carolina Community Bail Fund of Durham
Raleigh/Chapel Hill – The Anti-Racist Activist Fund
Oklahoma
Ohio
Beloved Community Church Bail Fund (choose amount and then select “Cincinnati Bail Fund” on the next screen)
Oregon
Portland — PDX Protest Bail Fund
Pennsylvania
Philadelphia Bail Fund (The Fund believes it has received enough funding to support their needs at this time, but has several recommendations on their website of where else to donate.)
Lancaster Bail Fund for #BlackLivesMatter
Harrisburg — The Dauphin County Bail fund
Pittsburgh — The Bukit Bail Fund
Rhode Island
South Carolina
Tennessee
End Money Bail Knoxville – Label “BLM”
Hamilton County Community Bail Fund
Texas
Houston — Restoring Justice Community Bail Fund
Dallas/ Fort Worth — Luke 4:18 Bail Fund
Dallas – The Dallas Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression
Fort Worth – Tarrant County Community Bail Fund
Utah
Virginia
Washington
Seattle — Northwest Community Bail Fund
BLM Seattle Freedom Fund (The Freedom Fund has been fully funded)
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Madison — Free the 350 Bail Fund
The Black National Bail Out
The LGBTQ Freedom Fund
This an ongoing fight, and a donation is merely one part of showing up. We have lost so many Black lives. In the face of continued inexcusable police violence and murder, it’s hard to hold on to hope. But we don’t have to wait for others to commit to upholding the value of Black life and materially improve the lives of Black people. We can take care of each other instead.
Year of Our (Audre) Lorde: May’s Burst of Light
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.
My Auntie Jean died. My aunt died of cancer and I wasn’t there. No one was, because she died alone in a hospital not even two weeks ago, one day after my uncle and my cousin met with people about moving her to hospice. Two months after she shared her diagnosis with the family, two months and two weeks after the country began sheltering in place.
In some ways it’s surreal to note how little time has passed. I thought I would have more time with her, passed time by bargaining with every higher power I could think of for this storm to pass so I could get home, have time to hold her hand, time to hug her and tell her how much I love her. She was the youngest of three, my grandmother’s baby sister. Now they’re both gone, taken within a five year span that feels simultaneously like an eternity and like each second has eked by, excruciating and slow.
I know I’m far from the only one to mourn from a distance, pre or mid Covid-19. In the midst of trying to wrap our minds around the global pandemic, personal tragedies compete for our presence of mind —both insisting on our full attention, complete with their warring interests. The thing is, cancer is a beast I know. My father faced his first bout of cancer when I was 10, and his second battle continues on today; both grandmothers died of it, too. But to face my aunt’s mortality with the reality of my own, with the risks of what my traveling to her might do — on multiple planes and via multiple airports to be with someone whose immune system was compromised — there’s no clear path to the “right” decision under these conditions.
Out of duty and necessity, I turned to Audre Lorde because, if nothing else, she’s someone who has been teaching me how to face those most painful and raw feelings from which I might otherwise turn away. In writing about her own struggle with metastasized breast cancer in the essay compilation A Burst of Light, she stated she was “Coming to terms with the sadness and the fury. And the curiosity.” I keep returning to that part about curiosity. Probably because I’m a Scorpio, but also because I think curiosity has something to offer us about the fear with which we normally confront death. There’s something otherworldly and ethereal in her ability to always find the light. She writes, “Dear goddess! Face-up again against the renewal of vows. Do not let me die a coward, mother. Nor forget how to sing. Nor forget song is a part of mourning as light is a part of sun.”
The essay is a compilation of journal entries, beginning with the discovery of a mass on her liver and ending with the damning confirmation that the breast cancer she thought was in remission had returned and metastasized throughout her body. Yet even in the midst of a death that was most certainly coming, the only variable was when, Lorde forged a path of her own making. True to form, she acknowledges her ever-present fears and concerns, yet faces them head on.
“There is a persistent and pernicious despair hovering over me constantly that feels physiological, even when my basic mood is quite happy. I don’t understand it, but I do not want to slip or fall into any kind of resignation. I am not going to go gently into anybody’s damn good night!”
My aunt was a doctor, an endocrinologist. A history maker as one of the first Black women physicians to launch a career in our southern, still-segregated hometown. Through it all, even in her last months as she rapidly lost weight and faced symptoms she knew all too well signaled something pernicious and invasive, she kept on with her work. Each time I called or FaceTimed with her I would see piles of charts stacked in the background, a testament to her dedication to her patients, especially as one of the few private doctors to still accept public insurance in Memphis. Even until those last few days before she took her medical leave, she spent over an hour with each patient, making sure she knew each patient’s story so she could best serve them. In many ways it felt like she, too, lived out Lorde’s sentiments:
“[H]ow do I want to live the rest of my life and what am I going to do to insure that I get to do it exactly or as close as possible to how I want that living to be? I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. I am going to write fire until it comes out my ears, my eyes, my noseholes — everywhere. Until it’s every breath I breathe. I’m going to go out like a fucking meteor!”
My aunt’s own meteoric impact on my life means that I feel her loss on every plane — psychic, emotional, and physical. This, on top of the losses we are all experiencing as we continue to tread through our new quicksand reality, has left me fighting every impulse to close in on myself. There’s just so much to feel that even trying to parse through individual emotions is labor. But even when I’m ready and willing to stay mired in my fog, Lorde’s work arrives with a timing that is as prescient as ever. She writes:
“How do I hold faith with sun in a sunless place? It is so hard not to counter this despair with a refusal to see. But I have to stay open and filtering no matter what’s coming at me, because that arms me in a particularly Black woman’s way. When I’m open, I’m also less despairing. The more clearly I see what I’m up against, the more able I am to fight this process going on in my body that they’re calling liver cancer. And I am determined to fight it even when I am not sure of the terms of the battle nor the face of victory.”
In the end I chose not to fly home for the funeral. I watched the service and smiled through tears of grief and fear as I saw my family members gathered for the homegoing of one of our own. Tennessee is one of the states beginning to slowly re-open businesses, meaning the funeral home could host up to 100 people for the service. As painful as it was not to be there, the potential exposure my travels could bring to such a large crowd was a risk I just simply couldn’t take. In reading A Burst of Light in the days before and after the funeral, my resolve was strengthened by the following:
“It is the bread of art and the water of my spiritual life that remind me always to reach for what is highest within my capacities and in my demands of myself and others. Not for what is perfect but for what is the best possible. And I orchestrate my daily anticancer campaign with an intensity intrinsic to who I am, the intensity of making a poem. It is the same intensity with which I experience poetry, a student’s first breakthrough, the loving energy of women I do not even know, the posted photograph of a sunrise taken from my winter dawn window, the intensity of loving.”
I know it’s a common aphorism to say that grief is love with no place to go, but I do think there’s truth to that. In the midst of my personal grief, this moment and Lorde’s words are teaching me that what so many of us are grieving is the loss of a life that we knew how to live. What’s replaced that life for so many is a way of existing, not necessarily living. These last few days without my aunt feel almost identical to the first few days without my grandmother — I didn’t know how to live in a world where she wasn’t present. Lorde, of course, offers a remedy for these feelings:
“I make, demand, translate satisfactions out of every ray of sunlight, scrap of bright cloth, beautiful sound, delicious smell that comes my way, out of every sincere smile and good wish. They are discreet bits of ammunition in my arsenal against despair.”
So often I get swept up in the beauty of her writing that I become frustrated when it comes to trying to enact her words. There’s a cleanness I’m craving that I know isn’t possible, but I still want it. I can’t think of a way to make it okay that she’s dead. Nor is it okay that there is no end in sight for our current circumstances, no neat and easy way through this unprecedented time. Any sort of resolution won’t happen this year or maybe even the next, and the implications of that are indeed those of life and death. But Lorde, in this unflinching look at the disease she knows will take her life, offers a window into her learning not only how to cope, but how to make the absolute most of all she still has. She says:
“How has everyday living changed for me with the advent of a second cancer? I move through a terrible and invigorating savor of now — a visceral awareness of the passage of time, with its nightmare and its energy. No more long-term loans, extended payments, twenty-year plans. Pay my debts. Call the tickets in, the charges, the emotional IOU’s. Now is the time, if ever, once and for all, to alter the patterns of isolation. […] I am not ashamed to let my friends know I need their collective spirit—not to make me live forever, but rather to help me move through the life I have. But I refuse to spend the rest of that life mourning what I do not have. If living as a poet — living on the front lines — has ever had meaning, it has meaning now. Living a self-conscious life, vulnerability as armor.”
How are you finding ways to cope with any feelings of loss or despair? Please drop some wisdom, encouragement, and love in the comments.
Asian Communities Must Desert the American Empire and Protect Black Lives
George Floyd was murdered on May 25, 2020, and we stand in unequivocal support of the protests and uprisings that have swept the US since that day, and against the unconscionable violence of the police and US state. We can’t continue with business as usual, which includes celebrating Pride. This week, Autostraddle is suspending our regular schedule to focus on content related to this struggle, the fight against white supremacy and the fight for Black lives and Black futures. Instead, we’re publishing and re-highlighting work by and for Black queer and trans folks speaking to their experiences living under white supremacy and the carceral state, and work calling white people to material action.
Tou Thao. The name of the Hmong police officer who was a bystander and accomplice to the murder of George Floyd. Thao stood by and watched as Floyd’s last breaths were taken.
My heart dropped when I saw his name — Thao is my cousin’s first name. I grew up with the name Thao. Like me, the officer descends from Southeast Asia. It’s not just Thao’s name that’s familiar to me. Asian complicity in violence against Black people is not new. Several years ago, New York City erupted in warring protests over the murder of Akai Gurley in 2014, a Black man who died after Chinese police officer Peter Liang fired into the stairwell of a housing project.
A multiracial group of protesters demanded justice for Akai Gurley. Meanwhile, counter-protesters — many of them of East Asian descent — vowed to protect Peter Liang, considering him a scapegoat victim. His protectors claimed that the jury only convicted him in 2016 because he was Asian rather than a white officer. The common denominator between the death of Akai Gurley and that of George Floyd is the deliberate theft of Black life.
No matter how we analyze events, no matter how the politics that are spun, Black people are in constant mourning. No words that I write will revive George Floyd or Akai Gurley, as much as I would like that to be the case. No words that I write can provide true consolation to their families, because they should be alive.
The theft of Black life has been the foundation of the United States since the country was born. The first police forces were meant to be slave catchers and exterminators against Indigenous people. Today, Black and Indigenous people face the highest rates of police murders. The police are not friendly neighborhood authorities; they are an army intent on protecting the American empire. In 1990, the National Defense Authorization Act further cemented the role of police as military by approving surplus military equipment to be sent to local police departments.
It shouldn’t be lost on us that this case of police brutality occurred in Minneapolis, in a state with the largest refugee population per capita. Before Tou Thao was a servant of American empire, his family had to flee Southeast Asia, where Americans had destroyed beloved homes and killed approximately 3.4 million people. Those who left behind their ancestral land in the wake of the war in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos make up the largest refugee group that has ever entered the United States.
Within that same war, Black people were disproportionately drafted to kill Southeast Asians: the percentage of Black soldiers recruited were more than triple the percentage of Black people in the general population. Black soldiers were placed on the battlefield expected to defend a country that repeatedly stole the lives of their family and community members. What this means is that both now and then, both in Minneapolis and in Southeast Asian jungles, Black life is considered disposable.
Many Black soldiers ended up deserting the army. Meanwhile, civil rights movement leaders, from Malcolm X to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, denounced the war as forcing Black people to serve white colonizers. These leaders expressed solidarity with oppressed people they had never seen or met.
Like the many Black soldiers in Southeast Asia, it’s now long overdue for Asian Americans to desert the cause of white supremacy.
The police department that Tou Thao serves is a mirror image of the occupying armies in Southeast Asia. Every day that he goes to work, he is doing the work of shortening Black life; he becomes part of the lineage of slave catchers and “Indian killers.”
We have been drafted to protect white institutions that come at the cost of Black lives. We have been named a “model minority” to convince us that we’ve been saved a seat at the table among white peers — but that table was cut, assembled, and varnished by Black slaves.
Asian Americans should look into the face of Tou Thao and see their own brother. It is our duty to bring him to justice, because he is not the only one. There are scores of Asians who have turned their backs on Black people. And they live in our homes. They’re in our neighborhoods. They come to dinner. They’re enmeshed in our lives. Which means we have the duty to make sure they do no harm, otherwise we’re in the wrong, too. The cost of inaction is another life lost.
There will be a day when Black people no longer have to endure this endless cycle of grief. We must be committed to bringing that day to the present. We have to act like that day has to arrive now, because every day that passes has the potential for another life stolen.
A world of Black liberation by nature creates a more just, joyful world for all people. But that shouldn’t be the only reason why we act. We all have a responsibility to George Floyd, simply because he was a human being who should be alive.
We also have a responsibility to Akai Gurley. To Tony McDade, a Black transmasculine person who was just murdered by the police on Wednesday. To Nina Pop, a Black trans woman who was stabbed to death earlier this month. Say their names aloud. Each time you say their name, think of their families, the friends they left behind, the homes they loved, the air they breathed before they were taken.
Situations of police brutality can leave people feeling powerless, but a choice lies in our hands. When we do nothing, like Tou Thao, we become accomplices to the death of Black communities. Instead, we can contribute to a rich legacy of freedom fighters, those who believed in a world where all people thrive. Despite the constant attacks on Black life, Black artists and activists continue putting forth the most fearless, vibrant visions of our collective future.
Here are just a few to whom you should commit your time:
Black Trans Men Face a Constant Threat of Police Violence by Ash Stephens. On Wednesday of this week, Tallahassee police killed Tony McDade, a Black trans man. Ash Stephens outlines the threat of violence to Black trans men’s lives. Black trans people are murdered by both police and civilians with little consequence. “After learning about the murders of Black men, I don’t think I feel more vulnerable now. As a Black trans man, I’ve always felt that.”
Amy Cooper Knew Exactly What She Was Doing by Zeba Blay. “There is, of course, a long history of white women in this country falsely accusing Black people, particularly Black men and boys, of crimes they did not commit.” Amy Cooper, sadly, is not original. And, as Zeba explains, she was deliberate in her decision to threaten Christian Cooper’s life.
“I don’t want to wake up to news of murdered kin anymore. I want to wake up knowing our kin are safe, celebrated, and cherished.” Alán reminds us that it’s our duty to channel our outrage into action. It’s not enough to be angry.
In a world where so many of us lack adequate housing and healthcare, the police budget does not need a raise. In fact the police needed to be defunded altogether; their budget could be channeled into methods of keeping communities safe while resolving conflict.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CAq5ILsgZG8/
As documented by Vienna Rye on Instagram, Angela Davis reminds us that anti-Black violence is not a singular event. It is actively produced with malice by the white nationalist state.
A Small Needful Fact by Ross Gay. Ross Gay’s poem lovingly remembers Eric Garner, who was killed in 2014. Like George Floyd, Eric Garner was murdered by the police by choking, and the hashtag #ICantBreathe subsequently went viral.
Addendum (6/1/20): This article originally did not include the unique experience of Hmong people during the war in Southeast Asia. Hmong people have historically been oppressed by Southeast Asian governments, which continues today. The U.S. Army leveraged this dynamic to hire Hmong communities to fight alongside American soldiers, using incentives like schooling, since education was not something that was afforded to Hmong people. Now, the U.S. government is ramping up deportations of the Hmong diaspora back to Southeast Asia. They are being deported from one hostile country to another.
Learning To Live After My Younger Brother Died
Welcome to Autostraddle’s APIA Heritage Month Series, about carrying our cultures from past to future.
We pray to our ancestors asking for guidance and protection. So rarely do we imagine our ancestors to be younger than us. When my little brother unexpectedly passed away last November from cancer, he became the youngest ancestor I’ve ever known.
It started with a missed call and finding out that he was in the ICU. Several BART and bus rides later, I made it to O’Connor Hospital where he was born 22 years ago and would die four days later. See, grief doesn’t start in the present. It starts in the past, right with all the shoulds and could have beens. The frantic replaying of everything that has happened on double the speed, skipping from one frame to another in a wild hunt for answers. Why did this happen? Why couldn’t I stop it from happening?
That week in the hospital, I felt pain at every sight of him lying in that bed. His body was swollen from head to toe, especially his face. He lied prone with a tube down his throat to stabilize his breathing. He was covered in wires that monitored his vitals. We called Cha[1] to xức dầu cho em Nguyên[2] and prayed incessantly. My prayers carried manifestations for his recovery with no doubt in my mind that he would make it through, but by the end of the week, I learned that some things just can’t be manifested.
If death is a silent reaper, grief is the piercing wails of everyone I love in the same room, desperately clinging to a body that no longer carries a soul. It is giving myself 3 seconds, if even that, to let the news sink in before rushing over to hold my mom, already collapsed on the couch and wailing repeatedly, “Ta không chịu được đâu… Nguyên đâu rồi? Nguyên đâu rồi?”[3] It is forcing myself to be strong though I am in indescribable pain, because the elders who have always been my pillars of strength have crumbled.
I let my face drown in tears as I explained his death over and over again in Việt[4] and English to everyone that came—and over the phone to everyone that couldn’t. As we viewed his dead body for the first time, we soaked our love into him through tears and prayers, clutching onto whatever life was left. I held his hand until it grew cold, making a promise loud enough so my mom wouldn’t feel alone in speaking to the dead. I promised him that I would take care of our family and make sure everyone was good. I tried to reassure his spirit in case he was scared of what lay ahead—but how could I possibly provide him guidance for somewhere I’ve never gone?
For the next several months, I replayed this nightmare of his death and cried my heart out every night. Gut-wrenching sobs tore through my chest and became my lullaby. They drenched my face in tears and snot, making it hard to see or smell anything no matter how many tissues I used. I didn’t care for connecting with my senses anyway though. I was trapped in a spiral, thinking, If I had known he was sick, I could have protected him. But the truth is that no one knew he was sick, even himself and the doctors, until it was too late. I refused to accept that he had passed away even though I spent every day handling logistics about his death. I learned how to plan and negotiate the cost of a funeral and close out financial assets of someone without a will. I offered comfort to others as they processed his death, though I didn’t have space myself to scream. I needed to break down, open my mouth wide, and release the thunder from the bottom of my lungs in one loud, piercing cry. I’d just lost one of the most important people in my life. With every message, call, and saying of chia buồn[5], the sadness multiplied rather than divided. It added anger to the equation, and I was angry that I was alone. I was alone in a world that “could not imagine” my grief even though I was waving it right in front of their faces.
I dove into stories that his friends, students, colleagues, teachers, family, and I shared. He was down for anything: hanging out, completing silly dares, and staying up late to listen and give advice. He built a magical haunted house for his students to enjoy on Halloween and looked forward to helping with their homework. He paid attention to the little things and always made sure to take care of set-up and clean-up at events because he knew how much it helped.
Through these stories, I called upon his spirit to give me strength, and this is how his past became the guide for my future. It became impossible to forget how much he loved and believed in me. Every story about him from the people in his life was a love note he had left for me—to guide me day by day. They reassured me that people remembered so much about him and wouldn’t forget him. They reminded me of how far the impact of his kindness and service went. It was the proof I needed to know that although I couldn’t follow him into the afterlife, he was settling in just fine as an ancestor. I didn’t have to worry about him so much anymore.
As the tasks for my em[6] dwindled down, the relief of not having to deal with them anymore mixed with a different kind of heartache. Carrying what remained of his world on my shoulders wasn’t easy, but letting it go felt even harder. I feared that there would be nothing left for me to do for him. If there was nothing left I could do as his chị[7], then what do I do now? How do I live when the one I always guided in life no longer needs me? How do I move forward when I still need him to support me as an ally when it comes to queerness, mental health, and social justice in our family?
In trying to figure it out, I cried, prayed, and wrote a lot. I prayed for the peace and protection of his spirit, for guidance, and for my family and me to be okay. To balance out the tears, I soaked up laughter whenever it came. I changed my phone’s wallpaper to his photo. I hoped he would visit my dreams though I never knew if I would wake up the next morning. Nothing made me sure that I would be granted another day because he wasn’t.
Yet somehow, the mornings kept greeting me.
As much as I still don’t know how to live life without him, I know I just have to keep going. While he was alive, he hoped for me to be well, live my best life, and always find happiness. I can’t imagine that he’s changed his mind now that he’s an ancestor. So for today, I choose to focus on that. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll choose something different. But I hope one day, when it’s time for us to finally reunite, I can share with him that all his hopes came true.
Artwork by Danthanh Trinh depicting An and her brother Nguyen on his graduation day.
[1] Father (Priest)
[2] “anoint my little brother Nguyên” (Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick)
[3] “I can’t take this at all… where is Nguyên? Where is Nguyên?”
[4] Vietnamese
[5] condolences, to share sadness
[6] younger sibling
[7] older sister
The Price I Pay For(ever) My Culture
Welcome to Autostraddle’s APIA Heritage Month Series, about carrying our cultures from past to future.
For Aunty Hauani
her words, my final resting place one day:
“upon the survival of the Pacific
depends the survival of the world.”
We, the biggest region on the planet.
The oldest ocean.
The heart, if this world ever had one.
How dare anyone look at a map
with Oceania sliced in half
hanging on the edges of it and say:
I know what the world looks like.
For everything that fractured us.
For my severed island,
once belonging to itself
for my chest, where Samoa is whole always
where Guahan is demilitarized finally
Hawai’i too. Northern Mariana Islands too
where the Marshall Islands is nuclear waste free
and the sins that bombed them 67 times
1000 times bigger than the one dropped on Hiroshima
remain America’s judgement day explanation,
and never theirs.
For every misspelled / mispronounced attempt
at our family heirlooms.
How people will suggest that I
introduce myself
before giving my keynote address,
rather than trouble their lazy tongue
with learning how to say it
out of respect for my ancestors.
No.
You say it
so there’s no mistake
that you can see me
and the village
I’m standing in.
The audacity
has always been violent.
The honeymoons
timeshares
family vacations
spring breaks
violence done to us
masked as gaslight
but this is for the lighting
of the match.
For the spark of my generation
settling for nothing less
than our due.
For the aloha spirit being sharper
than you last remembered.
For the locals no longer willing
to tourist trap for you.
For the love of my ancestors
how once, I read that when our colonizers
came back to Samoa the second time,
their boats were capsized
by our sea.
Oh well.
For that too.
And as always & forever more:
for the culture.
The one I come from
and the one that had no choice
but to come from me.
Indigenous diaspora finds home everywhere
my people survive.
From Cali’s coast to Oceania’s edge
from my swollen heart to the valley in my voice
the one that my love echos between forever
for the ones I intend to die for
and the ones who now understand
why they’re alive.
For the lengths I will go
to tell the truth
in this lifetime
in my writing
for us.
Photo by Kara Schumacher, Collage by Melissa Aliu
I was a third year student at UC Santa Cruz when I fell in love for the first time. The U.S. was in the heart of the 2008 recession and my then-lover and I were at the end of Fall Quarter — just around the corner from my 21st birthday in February 2009. That love held many of my firsts in the palm of its warm hand: my first real kiss, my first serious relationship, my first time having sex, and my first queer love. That was the year my queerness gained its footing long enough to experience a love that I thought could withstand my family and our Samoan culture. I was wrong. Against my decision to come out on my own terms, I fell out to my parents five days before my 21st birthday, and if I run through the vivid details of it long enough, it’s still one of the most painful days I ever experienced in my life.
I don’t make my way through that trauma the way I used to. Partly because I don’t have to, because it doesn’t traumatize me anymore. My parents and I have healed over the years long enough to own the apology I was afforded by them and honor the time (years) it took for them to not just accept me, but nurture me (and my relationships) as well. After 11 years and many poems about my queerness posted all over the internet, I’m at a place in my life where I can look back at that period of time, the language that was unspeakable to name in the midst of it, and put to rest things that I no longer feel shame or responsibility for.
But one thing that I remember vividly, as the truth about my relationship with my first love was unraveling for the first time, was something my mom asked me. At that time, it made me feel guilty, but now makes me feel more curious to unlayer and reckon with it: amidst (her shock about) me coming out, she asked, “What will the church think?” To someone who isn’t Samoan (or Pacific Islander), it’s safe to assume that she was referring to what our church would make of my queerness in the context of religion, but that’s not all that she was worried about at that moment. She wasn’t just asking me about our church, she was asking me what our Samoan church, a pillar within our culture, would think. She was concerned about the repercussions I might face not from the institution of church: but from our own culture.
One of the most remarkable things about being Samoan in diaspora is that — despite all that colonization robbed us of when Germany and the U.S. partitioned our islands into countries, declared one of them a U.S. territory, and militarized us to the point of imperialist ownership — despite all of this, we’ve still been able to maintain a strong connection to our rich heritage and sacred traditions. I absolutely love that about us. Go us! I love that I was born into an intergenerational, multiracial Samoan family in the Bay Area back in the late 80s, with our culture as my first crib. My grandparents (may they rest in peace) as our family’s culture keepers, as all Samoan elders are.
Photo by Melissa Aliu
But to understand the Samoan culture and why my mom (or any Samoan parent) would worry about it in relationship to their daughter’s queer identity, you must first understand that as Samoans, our community is a collectivist people. When we say “it takes a village”, we say it in unison and in harmony, with our entire chest. We say it standing for the actual villages our families are indigenous to. Our identity is interdependent. There is no sense of “self” without or even before the collective self. When people say, “You have to love yourself in order to love anyone else”, that’s not how Samoans move in the world (or how any Pacific Islander culture moves).
We derive our understanding of identity through the collective in order to understand who we are individually. Even in diaspora and post-colonization, Samoans live and move through life in a way that emphasizes collective cooperation over independence and self-fulfillment. We have a sense of responsibility to one another, to our families, our genealogies and to Samoa that is defined by the socio-political practice of our cultural values that we call Fa’a Samoa, or “the Samoan way”.
Our identity is interdependent. There is no sense of “self” without or even before the collective self. When people say, “You have to love yourself in order to love anyone else”, that’s not how Samoans move in the world.
Fa’a Samoa defines not just what our culture is, but the structure and codes on who we’re supposed to be in our culture, and if you’re Samoan, Fa’a Samoa is always on. We’re always moving through the protocol of it, or at least that’s the expectation. The cultural code of Fa’a Samoa is as complex and strict as it is powerful and sacred. Much of it revolves around particular behavioral expectations around showing our deep reverence for our elders, our families, our High Chiefs, our ceremonial practices, and our churches. Respect is the cornerstone of Fa’a Samoa, and is oftentimes met with strict consequences when not practiced the way it was taught to us.
It’s in the way I bow my head when walking in front of elders in my family. Or in the way I immediately sit at the feet of my parents or outside of the room that the elders and Chiefs are gathered in. It’s in the dos and don’ts of how food is served during a ceremonial gathering, and in the way I’m expected to dress depending on the formality of the event. Fa’a Samoa is all of this and more. And no other place in our lives is Fa’a Samoa expected to be upheld with the utmost respect than at church, in the presence of the faifeau (minister) and church officials.
As the granddaughter of a minister and the daughter of a deacon, I grew up attending a Samoan church, which means I grew up deeply connected to my Samoan culture through Fa’a Samoa. My upbringing as a Samoan girl, navigating both Fa’a Samoa and a world that didn’t understand it, certainly left me feeling proud for knowing how to articulate my culture to an outside world. But it also left me with a lot of questions that I felt guilty about, because it always felt like questioning my culture was its own world of sin. Plus I was questioning my culture as a Samoan-American in diaspora, another layer that leaves me wondering, if I wasn’t born and raised in Samoa, what “authority” I even have to speak on Fa’a Samoa.
To question Fa’a Samoa felt like a betrayal of the village that raised me, as valid as the questions were, or as valid as simply having a question is. Questions I had around power dynamics between authority figures in our community, gender roles and expectations, or simply why I couldn’t wear what I wanted to wear at times that called for specific attire. What I wasn’t allowed to explore out loud, I worked out on the pages in my journal in isolation. But even that had its limits. I remember times where I’d find myself in arguments with my parents, trying to understand why our culture called for certain things to be the way they were, and was met with “that’s just the way it is.”
But if Fa’a Samoa is what makes us Samoan, and I was struggling with feeling like I could be my full self — my queer, feminist, inquisitive, outspoken, independent, critical self — because of it: what did that make me? Am I any less Samoan because I challenged what constitutes being Samoan? And will my culture still claim me if I’m struggling to claim it? Does being Samoan mean I can be who I truly believe that I am, even at the risk of not being what is culturally expected of me?
And just like my mom asked me the day I came out to her and my dad: what will the church think?
Until it happened, I never realized that the very thing that would help me answer all of these questions, would come from the first poem I wrote 14 years ago, in my dorm room during my first year of college. When I finished writing it, I felt like I’d deeply exhaled, letting out a gulp of air I’d held in for far too long. When I wrote my first poem, I gave myself permission to stop paying the cost of staying silent about things that mattered to me. Even if those things were the very foundation of who I am. My earliest writing focused a lot on my experience with being a first generation queer student of color on campus. And then from there, I started writing about my Samoan identity, the utter devotion and pride I have in being Samoan, while also writing my way out of the fears and guilt of being seen as a disrespectful daughter. It felt scary to be a Samoan girl from a culture I loved and was so devoted to, while also defying expectations by voicing my opinion and expressing myself through an art form that encouraged it.
I started performing these poems all around campus. With every stage I performed on, I felt our Pacific Islander ancestors giving me permission to stretch the muscle of my voice around every microphone I spoke on. When I wrote and performed my poetry, I imagined being this brave for the rest of my years in college: brave enough to feel as intelligent as my palagi (white) classmates, brave enough to fight my insecurities with the reassurance that I deserved to be a student there, brave enough to quiet my own demons that tried to punk me into believing that what I had to say wouldn’t matter to anyone else but myself.
I also imagined being this brave in the face of my family and my culture.
I had to face the fact that it was more important to speak up and use my voice to tell my story, than it was to stay silent about the things that affected me. If I were silent about it, there’s no telling where I’d be today. If I were silent about it, no one would know when I was hurting or when I needed support. I know too many young people in my community, both in diaspora and in the islands, who have taken their lives, who suffer from depression and anxiety, who fear rejection from their families and culture, because they never had a healthy way to express themselves nor people they could trust to listen to them.
Poetry reassured me that my voice is necessary, and that what I’m speaking about is important because it’s rooted in a radical love I have for who I am as a queer Samoan woman, and who I belong to. Poetry was what helped me to speak to my parents when we didn’t always see eye-to-eye, especially after I came out to them. It helped make our relationship stronger, and helped make it easier for me to express myself with them. There was a time in my poetry career where my parents didn’t always support how open and honest I was in what I wrote and shared with the public. They would ask me questions like: “What is the church going to think about your poem?” or “Why do you have to tell all our family business?” But just like I had to do with myself, they had to ask themselves: would they rather I kept secrets from them about things that I was struggling with or things that were important to me, or would they rather I feel comfortable enough to come to them in those moments?
Thankfully, my parents are now my biggest support systems, and have come to enough of my poetry performances and watched enough of my poems go viral to realize that I’m not going to stop speaking my truth. More importantly: they’ve realized that where I speak from is rooted in where we come from.
I have poetry to thank for being my entryway to critical conversations in my community. Topics that I never believed would be on the table are now finding their way into the open, even as we fear the cultural repercussions of doing so. Topics such as sexism, gender roles, anti-Blackness in our families, domestic violence in our homes, mental health issues in our community were once things I would write about in private, but am now seeing come to light in dialogue and in action, and I can’t help but think outlets like poetry, art, and the power of social media have played a part in making that possible.
Photo by Youth Speaks
In making a career out of poetry over the last 14 years, that’s what was stuck with me the most: that as terrifying or uncomfortable as it is to speak your truth, or to listen to someone speak theirs, the cost of staying silent is too high a price to pay. Many of us have spent our lives paying for it with a currency that doesn’t even exist, and have instead jeopardized our mental, psychological, spiritual, and physical health for the sake of believing that we were better off silent and in pain, than we were vulnerable and free. We did it for reasons that make complete sense to a people who move in the world as a collective: as the village we come from and the village we will always be to each other. We did it out of protection for one another. We did it out of deep respect for our elders. Out of respect for our parents. And most of all: we did it for the culture.
Many of us have spent our lives paying for it with a currency that doesn’t even exist, and have instead jeopardized our mental, psychological, spiritual, and physical health for the sake of believing that we were better off silent and in pain, than we were vulnerable and free.
But as my professor in grad school once said as I was earning my Masters in Marriage/Family Therapy at USC: “Just because it’s cultural, doesn’t mean that it’s sacred.” The very purpose of culture is to shape itself into protecting those that depend on it to live. To thrive. Culture is supposed to evolve, because we do. I am not the same Samoan girl that I was growing up living by the values of Fa’a Samoa, and Fa’a Samoa isn’t the same either. If anything, my challenges to my culture are what deepened my devotion to protecting it for the remainder of my life. Even if it almost cost me my family. Even when my parents get frustrated at the questions I have about why we do what we do. Even in the shame and pain that I still harbor because of my inability to speak my Samoan language fully. Even through all of that, I still plan on dying for the sake of protecting, defending, and living for my Samoan people and the complexity of the culture that defines us.
Until then: if my Samoan culture is passed down through me, may it be the parts that want me alive. May it be the parts that see my future lover(s) woven into the fabric of queer Pasifika love. If my culture is to be one that I inherit, may I take the parts of it that see us wholly and call us kin, and shed the parts that our colonizers wanted for us more than we wanted for ourselves.
I carry Fa’a Samoa in my mana (power) in the face of a world where white supremacy, anti-Indigenous/anti-Black racism would rather I turn on myself and on my people than on the systems that keep us chained to our fear of fighting for a world we deserve. A world where respecting my culture means ending the anti-Blackness within it. A world where respecting my culture means gender equity towards the matriarchy that we’re indigenous to. A world where respecting my culture means going to therapy. Taking my antidepressants if it helps me to heal enough to show up for my life, so I can show up for my people. A world where respecting my culture means taking care of our youth and creating spaces for them to finally write and speak their truth, is treated with the same reverence as taking care of our elders.
A world where respecting Fa’a Samoa means one day, I’m going to be the queer Samoan elder who looks my grandchildren in their faces, and says: I was afraid the entire time that I was fighting for the world they deserve: but I did it anyway. I did it, afraid. I did it at the mouth of a mic. I did it in every poem I wrote for them. I want to be able to look our future generation of Samoan culture protectors in their faces and tell them that I devoted myself so deeply to our community, that I decided to break the cycles that we no longer need to be in survival mode for. I did it because I loved the promise of them more than I loved my silence. I did it because I couldn’t stop dreaming of our liberation, even as I know that I won’t be around to see it in my lifetime. At least I dreamt it. I want to be the Samoan elder who lives long enough to write/say:
It’s okay to have traditions that stay the same and remain a pillar within our people, but our culture around how those traditions are carried out are destined to change, and the best we can do to prepare ourselves is to be open when it does. There are parts of Fa’a Samoa that couldn’t make their way intact across the Pacific. We’ve had to adjust and adapt in order to make those aspects of our culture work for us. But as we change, and discover ourselves, and speak up, finally, and return deeply to our ancestral roots, my hope for us is that we do so in a way that never leaves any of us questioning whether we’re “Samoan enough”. You are enough. Our ancestors made it so. And as a first-gen, queer, indigenous, Samoan, woman of color in diaspora, not only do I now stand firmly in the notion that I am Samoan enough, but I am Samoan, and more. All of us are.
Lost and Found in the Fish Sauce: How I Cooked My Way Back Home
Welcome to Autostraddle’s APIA Heritage Month Series, about carrying our cultures from past to future.
At ten years old, I held a Cheerios cereal box featuring a white Barbie next to my face while I asked my mom, “Can I get this, please?” Without even looking, my mom responded, “Uh huh, học giỏi đi con, as long as you do well in school.” I felt like the happiest little kid on the block. I looked down at Barbie and saw her beautiful, fair skin. Later that year, I wanted to bleach the brown off of me.
As the youngest of seven kids, I felt the pressure to live up to the sacrifices my parents made for me and my siblings. My life was indebted to theirs and felt like it was never mine to own. The sacrifice of leaving their war-torn home. The abuse they endured trying to come here. The endless hours working to feed us and put a roof over our heads. My older siblings seemed to do a great job of proving that my parents’ sacrifices were not a waste; it only made sense for me to continue that.
A photo of Sal’s family. Sal and their twin Nancy stand at the bottom of the photo.
I did whatever it took to live the American Dream: you can be whoever you want to be with the right mix of ingredients. Add one cup of bleach, four ounces of internalized racism, a slab of self-hate, and let it all braise together, you will have cooked up the perfect child to conquer anything in the American concrete jungle.
To prove my dedication to this dream, I had decided not to speak in Vietnamese anymore. With every Vietnamese word that exited my mouth, I felt the weight of shame pull me away from my sprint towards whiteness. I refused to eat my mother’s Vietnamese packed lunches of cá kho, as beautiful as that braised fish over steamed rice was. I needed to play the game: Lunchables, Capri Sun, and English were all I would accept. There was no room for the smell of fish sauce on my skin. I would rather starve with my own ego.
One day, my mom came home from a long day of work as I came home from school. I was holding a stack of books and tried to explain what I learned in school today in English. She couldn’t understand a thing.“Cái gì? Mẹ không hiểu. Con nói lại lần nữa. What? I don’t know what you’re saying. Say that again.” I fished for a response in Vietnamese. My ego held me down like a rock. “No, mom, that’s not what I was trying to say. Seriously, mom, you don’t understand?!” Frustrated, I slammed my books on the floor and looked her in the eye. “MOM, YOU’RE SO FUCKING STUPID.”
Four seconds passed. Out of all the words I said in English, she heard the ones that mattered. She held back tears as her eyes locked with mine. I could see the same shame in her eyes like a mirror to my own. She slowly crumbled. “Con đúng. Mẹ ngu. Mẹ không đi học giống con. You’re right child. I am stupid. I didn’t get the chance to go to school like you did.” As my mom walked out of the room, all I could feel was the heaviness of her absence. Nothing could describe the betrayal I had committed. I never meant to make her feel so small — to have her believe the words coming from a child poisoned by whiteness. Did I poison her too?
I perfected the art of disconnecting myself from my own body in an attempt to survive. I adopted anger as a mechanism to protect myself. I held these two skills close to me as I entered one of the whitest universities in California. Being a student unearthed what whiteness had buried in me. It brought me back to the place I was avoiding my whole life — my body. I never realized how painful being in my body was until I had the language to describe it during my undergraduate years. I finally had the tools to articulate the hardships I went through growing up: the unresolved trauma that was carried, compounded, and passed down from past generations into my own DNA. The kind of trauma that lives within the body — and when it escapes the boundaries of our bodies, it can transform into violence in the form of abuse, self-hate and mental health challenges.
To be in my body felt like not only reliving the sexual and physical violence I experienced as a kid, but to finally accept that this pain was mine to hold. To hold pain meant to create space for emotions like grief, disappointment, and sadness. I never had the chance to embody these emotions because all I could feel was anger.
But holding onto anger felt like I was holding onto a burning skillet. I failed to realize how the tightness of my grip was causing myself more pain. If I loosen just a tiny ounce of the grip of my anger, all of the violence I experienced would disappear. Or at least that’s what I believed. Anger kept me alive but I failed to realize that it never kept me safe. Safety meant cultivating a space where I could feel the full range of emotions manifested by those past experiences.
I grieved the safety that I lost as a kid. I grieved the sexual and physical violence I endured. I grieved my hatred for my own brown skin. I grieved the time I used the words I inherited from people who hated us to make my mom feel uneducated and worthless. Slowly, I embraced my anger and grief as natural responses in my queer immigrant life. I remembered the kind of knowledge that no university could ever teach me: the wisdom my mother holds through her love, her stories, and her cooking.
My mother became my anchor during one of the most challenging parts of my life, as I learned to name and navigate my trauma. When she had to escape from her home in Vietnam with no belongings, she looked to the moon as her guide in the darkness. Now, I think of the taste of her food when I need to be guided back home. Not knowing how to cook during college, I would call my mother and ask, “How do I cook this?” She replied, “chút xiêu cái nầy, cái kia. A little bit of this, this, this, and this.” Frustrated, I replied, “But like, how much, Mom?” Without pause, she laughs, “Con sẽ biết. You’ll just know.”
Sal Facetimes their mom as they cook together.
As I figured out how much of each spice to add, the only thing I had confidence in was the memory of how the dish tasted and the happiness it brought me. I knew I only needed to add as much as it took to bring me back home to my mom’s Sunday morning meals. That is when her “you’ll just know” wisdom finally made sense. That is when I knew: I’d arrive home not only with myself but with my mother and with my ancestors.
Through my mother’s recipes, I’m reminded of the resilience that flows in our blood. Instead of disconnecting from my body to survive, I nurtured it. Like me, cooking is hella queer and fluid. Every time I reimagine a dish, it can taste different depending on my mood.“How spicy do I want this dish to be today? “How sweet do I want this dessert?” It’s never fixed or prescribed. That’s what makes these evolving recipes — and the queer experience — so delicious.
The family shrine, adorned with orchids, incense, and meditation bowls.
We can’t exist if we don’t nurture ourselves. I exist through the recipes passed down by my mom, that have been passed down by her mom, and so on. Our whole lives we’ve been fed things that have disconnected us from our land, our culture, and our bodies. I will never again get lost in the vortex of the American Dream, but I’m always down to get lost in the fish sauce. Because that’s where my mother and ancestors will guide me back.
For more queer stories, food, and tears follow me on my food journey on Instagram Television and YouTube.
..
I Am Who I Am: Annalise Keating and the Power of Black Reflection
Four episodes into How to Get Away With Murder‘s inaugural season is the first time it happens. Annalise Keating sits down at her vanity, in her dimly lit bedroom, and takes off her armor: first, her jewelry, then her wig and followed by her eyelashes. She scrubs her face of every trace of makeup and comes face-to-face with her own reflection. Her armor gone, she’s as vulnerable as we’ve seen her. Without uttering a single word, Viola Davis changes our view of Annalise Keating, from this force to nature to a human being, susceptible to all the pain the world dishes out.
It’s the moment I knew for sure that Annalise Keating would be different, that How to Get Away With Murder would be different. I took it as a sign that HTGAWM would allow us to see black womanhood in a way we never have before. In hindsight, I should’ve seen it — she’s literally staring back at me in the mirror — but I was so enchanted with Viola Davis, I missed it: the pieces of Annalise Keating’s story that make her more reflective of me than any other character that I’ve ever seen on television.
I relish it, at first: there are fewer greater feelings in this world than being truly represented, particularly when you’ve been starved of that representation so long. But that triumph soon gave way to discomfort as Annalise Keating’s stories start to cut a little too close to the bone. The stories that have haunted me, the ghosts that I’d kept at bay for years, were now invited into my house, every week at 10PM. The show became, at once, difficult for me to stomach and impossible for me to turn away from.
At the root of my kinship with Annalise Keating is a shared trauma. Both of us, “black and from the damn Bible Belt,” were victimized as children by someone around whom we should’ve been safe. She doesn’t tell anyone — I don’t either, at least not at first — but, atop the shame she feels for drawing her Uncle’s attention, Annalise carries anger at her family for not having recognized what happened. She draws further away from them — changing her name, keeping her old life and her new life separate — and gravitates to the one person who sees her pain for what it is: Sam Keating.
“This thing that happened to me, what you ignore, is why I am the way I am,” Annalise angrily confesses to her mother.
I don’t share Annalise’s anger — though, as my therapist once pointed out, perhaps I should — but hearing her make my confession aloud, “This thing that happened to me is why I am the way I am,” stopped me in my tracks. She’d given voice to a thought I’d had over and over again… when I disappointed my parents by not embracing the dreams they had for me, when I prematurely abandoned relationships because I doubted anyone could truly love me. All I ever wanted to say is, “this thing that happened to me…is why I am the way I am.” But it was easier to deal with everyone else’s disappointment than to speak that truth aloud. I wasn’t strong enough for that. Annalise was.
The trauma of that thing that happened reverberates across our lives. We both seek an escape. We start first with temporary measures — drugs and alcohol, for us both — to dull the pain. Hers becomes an addiction that nearly ruins her career on more than one occasion, mine give way to the limits of my financial reality. But in the back of both our minds, thoughts of a permanent escape from the pain persist. In the years following my abuse, the only constant — no matter how deep I tried to bury the memories — were thoughts of suicide. Things would be easier if I weren’t here, I thought. I could finally stop hurting, I imagined. They were my quiet thoughts and then Annalise Keating went and shouted them out to the world.
In HTGAWM’s second season, Nate’s cancer-stricken wife, Nia, summons Annalise to the hospital, and begs her to hasten her suffering. Medical trials have kept her alive but this isn’t the life she wants, she wants to die. Annalise owes her this, after sleeping with her husband and pining a murder on him, the least she could do is supply the drugs to end her life. But even after Frank gets the pills, Annalise can’t do it: She’s done bad things but she’s not the person Nia imagines her to be. Annalise says, “I think about it a lot, killing myself. I have ever since I was a child. A lot of times, I think the world would be a much better place without me in it, but I don’t do it. You’re a better woman than me and if I don’t deserve to die, then you definitely don’t.”
Before the words are fully out of Viola Davis’ mouth, my tears spill out. I reach for the remote — so I can pause the show to regroup — and I can barely still my hands long enough to grab it. Even now, just typing about it, my body radiates with anxiety. Those are my thoughts, tied to that thing that happened to me. It’s me at my absolute weakest being broadcast to the world on some random Thursday night. But, as painful as it is to witness, when Annalise says, “I’m sorry you feel alone in your pain, but so do I,” I realize I feel a little less alone in my own.
With no obvious (or immediate) respite from the pain, we overcompensate.
Men take things, Ophelia tells Annalise, but women are made to give love, to nurture, to protect, to care for… and Annalise (and I) have been striving to be that ever since. The central conceit of the show — of helping them get away with murder — is based here: Everything stems from her desire the nurture and protect, in the way that no one nurtured and protected her. It’s why she became a defense attorney. It’s why she launched the class action suit. It’s why she risks it all for these kids, time and time again, even when they prove, time and time again, that they don’t deserve it.
Annalise: Every man I ever loved has hurt me, Mama. And I’m not you. I can’t forgive and forget. I tried, but…and I don’t want to let anyone else in. I just want to be alone.
Ophelia: How in the hell are you alone when I’m here?
Annalise: Because you’re packing up to go home, and I’m gonna be left here to do what? Save everyone else, even if it kills me? What about me saving myself?
Ophelia: Only by saving everyone else… can you save you.
While it drives me crazy to watch Annalise sacrifice her own safety and security, repeatedly, I get it… it’s what I do too. My days are lost to taking care of others and I don’t regret a second of it. That job everyone thinks I’d be perfect for? I’m sorry, I’m needed here. Those concert tickets you bought for my favorite artist? Sorry, I can’t make it, I promised I’d be here. Being in service to others, whether it’s becoming a homeschool teacher for my nephews, volunteering for campaigns, working in undeserved communities, it’s what I have to do. This is not altruism — I’m not interested in the clout. I sacrifice because only by saving everyone else can I save myself. This is how I stay alive.
Even as you chase a new purpose meant to erase the feelings of worthlessness that linger, love remains just out out reach. It’s one of the great cruelties of abuse, I’ve found: It leaves you both wanting to be loved so desperately and convinces you that you’re never truly worthy of it. I stopped trying a while ago — unable to see the utility of chasing something that I’m convinced I’ll never catch — but Annalise persists.
She chases after inappropriate men — Solomon and Emmett, her bosses; Sam and Isaac, her therapists; Nate, the married cop investigating her case — because that’s what she felt she deserved. But, one of the most interesting facets of HTGAWM’s final season is watching Annalise fully grapple with the reasons behind her relationships with men, all who have hurt her at one point or another, and attribute it to her desire to be normal.
“I was afraid to be gay. Should’ve stayed with Eve, loved her, but I wanted to be normal, I wanted to be accepted,” she confesses to Bonnie, after replaying her old therapy sessions. Sam was the life she’d dreamt about as a child — the princess that gets rescued by the handsome prince with an easy smile — when all she wanted was to feel like she belonged. After coming out to her mother, Annalise makes it more plain: “Maybe those men were just me running away from being different, Mama.”
Those old therapy tapes reveal a better version of Annalise Keating: being with Eve — who was the impetus behind Annalise going into therapy — helps her feel better about herself and makes her feel safe. As classmates at Harvard Law, they have fun together…”dinner parties at Al’s, dancing all night at that Brazilian bar.” Years later, when they cross paths again, they settle back into comfortable groove. They laugh, they dance, they have sex. Annalise never shines brighter than when she’s next to Eve. She doesn’t feel judged, she just feels safe. But there’s something unsettling about safety for Annalise — it always feels like a temporary condition — so, while Annalise loves Eve, she keeps her at distance, even urging Eve to chase love in San Francisco.
“You should go…You deserve it more than anyone,” Annalise tells her. What goes unsaid is that Eve deserves to be loved but Annalise, clearly, doesn’t believe that she does.
With Tegan Price, Annalise is full of doubt: constantly second-guessing whether Caplan & Gold’s Managing Partner is sincere in her efforts to help. No matter how often Tegan tries to prove herself, Annalise questions if she can trust her or if Tegan’s just another person trying to play her. But Tegan’s dogged by ghosts of her own — fear of abandonment after losing her parents in a plane crash and the collapse of her marriage — and so she keeps coming back, hoping to prove herself to Annalise and never pushing too far or too fast.
“[Annalise] makes me feel alive,” Tegan confesses. It’s the first time she’s acknowledged her feelings for Annalise out loud, despite the fact that everyone else can see right through her. But still, Annalise pretends not to see… if she doesn’t acknowledge Tegan’s feelings, Annalise won’t have to disappoint her. If she pretends not to see, she doesn’t have to be reminded of her own shortcomings.
It’s still to be determined what lesson I ought to take from Annalise: Is she a cautionary tale of engaging in a futile chase or is her journey evidence that there’s hope for me too? I cheer for the latter. I want that, despite myself.
They don’t write stories about girls like me. No one tells the stories of women of a certain hue… of a certain size… of a certain age.
For years, I convinced myself that it was okay. It didn’t matter that all of me wasn’t on screen, I could make due with just the parts. Even as I championed representation elsewhere, I resigned myself to the belief that seeing my own story didn’t matter and, by seeing myself in others, I’d grow into a more empathetic person. I convinced myself that it was enough.
Besides, they don’t write stories about girls like me and, in the rare instance that they do, they certainly don’t put them on television.
“I feel like, especially with women of color, nobody loves to embrace our mess. They don’t,” Viola Davis once said. “And what I’ve seen a lot of times, especially stories of people of color, is that they’ve been really filtered down so they don’t become an indictment for white people and they become very comfortable for us. But they’re never really who we are.”
With How to Get Away With Murder, Annalise Keating showed all my mess… and managed to be revelatory, aspirational and deeply uncomfortable in the process. She was who I really am and, as the show takes its final bow tonight, I’m profoundly sad and a little relieved to see her go.
Stepping Out Of Silence
Welcome to Autostraddle’s APIA Heritage Month Series, about carrying our cultures from past to future.
I know three different ways to say the word “love” in Hindi, but I’ve never once heard them spoken by anyone in my family. Nobody did anything for love but rather for honor. It seems like every South Asian story boils down to a story about shame and honor: the family’s honor must be protected at all cost – even, if necessary, that ultimate one — but if everyone would just hold onto their sense of shame, we wouldn’t have to go down that road.
So much went unsaid, and yet somehow the stories made the rounds. No one ever told me, but I always knew that my cousin, two decades my senior or more, put a lit cigarette out on his soon-to-be-ex wife’s hand. My mother reminisced about my cousin, her nephew, from time to time as I was growing up. How smart he was. How much potential he had. If he had become a black sheep, it’s because he had been sent to a boarding school for rich kids as a child and spent too much time around “bad” people. Lost in her memories, I was always afraid to interrupt and ask whether the shame of that incident was his fault for battering his wife or hers for deciding that she deserved better than a life of abuse.
Being in India often answered my questions without my asking them. I don’t remember living there, but I remember visiting it over the course of my childhood. One of my earliest memories is watching my father’s youngest brother spend an entire evening berating his wife because she talked to a man on the street that she — and more importantly he — didn’t know. My parents stood out of the way, saying nothing. That solitary, enraged voice, emboldened by the complicit silence around him, carried a clear message. Some people were in possession of honor, and others could only bring shame. Some people could say anything in defense of that honor, and others had to acquiesce into silence.
Some people were in possession of honor, and others could only bring shame. Some people could say anything in defense of that honor, and others had to acquiesce into silence.
No matter where we were, religion always elucidated the unspoken: the positions of honor and shame within a family are relative, usually assigned based on birth, marriage and — most of all — gender. By any account, Holi and Diwali are the two biggest Hindu holidays, but those aren’t the ones impressed into my memories. I remember Rakhi, where my sisters and I would be woken up early in the morning before school to tie beaded and decorated thread bracelets on my father’s wrist (in the absence of having a brother) to thank him for another year of protecting our honors. And then there was Karva Chauth, where our mother would join hundreds of thousands of women across the subcontinent and the diaspora in fasting food and water an entire day for their husbands. Some people were in possession of honor, and others’ lives only had value in relation to them. There was no escaping that.
But nobody uses the words “honor” and “shame” except in the movies, because if anything is said, it’s said indirectly. So shame becomes a matter of propriety and honor, respect. And in that translation, the burden shifts from how we are viewed to the lengths we must go to secure our place.
My mother always framed herself as more forward-thinking when it came to gender equity, although it was never clear to me who exactly she was comparing herself to. She seethed quietly about my uncle’s treatment of his wife on that trip. Such disrespect for women. My father’s eternal criticism of her is that she says too much. I’ve watched as she, often, silences herself in reply. Because the only way to compensate for behaving improperly is to recede into the silence.
Silenced feelings find their way out, in one way or another, and it doesn’t always end well. I grew up surrounded by a fuming anger that could ignite anywhere at a moment’s notice – including inside myself. But sometimes the silences were more terrifying because you never knew what was smoldering, just waiting to combust. And as the flames eventually burned themselves out, as they always do, we returned once again to our unstated familial obligations. Silence to silence.
At this point, the other first generation immigrants and the other Asians say to me, “Oh, but you know your parents cared about you. That’s why they immigrated. They just showed it in a different way. They did their best.”
Silence is about absence, so how can I possibly describe it to you?
What if we tried this: Think about every time in your childhood a parental figure told you that they loved you, in whatever language they spoke. Every moment of being cared for and knowing, truly knowing, that this person was putting your needs, interests and desires first and foremost. Every embrace, every caress, every pat on the back. Take all of those memories – can you hold them all? – take every single one of them and remove them from the narrative of your youth. Now look at the emptiness you’re left with.
That barren landscape is my childhood.
B. and N. and I broke the silences, in secret. We found solace in each other’s company because no one who didn’t live it could truly understand. And besides, barred from having friends, all we had was each other. We spent all our time together: after school, on the weekends, in the summer. Year after year after year. There was nothing else to do. We lost ourselves on the pages of fantasy lands. There was nowhere else to go. We had the closeness of people who shared everything.
But even among the three of us, the most important things were left unsaid. Growing up, anything that smelled of sentimentality was roundly mocked. When I was very young, I liked singing along with Barney, and my entire family teased me because, apparently, love was a ridiculous thing to profess. So I followed the example of all my elders, and buried that word deep inside myself, laughed at it — disbelieved it — if anyone dared to even imply it.
Oh, that we loved each other is undeniable. Love was always there: in the gifts we made by hand for one other, the letters we sent long after the world stopped using postage, the secret nicknames that no one else is allowed to use. Even through all the bitter fights that children and teens and young adults have, we found our way back to each other. We were never shown how to navigate those disagreements, how to put aside differences, how to apologize, but we taught ourselves bit by bit, for each other, because we were all we had.
“We’ll never be like them,” we used to say — still say — talking about our father and his brothers. “They fight about the favors they did for each other years ago and who still owes what.” In my family, the only understanding of love was as a price, once paid, you collected your dues ever after. But B. and N. and I wanted so much more than that.
You probably think I’m exaggerating. I’m given to talking in metaphors, after all. So, I’ll draw the curtain back just a little.
What if I told you about the time they threw N. out of the house because she couldn’t stomach the taste of cooked onions? Which time should I tell you about? It happened so often, I can’t even count how many times. Or how about the time N. and I got into an argument, and the only way they knew how to end it was by making her stand on the other side of the apartment door?
I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.
Twenty-five years later, and I still can’t think of this without —
“Why are you crying? What’s wrong with you?”
“You don’t cry out there,” B. told me gently after she dragged me by the hand into the bathroom. I got upset that he yelled at me for crossing in front of the TV too many times.
But as we got older, B. couldn’t handle my tears either, probably because she has worked so hard her whole life to swallow her own.
Isolation is too small a word. To be left to navigate a storm of feelings in silence on your own – sometimes I think people use the word “alone” without ever really knowing what it means.
Everything I learned about love – including the words – came from Bollywood. So often, in those movies, love was about destiny, as in Devdas, a predetermined bond between a man and a woman that transcended the trappings of family, marriage or even life itself. At times, love for a woman was about being gazed at by the proper man, as in Pakeezah, although it was never clear to me what separated the hero’s leering eyes from the villain’s that caused the heroine to fall in love with one and live in fear of the other. And if that love was unsanctioned by family, it almost always ended in either exile, as in Mughal-e-Azam, or even death, which is the story Devdas was really telling.
In the nineties that unsanctioned love started earning the family’s blessing, as in Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. But that rested on the strength of a familial love that felt like a fairytale to me. A mother who loves her daughter so much she defies her husband on her daughter’s behalf? A father who loves his daughter so much he acknowledges her feelings and allows her to follow them? This seemed more fantastical than all those books I read set in made-up worlds.
My parents vastly preferred Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, which begins with a similar premise but ends with our heroine realizing that the man she should have loved all along was the man her father had chosen for her. That told me everything I needed to know.
Desire was so obscene that anything even remotely connected to it was silenced out of existence. I grew up with three other women, and yet the only time we talked about our bodies was when my mother told us we couldn’t enter the temple in her hometown because, They’re a little old-fashioned. I did my best to hide it — practicing how to open pads while barely making a sound and burying them deep in the trash. But I couldn’t be sure when I was internalizing her shame and when I was acting in defiance of it.
My parents shamed us about our bodies endlessly. Those shorts are too short. Only skirts below the knee are acceptable. That top is cut too low. Bare shoulders are indecent. But South Asian women are placed in a paradoxical position. Hide yourself endlessly for shame. Protect yourself from being marred so you could secure a good marriage. And then, one day, emerge from the chrysalis in perfect, untouched beauty.
The only time I’ve been to a salon with my mother was just before B.’s wedding in India. After two decades of being told that a dressed up body was improper, suddenly now I was supposed to care about looking good. Suddenly now, drawing attention to myself in that way was acceptable, but just for that one day. I was uncomfortable and a little unnerved by all the watching eyes because I was so deeply conditioned to believe it was shameful. But this is the love that was sanctioned.
You can say that I never had any bruises or scars, that there really isn’t much to this story at all, so what’s the problem? But what can I say? How can I explain that the world terrifies me in its vastness? That the deepest truth I hold is that people are fundamentally scary, unpredictable and untrustworthy? That dreams are a luxury when the mere existence of feelings could compromise the only place I had in this world?
My family moved around a lot, especially when I was younger, as my father chased one dream job after another, but the one constant was that I was always drowning in a sea of whiteness. My classmates taught me, at a fairly young age, that all the things that made me different were sources of shame.
“Why are your jeans purple?” (Why are you wearing those hand-me-down clothes, those dated, out of fashion pants?)
“Your mother has a red dot sewn into her forehead, right?”
I wanted so badly to fit in. I dreamed of having different parents, parents who I could go to with the simplest of my wants: a wardrobe that at least wouldn’t make me stand out. “No,” definitively, and more silence. If I asked too often, “What’s wrong with you that you would think of something so stupid as to want this? It’s such a waste of money.”
I turned, instead, to things seemingly more in my control. I remember looking at my hands and wishing with all my heart they were white, thinking that if I hid from the sun I could will my brown skin away. It didn’t work, of course it didn’t work, but as I grew older, I learned how to hide better. I spoke less and less about my family and anything that even hinted at culture, to the point that I still don’t use my sisters’ names when referring to them; sharing my own foreign name is more than enough to navigate.
But, as I grew older, the terms kept changing, and I couldn’t keep up.
“You’re a girl, why do you have a mustache?”
I couldn’t tell the other kids about the time they had yelled endlessly at B. because she dared to do something about her pubescent hair like the other girls in her class. How improper that is for an adolescent girl. Had she ruined herself on purpose, because every South Asian knows the hair will grow back thicker? That was a memory buried deep in myself, like so many others, surrounded by silence — all shameful topics, never to be discussed inside the family and especially not outside it.
And besides, by that point I knew that anything I said would only be fodder for further attacks. I tried throwing my own jabs, once — I called a boy “so gay” and felt terrible about it ever after. I learned, after hurting someone else, that the kindest thing I could do for myself and for others was to hold my feelings even closer.
Every high school rom-com I’ve watched shows teenagers fumbling through adolescence together. But I had bigger concerns, and love wasn’t real anyways.
Eventually, first B., then N. went to college, and so I was left to navigate the unpredictability of school and home life ever more alone. Oh we talked on the phone every single day, but it wasn’t the same. And then there were all those things — the most important things — that we had never spoken about at all. How could we start now, over a landline? How could we start now, when we never knew if they were listening? How could we start? Now?
That’s when the feelings began to just spill out. The harder I tried to hold them in, the more intense they became. Feelings I could never find words for, so I drowned myself in music to express the things I didn’t know how to say. Still don’t. I can make you a playlist of all the most desolate musical moments written by composers of the Western classical cannon. Would that make it any clearer?
I receded further into other people’s stories. Young adult fantasy novels became my guide, and I particularly loved books with women at the center of the action. I relished the works of Patricia A. McKillip, Robin McKinley and Diana Wynne Jones, who showed me that a woman could be seen for everything she was capable of, that a woman could be herself and still belong. But, they also, unwittingly, showed me that love was a foregone conclusion if there was a boy and a girl, roughly the same age, who spent an adventure’s worth of time together. That’s all it took.
So I romanticized those rare moments when a boy talked to me and didn’t make fun of how I looked or what I said. That’s all it took, right?
One day, I stumbled on an excerpt from Stone Butch Blues in an anthology N. had recommended to me. I remember the wonder, the utter beauty that reverberated through me as I read an intimate scene between Jesse and Theresa, and I needed more.
One day, I stumbled on an excerpt from Stone Butch Blues in an anthology N. had recommended to me. I remember the wonder, the utter beauty that reverberated through me as I read an intimate scene between Jesse and Theresa, and I needed more. But what left a much, much stronger impression were all of the graphic descriptions of assault, of being unaccepted, of being abandoned again and again and again. I didn’t remember that Jesse found a place at the very end.
I closed that book, and, with it, locked shut a door so, so deep inside me I didn’t even know it was there. By that point, I was so removed from myself I had no way of realizing what had happened. Those feelings had long since hardened into imperceptible silence, hidden behind a mask so close-fitting I couldn’t feel it on my skin and countless others I adorned meticulously because that is what I thought acceptance meant. Perhaps, if I made myself small enough, I could make it out of this life unscathed.
And yet, in spite of all that, I continued to despair at the lack of attention I got from boys and, eventually men, as one after another my sisters and then my closest friends entered into relationships and got married. When would my moment arrive to be seen, to belong? To be loved?
But, on the rare occasions I was noticed by a man, my feelings ranged from indifference to fear. Most of the time, I felt nothing.
When love is a matter of desperation, how do you even begin to know what it is you desire? It doesn’t matter what shape love takes. Or does it?
People talk about being closeted. “What do you mean you assumed you were straight until you were almost 29? Didn’t you have any inclination earlier?”
I refuse to fill the silence with a voice that was never there. There was a word that just didn’t exist in my world. Couldn’t. I was already burdened by too many other labels that prescribed who I was and asserted that I would always be worth less in this world. I simply could not add one more to the list.
Sometimes — I would argue most of the time — there isn’t a single, solitary closet. It is a door within a door within a door within a door, each chamber going deeper and deeper and deeper, and if you make it to the innermost one you just might catch a glimmer of your heart as your eyes adjust to the darkness around you. If you’ve been told your whole life that opening even the first door is an act of shame, that opening the second door results in derision, that the third door ends in violence and beyond that who even knows — would you open any of them?
It took years of unlearning and learning the many shapes of love to crack open one door and then the next, close it, reopen and try again. And I have always, always been afraid of darkness, of things that I can’t see, of paths that I don’t know where they lead. But no one makes such journeys alone. With B., with N., with people who have come in and out and into my life throughout adulthood, I’ve begun to build a place where I can be and always belong — a place that is much richer than the flimsy love any of those movies or books could possibly imagine.
People marvel that in just a couple of years I went from assuming I was straight to being so comfortable in my queerness, from how I dress to the fact that I write here publicly. But I finally have the words for what I’ve been trying to say for so long.
It has taken me three decades to find this voice. I will not silence it.