I missed the bus to work today (simply couldn't get my legs moving fast enough), and I realised that I had the silver lining to have free time to read thorough all of these works, and how powerful they are. I see myself in parts of them, sure (i am, after all, a trans woman), but to only absorb as much of a work that speaks to me is to not absorb the work as it is. These are the stories of Black Trans Women, and I am not Black.
Instead, what I feel reading these works is humbled. Not in a self-flaggelant way or any kind of white guilt bullshit, but the kind of humbling that I felt when I was brought on Country, and felt the power of those traditional lands as I looked out to sea.
And these works carry a similar power to them. They hold a deep connection to Transfemininity and Blackness that cannot be disconnected from each other- A connection that I lack the lived experience to fully grasp. It's for this reason that I am grateful and humbled; To be invited in and see such an important, powerful story.
A few things stuck out to me. I saw myself in parts of every work, more or less, (especially Call Me By My Name, Bodies and Shame) and it was my inability to see myself in the others that really spoke to me. If you stripped away the meaning, painted over the details, and do the very things that When The Story Was Stolen talks about, it could be my story. But I'm not going to do that. These works don't serve as a mirror for me, just as a story of my life could never fully reflect a Black Trans Woman's back at her - like a window, reflecting parts, while others are lost in the gaps. In a way, these stories are stained glass. They present something to me. Something important. The parts that don't reflect me are the parts that I must see.
soft trans girls caught me off guard. It's perhaps the most stark story in my inability to see myself in it, for one reason. I see myself as a soft trans girl. I think those around me in my life agree. I've never really had any pushback on that- not counting the pushback to being a girl more generally. The poem confronted me with the very real reality that something i hold close to me, intertwined with my own transfemininity, was often denied outright to the black trans women around me. Even in accepting spaces, if you can call them that, a Black Trans Woman is expected to be the strong woman, the stalwart defender, and the unaffected stoic. And, simply, that's just not fair.
There's a quote in Cleansing that sticks with me.
Black trans joy is so important)
But,
Black trans pain is the catalyst upon which most allies show up)
It sticks with me because it's true. I won't pretend to be innocent here, I'm certain there have been times I've overlooked the joy in things to focus on fighting the pain. In a way, I was doing it while I read the compilation. The truth is, there's joy intertwined throughout all of these works. Certainly, these are works of lived experience, and the struggles that paint it, but these struggles are themselves bound to the joy of being truly one's self without reservation. In a way, I think that joy is liberatory, too, so we can't forget it
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