Malaika

I like to think all of this travelling has taught me a few things, or else what would be the point? Here’s a list of 10 things I’ve learned as a prairie homo in the great wide world.

Your dog doesn’t care that you’re an anti-social drunk bookworm.

I like to think my gender identity changes with the seasons. In the winter I can channel my great Canadian butch, and in the summer I can femme-it-up.

These are three of the amazing Indigenous female writers, activists, and artists I’ve been reading this week. I may not be the best person to write about Indigenous issues, but I can certainly read what I think are some of the best, educate myself, and encourage you to do the same.

Wait, so this hadn’t happened yet?

This is my unique perspective on being a half-black, half-white human who sometimes feels uncomfortable using the term Person of Colour to refer to myself.

Sometimes a prairie homo has nothing to write, so she writes about it.

Check out this list of queer prairie sites to visit when you’re not reading A Prairie Homo Companion.

On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave orders to the Supreme Court to make changes to Russian adoption laws in order to prevent same-sex foreign couples from adopting Russian children.

In anticipation of my future homesickness, I’ve compiled a list of 50 things (in no particular order) I’ll miss should I leave the prairies.

This spring, as you shed all the layers of winter, it’s important to love your prairie homo skin and not feel bad about its colour, its stretch marks, or whom or what it responds to.

This is the best recipe of all recipes.

From March 13-22nd, it’s the University of Alberta’s first ever Pride Week, and you should go!

Very simple, yet very delicious.

ELIXHER is “your go-to resource for all things empowering, thought-provoking, and pertinent to the Black female queer community and experience. You’ll find news, uplifting profiles, local events, political commentary, personal reflections, and more.”

In which Tegan lets me know that her songs are like her babies, she has a tea-drinking schedule, and she doesn’t want you to build a shrine to her in your home.

This is a book about being a queer girl in the 1970s, about traveling the world, and about trying to be a writer by the woman who would go on to co-found Seal Press and write award-winning books because who says you can’t accomplish what you dream of doing?

Since I easily dismissed the strange looks people gave my white mom and her three brown-skinned little kids and the questions about where I was from as just ignorant things people said, I grew up not very aware of racism and micro-aggressions. I didn’t think of myself as black or as white.

Welcome to the latest instalment of A Prairie Homo Companion, in which I proudly inform you that the prairie homo literary movement is indeed here, queer, and fantastic.

“I took a long bus ride to the “good” school where I could learn how to speak French and be Catholic, where the girls, instead of pretending to be dragons from Harry Potter, gossiped about which Backstreet Boy they’d eventually marry.”

A Canadian’s take on how backwards the struggle to get immigration reform for same-sex couples has turned out to be.

There are so many different ways to celebrate. You could have a Virginia Woolf dinner and costume party! You could smoke a pipe until your throat hurts! You could speak with a British accent for a day (unless you’re already British; then it’s too easy and not as much fun).

A prairie homo herstory lesson! The Edmonton Grads revolutionized the sports’ world by demonstrating that women, just like men, could be athletic champions.

Italian photographer Gabriele Galimberti carried out my dream job before I even managed to dream it: he travelled around the world visiting cute grandmas and asked them to make him their favourite foods.

From free healthcare, to the suffragette movement, to Idle No More, the following list describes some of the best in radical prairie activism.