I pray that all my little trans sisters receive this love, this support and that more broadly in the black community we can make sure all of our children grow in love and kindness.
It was like saving a seat on the bus for someone who routinely happened to never show up. It was like setting the table for someone who decided to eat an hour before coming over for dinner.
In many ways, the deluge of hilarious, shitty, and hilariously shitty roommates I survived all offered the same thing: an excuse to not have to face myself.
In QTPOC community, the future can feel precarious. If queerness is so often associated with action and survival, how do we learn to slow down and rest so we can live long enough to grow into the queer elders we always dreamed of having?
Being bisexual is lit.
“I aspire to be described as terrible and lovely.”
I’m not coming out to you as a lesbian, umma, I’m coming out as your daughter. I’m tired of being a stranger to you and I’m tired of tripping over boxes in my living room because you’re incapable of just being vulnerable with me.
I’m not sure I am any of the things that the aunties here tell me I am: Good. Hindu. Girl. I’m not sure about a lot of things these days. But I’ve found a way to care for myself that keeps me alive.
“I think what she articulated for me that nobody else had done quite so well was that it was possible to be very smart, intellectually, while also feeling very stupid, emotionally.”
Someone once told me that if you’re Asian American, or mixed, or whatever, you have a grandmother poem in you that you need to write. This is mine.
Being focused on women never seemed remarkable to me. I grew up in a household with my mom, my younger sister, and my dad, so even if we were just being fair, 75% of our time was focused on women. And we were not fair.
“I remember little moments so vividly — like Ashley kissing Spencer on the shoulder while they looked in the refrigerator for something to eat. This is what I wanted. And I wasn’t afraid of wanting it anymore.”
“Selfishly, I’m worried about what will happen if I say out loud that I’m uncomfortable with all this God, if I let my brain run its anxious course. If my atheist, queer, bipolar self comes to choir with me in all its unkempt glory, will I lose my safest place?”
Both Marge and Madeline chose to find family within each other, and from there I understood, as I heard these stories from Marge after my grandmother had died, and then from my mother after Marge had gone, that such a thing could be done.
What, were you expecting the National Anthem to be sung in Spanish?
“I have enough of my own grief, I don’t need yours, too.”
While I really love the feeling of being transported to a new time and place, like when I’m reading a good book, what really got me misty-eyed about this festival was how inclusive of all weirdness it was.
I wanted to be whole, pure, the person I was supposed to be. I wanted to be good enough that my sexuality wouldn’t matter.
Part-poem, part heartfelt plea, this letter proves I have always been a bad liar.
For this piece, I talked to some trans women about their names and their experiences changing them legally (or choosing not to), as well as a couple of the incredible organizations attempting the make the process more accessible to all of us.