PRETTY

Stories, poetry, and photographs about growing up transgender, Black, and queer in Texas.

“I want to be pretty,” writes Brookins, author of the poetry collections Freedom House and How To Identify Yourself With a Wound, who was born and raised in Texas. “Pretty as in the softest form of me possible.” In the first chapter, the author describes their mother being told her baby would be a girl. “That was the first sentence of a book that describes my undoing,” they write. “That was the first story someone else told for me.” Now 28, the author has made concerted efforts to center themself as the writer, literally and metaphorically, of their life story. Despite an admittedly fuzzy recollection of their childhood and adolescence, Brookins describes myriad hardships they faced, including being molested by four boys at church at age 5 (“They are just being boys,” one grown-up responded) and losing 70 pounds, over the course of two years during high school, due to the stress of self-denial. This book, above all, offers a potent narrative of learning to live authentically, no matter the circumstances and challenges. Brookins relays their experiences and opinions with candor, usually in a colloquial tone. The author recounts their medical transition and the traumas of the last several years. “Transness is forty-nine lawmakers in forty-nine states wanting your carnages and spirit dead cause you dared to be yourself,” they write. The most compelling threads of the text relate the author’s journey of self-actualization, from questioning ideas of gender to shedding shame. “My life’s work is to make Black people, queer people, and masculine people fall in love with who they are and shed the daily violence of betraying themselves and others,” they write. This book is a powerful testament to that.

An inspiring and deeply human work.