a bit too on the nose at times but much appreciated voice regardless, such a delight to have seen her perform back during mardi gras ( )

Included in a blog post and resource list at https://booksbeyondbinaries.blog/2019/06/10/non-fiction-about-gender-and-trans-e...

Happy Pride Month!

Even This Page is White by Vivek Shraya has to be one of my most long-awaited reads of 2017. And from the first poem, white dreams, I loved her work.

She discusses racism, colour, what it means to be brown, desire, sexuality and how in coveting whiteness, you can lose yourself. I loved that she was able to take complex, difficult issues like privilege, heteronormativity and her own anti-black racism and condense them into short, emotional, cathartic poems.

Her work is not academic in nature. It is raw, it is vulnerable, it is beautiful and radical.

Her writing is lyrical and bare, but most of all honest and I think this is something I value the most. I'm reminded of this quotation by Gwendolyn Brooks:

"In writing your poem, tell the truth as you know it. Tell your truth. Don’t try to sugar it up. Don’t force your poem to be nice or proper or normal or happy if it does not want to be. Remember that poetry is life distilled and that life is not always nice or proper or normal or happy or smooth or even-edged." -- Gwendolyn Brooks

This quotation fits her work to a tee. She writes honestly, but not in a way that is not compassionate. She writes as if she were speaking to her former self perhaps, a younger self, and when I think of all the young trans or agender people reading her work around the world, my heart is warmed. Her voice is an echo, a soft place to fall, a mirror through which young trans and LBTQIA people can see their own beauty.

I think the aspect of her work that I cherished the most was when she discussed her sexuality freely and easily in her work. Trans people are constantly seen as other, they are forever sexualised and objectified. They are portrayed in films as the butt of a sexual joke, the endless fascination with body parts, genitals and sexual preference overrides even the most PG of daytime talkshows.

Enter Vivek Shraya, talking freely of her own desire, her own parts, her own sexuality. It was a relief to see a counter-narrative to this deafening commentary, for a brown trans body to be honoured in such a way. It is wonderfully queer, and it astonishes me in this day in age that queer sex is still considered so radical, but it is.

Shraya's work is kind. Shraya's work is gentle. Shraya's work is revolutionary. ( )

This is a powerful and beautiful book. I picked it up expecting to stare in the face with my own white privilege, but this offered so much more. Shraya gave us a window into her own experiences at either end of racism and didn't hold back when it came to illustrating the truth about how people of colour are treated and perceived. Some of the poems gain strength through her use of physical structure (how the lines are positioned, etc.). Some of her poems are utterly devastating. I highly recommend this book.

If you'd like to read a really good review, I highly recommend Kyla'sreview. I have no idea who Kyla is, but I was browsing through the reviews and I felt like she said all the things I didn't know how to say. She touches on Sharaya's seemingly purposeful use of white space, willingness to admit to her own role in the complexities of racism, etc. ( )

Even the dedication is poetry:

for anyone who has lost
a friend
from saying the word
race ( )