Happy first weekend of Black History Month! Hopefully, you’ve had a chance to order or download your copy of George M. Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue for our Liberation Book Club. Read or listen at your own pace. There’s no pressure here and our weekly chats will name if there are spoiler alerts. So, feel free to hop in those at any time.
In my childhood there was little room for differences. So many masked and overcompensated or were bullied. I always felt like there was a tiny margin of acceptability. Anyone outside of those parameters would be ostracized. I have often wondered if other people felt this way growing up in my town.
My background and Johnson’s are about as dissimilar as can be but his writing has a universal quality that is both enjoyable to read and easy to relate to despite having different struggles.
As I read I keep thinking "who in my school was masking all these different ways?" Especially the queerness. This book is making space in my remembered past for other stories and experiences that were covered up and hidden for survival.
Making Space is actually the title of an essay I wrote - it's a theme I come back to again and again, how we never know whom we're making space for when we live out loud or share our stories. Yes, those who share our identity categories need the space we're making, but so do the folks who do NOT share those categories - little cis-het-white children need to read "diverse books" just as much as the kids who see themselves reflected in those stories, just for different reasons. The fact that I grew up, as a Brown woman, thinking that it was exceptional for people who looked like me to do extraordinary things - instead of realizing that it happened all of the time but was suppressed by history that was controlled by a white patriarchy - is messed up, and has taken a lot of un-learning. I catch my own internalized anti-Black racism whenever I feel slightly surprised that a Black author from a background like Johnson's (which I was raised to see as inferior or underprivileged, to look down on and feel sorry for) says something brilliant or articulates a point beautifully - and then of course I feel shame and frustration at my surprise. I am raising a beautiful, smart, talented Black child and I know, I KNOW what she is capable of - I know what *I* am capable of - and still this poison runs through me.
Not sure if I'm making a point or just ranting. This book is so powerful and I'm really grateful to be reading it. Every time I feel like I am learning to take up more space (as a Brown person, as a woman, as a queer person), I realize just how cramped I've been, how polite I was raised to be, and for how long I have allowed this suppression, thought it was simply how my life had to be.
In my childhood there was little room for differences. So many masked and overcompensated or were bullied. I always felt like there was a tiny margin of acceptability. Anyone outside of those parameters would be ostracized. I have often wondered if other people felt this way growing up in my town.
My background and Johnson’s are about as dissimilar as can be but his writing has a universal quality that is both enjoyable to read and easy to relate to despite having different struggles.
As I read I keep thinking "who in my school was masking all these different ways?" Especially the queerness. This book is making space in my remembered past for other stories and experiences that were covered up and hidden for survival.
Making Space is actually the title of an essay I wrote - it's a theme I come back to again and again, how we never know whom we're making space for when we live out loud or share our stories. Yes, those who share our identity categories need the space we're making, but so do the folks who do NOT share those categories - little cis-het-white children need to read "diverse books" just as much as the kids who see themselves reflected in those stories, just for different reasons. The fact that I grew up, as a Brown woman, thinking that it was exceptional for people who looked like me to do extraordinary things - instead of realizing that it happened all of the time but was suppressed by history that was controlled by a white patriarchy - is messed up, and has taken a lot of un-learning. I catch my own internalized anti-Black racism whenever I feel slightly surprised that a Black author from a background like Johnson's (which I was raised to see as inferior or underprivileged, to look down on and feel sorry for) says something brilliant or articulates a point beautifully - and then of course I feel shame and frustration at my surprise. I am raising a beautiful, smart, talented Black child and I know, I KNOW what she is capable of - I know what *I* am capable of - and still this poison runs through me.
Not sure if I'm making a point or just ranting. This book is so powerful and I'm really grateful to be reading it. Every time I feel like I am learning to take up more space (as a Brown person, as a woman, as a queer person), I realize just how cramped I've been, how polite I was raised to be, and for how long I have allowed this suppression, thought it was simply how my life had to be.