Historic depictions like Queer (and the movie Capote I rewatched two weeks ago)  can be useful in recognizing how far we’ve come toward liberation.

As I watch my body reach for my phone over and over before I remember I’m not doing that anymore, and like a gift basket from The Universe, Dean Spade’s Love in a F*cked Up World arrives in my hands. 

The change I want to see in the world must happen inside of myself first.

What I really needed was a break. A break from trying to get it right, a break from striving, a break from the ridiculousness of the 21st century, a bestie to not brightside my shitty fucking day. 

Piepzna-Samarasinha’s thought-provoking work can help us to excavate any rugged (toxic) individualism we may have adopted, and rebuild our brains with collective care in mind. 

I’m adding “NECESSARY” to the badges this paperback wears on its cover. 

Between Queers, this book is a necessary cathartic cry with a friend who gets it. Comforting. Loving. A cool drink of water or a cup of hot tea. Being seen. 

While the question is not directly asked in the text, multiple disappointments and betrayals are on display, and I pictured Orlando entertaining a question many trans people have asked themselves: “If this implicit gender performance I’ve been providing does not serve my happiness, why not just be myself?”

In What It Takes To Heal, Prentis Hemphill joins the renaissance chorus of voices who are singing us out of the dark ages of pathologizing the impacts of trauma, that age-old and expiring practice of making an individual wrong/bad for having perfectly reasonable responses to the oppressive systems they are tangled with.