There are times when I absolutely feel like I have been stuck-in-place.
It is almost as if my feet have been cemented and I can not move.
What makes this the top-of-mind on this sunny, summer Thursday?
It is probably that I am feeling the stiffling suffocating smothering that is living in St. Louis, Missouri.
Let me explain.
This once hopeful, promised French founded colony that started with a nod toward inclusion and opportunity several centuries ago, is now mired in division, exclusiveness, and steeped in a racism that is as muddy as the Mississippi.
The background over the past few years, centuries even, threatens any opportunity for growth. That has proven to be true in the city and the suburbs through my nine years of living on this side of the state.
My feelings of being stuck are not unlike those I've heard from fellow transplants who are highly educated, highly experienced, and can't even get a barista job in this city that still celebrates high school graduations of sixty-year-olds.
They tell you that it is you, that you are just not a "fit" if you are older and black, or the black ones want to know what sorority, fraternity, exclusive mom club, or church you belong to before they would even consider passing on your résumé. The doors are slammed shut, bolted tight, and cemented over with red clay.
Someone close to me once told me it was all in my head. That it was me. That surely there was something wrong with my twenty-five plus years of management, marketing, and program management experience. Surely.
I did what any self-respecting professional would do, I asked the experts. They scrutinized my vitae up and down, queried me about my background teaching at several universities, about the extensive non-profit work I've done working with youth, about the marketing and communications work I've done in a corporate setting as well as a solopreneur. Nope, no holes, nothing wrong there.
My recruiter once told me to go and essentially pimp myself out to meet a white female corporate founder who got her hair done at a certain salon. In modern times, that is what they are telling experienced black women.
Nevermind the age thing. That is also starting to creep in as the twenty and thirty somethings knock down the few doors that are open or are taking their unencumbered existence and starting their own thing.
Being mired in place because of family obligations is something that it universal in holding women back, even more so when those women are bearing the weight of race and class. It is like the woman who left her chef job to go and reprimand her sons for stealing only to end up in jail because society punishes black women for putting family first. Or the woman who moved here because of her husband's position only to be divorced because of his extra-marital-affairs and languish in the city that won't open a door, she is leaving this month for greener pastures and a position already waiting, taking her children with her. Over and over, stories come to me and I wondered what is it about this place
At first, I examined myself ad nauseum. I revamped my résumé to dumb down my experience and education when they told me "you are a deeply talented woman who is just too experienced for this position." Then, I spoke with women who have two master's degrees and more experience than I do and they are not getting any traction.
What will it take to turn this city upside down and realize the brain drain?
Do we start our own exclusive mom clubs and only let in those who are not-from-here?
Do we play the game and create a list of self-congratulatory people to then tell everyone else how wonderful we are so we can keep all the balls on the playyard?
Do we turn the calendar pages until the last child graduates so their van goes one way to college and we go another way to life?
Do we accept our fate of being tied in marriage and place where only one career is allowed to thrive?
Do I just try to make do with what is here and go back to school?
I am not sure what the answer is.
I know I keep pushing, like so many other women I know who are trying to keep their families on track, trying to have a career, trying to hold off the student loan folks, trying to ask for a job lead without being asked to give the first born in exchange.
It is probably not limited to just St. Louis. I am sure women of lesser education and fewer professional opportunities are just as frustrated with being segregated into the stifling overcrowded "north of Delmar" divide that keeps them trapped in lack.
What I do know to be true is that this region can either die or dance. If it comes together for the good of all, it can dance as a true shining light and gateway of opportunity. Or it will die, choking off life at the vines that tries to sprout up.
Thursday, June 23, 2016
Monday, June 20, 2016
It's Summer!
It's the first day of summer.
The sun is shining through my balcony, the townhouse is quiet while I work, the promise of weeks of reading are ahead of us, it is something about the season changing that brings out a bit of optimism.
We know the election season, nationally and locally, is a bit nuts. We know there are folks who are being constrained at all sides. We know the economy has only recovered for some. We know the schools are a mess. We know it is hotter than hades in some parts of the country.
We know all that is wrong.
But in one brief moment, as natural light filters into my day, I thought about the promise of summer.
When I was a child, summer vacation began on Memorial Day weekend.
My late father and step-mother would pack up up in that tan and white station wagon for the long trek from Jefferson City to Benton Harbor. The promise of cousins, beaches, and the uncles' BBQ awaited us. We left in the dark of night, as a parent, I now know their strategy. The kids would wake up in a new state and bound into one of the many huge homes that my father's siblings owned. It was exciting.
I remember bike riding and long walks to the pool. Jefferson City was filled with hills. My father insisted upon us knowing how to swim so we would spend some summers in lessons, others at the university for one of their sports camps. I never mastered tennis because my nine-year-old self could not figure out how Love was a zero.
When I think about summer now, I think about longs days of reading, about the youth in the literary circle, about my daughters at TroMo or me at the Custard station, I think about the span between semesters to do a road trip or reconnect with family. I think about exploring a new gallery or trying out some iced coffee. Summer still holds wonder and promise to me. I hope it stays that way, we all could use a little sunshine.
The sun is shining through my balcony, the townhouse is quiet while I work, the promise of weeks of reading are ahead of us, it is something about the season changing that brings out a bit of optimism.
We know the election season, nationally and locally, is a bit nuts. We know there are folks who are being constrained at all sides. We know the economy has only recovered for some. We know the schools are a mess. We know it is hotter than hades in some parts of the country.
We know all that is wrong.
But in one brief moment, as natural light filters into my day, I thought about the promise of summer.
When I was a child, summer vacation began on Memorial Day weekend.
My late father and step-mother would pack up up in that tan and white station wagon for the long trek from Jefferson City to Benton Harbor. The promise of cousins, beaches, and the uncles' BBQ awaited us. We left in the dark of night, as a parent, I now know their strategy. The kids would wake up in a new state and bound into one of the many huge homes that my father's siblings owned. It was exciting.
I remember bike riding and long walks to the pool. Jefferson City was filled with hills. My father insisted upon us knowing how to swim so we would spend some summers in lessons, others at the university for one of their sports camps. I never mastered tennis because my nine-year-old self could not figure out how Love was a zero.
When I think about summer now, I think about longs days of reading, about the youth in the literary circle, about my daughters at TroMo or me at the Custard station, I think about the span between semesters to do a road trip or reconnect with family. I think about exploring a new gallery or trying out some iced coffee. Summer still holds wonder and promise to me. I hope it stays that way, we all could use a little sunshine.
Saturday, June 18, 2016
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
Review by Tayé Foster Bradshaw
My children and I were on a road trip to Alabama to pick up my college son.
We decided to do what we always do, load up with books, and prepare to enjoy a combined twenty hours of reading on the trip south and back north.
This time, we did something a little differently. We picked up a couple books on tape.
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, was a nicely rendered story about the immigrants rarely talked about in history class. This story is set in the months prior to the second world war in Seattle. Seattle in 1942 was a world that Asian immigrants, particularly Chinese and Japanese, were able to develop thriving insular communities that resembled their homeland. Many, by this time, were either second or third generation with their parents intent on them being "American."
The Japanese and Chinese were vastly different people with language, customs, foods, and integration ways that were unknown to most Americans at that time. Each shared a quest to fully actualize their potential in the land of opportunity. Some held onto their native languages, even having schools that specifically taught in their dialect. Others pushed to assimilation, like the European immigrants of a previous generation.
Told in the voice of Henry in 1986, now a recent widower and a fifty-something father watching his compeltely Americanized son grow up in a modern era. It was the death of his wife and his wondering of a teenaged love left behind, that is the backdrop of this tender story of love and loss, acceptance, nationalism, community, and what it means to be American.
We encounter many character from the bully son of the town developer who opportunistically bought up all of the Japanese homes once the citizens in those neighborhoods were rounded up like the Nazis rounded up the Jews. American's concentration camps in parts of Northern California and Idaho, are not often discussed in high school history classes. The loss of identity, the burning of precious artifacts, costumes, and caligraphy is a loss of Japanee culture that can never be recovered, despite the reparations paid to survivors.
In listening to the story being read, we thought about the alternating time travel back and forth. I remembered being a young college student in 1986, optimistic and hopeful for a modern future, not unlike Henry's son. The stories of the Civil Rights Movement, the second world war, the Holocaust, the internment, all were a distant part of dusty history books. We were forging ahead, but perhaps in that, were in danger of leaving something behind. This story was a tender reminder of the place that place holds in our collective American history and that while painful, it is important to remember.
My children and I were on a road trip to Alabama to pick up my college son.
We decided to do what we always do, load up with books, and prepare to enjoy a combined twenty hours of reading on the trip south and back north.
This time, we did something a little differently. We picked up a couple books on tape.
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, was a nicely rendered story about the immigrants rarely talked about in history class. This story is set in the months prior to the second world war in Seattle. Seattle in 1942 was a world that Asian immigrants, particularly Chinese and Japanese, were able to develop thriving insular communities that resembled their homeland. Many, by this time, were either second or third generation with their parents intent on them being "American."
The Japanese and Chinese were vastly different people with language, customs, foods, and integration ways that were unknown to most Americans at that time. Each shared a quest to fully actualize their potential in the land of opportunity. Some held onto their native languages, even having schools that specifically taught in their dialect. Others pushed to assimilation, like the European immigrants of a previous generation.
Told in the voice of Henry in 1986, now a recent widower and a fifty-something father watching his compeltely Americanized son grow up in a modern era. It was the death of his wife and his wondering of a teenaged love left behind, that is the backdrop of this tender story of love and loss, acceptance, nationalism, community, and what it means to be American.
We encounter many character from the bully son of the town developer who opportunistically bought up all of the Japanese homes once the citizens in those neighborhoods were rounded up like the Nazis rounded up the Jews. American's concentration camps in parts of Northern California and Idaho, are not often discussed in high school history classes. The loss of identity, the burning of precious artifacts, costumes, and caligraphy is a loss of Japanee culture that can never be recovered, despite the reparations paid to survivors.
In listening to the story being read, we thought about the alternating time travel back and forth. I remembered being a young college student in 1986, optimistic and hopeful for a modern future, not unlike Henry's son. The stories of the Civil Rights Movement, the second world war, the Holocaust, the internment, all were a distant part of dusty history books. We were forging ahead, but perhaps in that, were in danger of leaving something behind. This story was a tender reminder of the place that place holds in our collective American history and that while painful, it is important to remember.
Friday, June 17, 2016
Tears Falling
This was a hard week.
By every stretch of the imagination.
It was supposed to be a great week, I was going to write about being excited that my youngest son is home for his last summer of crashing with the family. He is a senior in college and essentially finished with his major, he is adding on a certificate and will graduate in December. We should be rejoicing.
Last week, this exact time, I was putting the final pieces into the luggage to make the ten hour drive to Montgomery, Alabama. My daughters and I were anxiously waiting for my husband's emergency meeting to end. He normally does not work on Fridays in the summer. I was a bit annoyed with the wrinkle in my schedule so the girls and I finished our packing and went out to get lunch before the drive.
Inconsequential things that make our day have a hiccup.
We had a great drive down, laughs and sights. We enjoyed time with my son in his apartment and then prepared for the drive back up north.
Somewhere in Birmingham, we started to receive the news.
He did not have cable in his apartment and since we decided to hit the road early on Sunday, we had spent those hours packing and making sure his place was tidy for the six weeks he would be away.
A gay nightclub.
Mass murder.
Young people.
Orlando.
The news started to come in through posts when we had reception and then friends texting. My fourteen year old daughter got the news first.
We could not believe it.
We did not know anything else except that a gunman entered a gay club and slaughtered several people.
As the news became clear that this was horrible and contrary to what many said, not the worse mass shooting or mass murder in the history of the country, the feelings of insecurity, shock, and terror started to ripple through parts of the country.
It was a bit disconcerting.
This was Latinx night at Pulse, the gay safety space in Orlando.
These were not the poster child for gay rights, they were Puerto Rican, Mexican, Muslim, and African-American LGBTQI young people.
The conversation changed. It was different, clearly different than Stonewall.
The complexities of race, gender, sexual orientation, class, and nationality all converged in this space and in the conversations that ensued in the week.
My family and I made it back home and the week started as usual for my husband and son. Both of them left for work, each in their own thoughts about what happened. There was a candlelight vigil on Sunday night in the Grove. It was led by the Pride/LGBTQI community, noticeable not POC. My husband attended a vigil on the campus of his HBCU on Tuesday. Some peopleI know held an ALL Black Lives Matter sign at their usual Tuesday night vigil at the chapel by farmers' market. My son and I attended a vigil outside the city hall of our suburb on Wednesday. There will be a POC focused vigil on Art Hill on Saturday.
The consistencies were the tears, the shock, the fear, the call for rights, the naming of names.
Present in two was the decided focus on the race and ethnicity of the victims.
It was a clash of privilege for another vigil. For even in being LGBTQI, being white had privileges and some protections that were not present for the 49 souls slaughtered on that trans talent night featuring Latinx performers.
I stood in the space on Wednesday evening and wondered when all this would end.
Would we continue to be afraid of someone who was a little bit different? What determines difference? Is the mainstream the best? Why is white patriarchy the norm? How many more have to die?
It is not lost on me also that I am musing on the one year anniversary that a young white male walked into a Wednesday night prayer service at Mother Emanuel AME Church. He was welcomed as any seeker is welcomed into black worship services. He sat among them, prayed.
Then he slaughtered them.
Those souls were all black.
Outrage, vigils, calls for prayers, calls for protest, calls for peace before justice.
It was only a year ago.
A year since that has been filled with rhetoric of fear and hate from presidential candidates until the field on one side is down to one who intends to make it worse than the holocaust for everyone who was not white and male.
In that year, more have been killed, POC of heterosexual and LGBTQI relationships, rights of life have been questioned, kids have been suspended for the color of their skin, the questioning of black parenting, the raping privilege of white millenials, and the constant, unending assault on the other.
It is not lost on me that there are massive floods in Ghana, displacing people, endangering lives, threatening infrastructure, and the western media is silent/ Where is the hashtag?
Why is there so much fear in someone who looks in the mirror and sees a history not like my own?
Can we just explore and love people for being people?
Or is this about so much more?
Power?
Control?
To what end?
The tears are falling, making a lake in this sweltering sun, soaking through to the ground, and only some are given space to grieve.
By every stretch of the imagination.
It was supposed to be a great week, I was going to write about being excited that my youngest son is home for his last summer of crashing with the family. He is a senior in college and essentially finished with his major, he is adding on a certificate and will graduate in December. We should be rejoicing.
Last week, this exact time, I was putting the final pieces into the luggage to make the ten hour drive to Montgomery, Alabama. My daughters and I were anxiously waiting for my husband's emergency meeting to end. He normally does not work on Fridays in the summer. I was a bit annoyed with the wrinkle in my schedule so the girls and I finished our packing and went out to get lunch before the drive.
Inconsequential things that make our day have a hiccup.
We had a great drive down, laughs and sights. We enjoyed time with my son in his apartment and then prepared for the drive back up north.
Somewhere in Birmingham, we started to receive the news.
He did not have cable in his apartment and since we decided to hit the road early on Sunday, we had spent those hours packing and making sure his place was tidy for the six weeks he would be away.
A gay nightclub.
Mass murder.
Young people.
Orlando.
The news started to come in through posts when we had reception and then friends texting. My fourteen year old daughter got the news first.
We could not believe it.
We did not know anything else except that a gunman entered a gay club and slaughtered several people.
As the news became clear that this was horrible and contrary to what many said, not the worse mass shooting or mass murder in the history of the country, the feelings of insecurity, shock, and terror started to ripple through parts of the country.
It was a bit disconcerting.
This was Latinx night at Pulse, the gay safety space in Orlando.
These were not the poster child for gay rights, they were Puerto Rican, Mexican, Muslim, and African-American LGBTQI young people.
The conversation changed. It was different, clearly different than Stonewall.
The complexities of race, gender, sexual orientation, class, and nationality all converged in this space and in the conversations that ensued in the week.
My family and I made it back home and the week started as usual for my husband and son. Both of them left for work, each in their own thoughts about what happened. There was a candlelight vigil on Sunday night in the Grove. It was led by the Pride/LGBTQI community, noticeable not POC. My husband attended a vigil on the campus of his HBCU on Tuesday. Some peopleI know held an ALL Black Lives Matter sign at their usual Tuesday night vigil at the chapel by farmers' market. My son and I attended a vigil outside the city hall of our suburb on Wednesday. There will be a POC focused vigil on Art Hill on Saturday.
The consistencies were the tears, the shock, the fear, the call for rights, the naming of names.
Present in two was the decided focus on the race and ethnicity of the victims.
It was a clash of privilege for another vigil. For even in being LGBTQI, being white had privileges and some protections that were not present for the 49 souls slaughtered on that trans talent night featuring Latinx performers.
I stood in the space on Wednesday evening and wondered when all this would end.
Would we continue to be afraid of someone who was a little bit different? What determines difference? Is the mainstream the best? Why is white patriarchy the norm? How many more have to die?
It is not lost on me also that I am musing on the one year anniversary that a young white male walked into a Wednesday night prayer service at Mother Emanuel AME Church. He was welcomed as any seeker is welcomed into black worship services. He sat among them, prayed.
Then he slaughtered them.
Those souls were all black.
Outrage, vigils, calls for prayers, calls for protest, calls for peace before justice.
It was only a year ago.
A year since that has been filled with rhetoric of fear and hate from presidential candidates until the field on one side is down to one who intends to make it worse than the holocaust for everyone who was not white and male.
In that year, more have been killed, POC of heterosexual and LGBTQI relationships, rights of life have been questioned, kids have been suspended for the color of their skin, the questioning of black parenting, the raping privilege of white millenials, and the constant, unending assault on the other.
It is not lost on me that there are massive floods in Ghana, displacing people, endangering lives, threatening infrastructure, and the western media is silent/ Where is the hashtag?
Why is there so much fear in someone who looks in the mirror and sees a history not like my own?
Can we just explore and love people for being people?
Or is this about so much more?
Power?
Control?
To what end?
The tears are falling, making a lake in this sweltering sun, soaking through to the ground, and only some are given space to grieve.
Tuesday, June 7, 2016
Tender Topics
I rarely link my book reviews to this commentary, but in this case will do so because of the topic.
The issues of homosexuality are not new. They have been around forever. They were there with James Baldwin and Richard Wright. They were there with Ella Fitzgerald and Eleanor Roosevelt. They were there with Barnyard Rustin. There are throughout the movement for black lives with some of the most vocal and prominent voices rising up among LGBTQI individuals. The open discussion of gender and identity, even among middle schoolers, is not something that was a part of my growing up.
I admit I had and probably still have a hard time understanding the transgender identified individuals than I do in understand someone who is gay or lesbian. My older sister is as she says, "a proud, same gender loving woman" and was like that long before it became the thing du jour to "come out." She is the first lesbian and partner I met as far back as 1987 when I was barely married and understanding my role as a new wife and mother.
On my facebook page, I engage with a gentleman who underwent surgery to identify with the gender he relates to. He recently changed his name and in all outward appearance, is presented as a man. I get it, I have never seen him as any other way. On my same page, I engage with a woman near my age who is in a same-gender relationship, both cisgendered females who were once married to men. I also have young lesbians that I met after August 2014 and a few gay men. There are numerous restaurants and establishments that I boycott because of their policies that discriminate.
There is an emotional aspect attached to gender and sexuality that can become murky when someone intentionally hides their orientation and potentially destroys the emotional well-beings of their romantic partner. There remain closeted men and women, in marriages that are struggling, because their status in the community, their religious beliefs, or their fear of losing it all, keeps them trapped. Some act on their want and have clandestine relationships that are often revealed to much embarrasment, others just languish and hide behind addictive behaviors, trying to stuff down their feelings, remaining distant from their spouses. Their spouses are often trapped behind this veil of unintended secrecy and shame, they must not tell anyone they haven't had sexual relations with their spouse since they had a child or must not tell that they can not leave because the spouse has a tight control on all the assets as a way to maintain cover for their secret identity. In all of it, a lot of hurt exists.
When the movement brought a lot of LGBTQI issues to the forefront, it shifted the narrative from a black boy lynched in broad daylight and his body left baking in the sun, to the orientation of individuals who are less than 10% of the total population. Accusations of being homophobic were thrown about when some protested the infusion of the the dominate white gay and lesbian community into a very black issue of inclusion and life. Others accepted that as a way to "all get free" with their being ministers at pride parades, even being ordained in certain denominations, and language being formed to educate people about what it means to be in a body outside one's birth designation. This was all against the backdrop of former Olympic medalist who decided in the sixth decade of life to undergo a partial gender reassignment. There was also the professional basketball player with the very public marriage and divorce, her former spouse now in a relationship with a man. There were numerous stories from the fraternity/sorority identifying with very masculine black male fraternities, right down to calls, steps, and images. There were questions of how young one can be to know when middle schools were hosting days of silence and someone as young as 14 refusing to attend graduation because the male name was not used. The stories flooded my timeline.
The connecting feeling I had was what about the ones left behind? The ones forced to keep silent about those in the closet? Or the ones grappling with reality that their life was a lie and they had no way to get out? Just like the support given to the addicts that get clean, there is very little support or discussion of the ones left in the destruction of their addictions, whether that is food, drugs, alcohol, gambling, or porn, there is always damage and debris left on the family.
This brings me to the unexpected connection of the book I recently reviewed.
I had no idea the tale would turn to include commentary about homosexuality, masculinity, femininty, identity, and politics.
It was set in modern Zimbabwe. Like a lot of African nations, homosexuality is frowned upon and those in that lifestyle are in grave danger. That danger played itself out in the lengths that one goes through to keep hidden a sexual orientation that is deemed taboo. Again, left behind is often the woman (or man) on the other side of somoene's secret life. They are often held hostage, emotionally and sexually. If they are married, they can not have a lover to meet their unmet sexual needs even as their spouse if out in clandestine relationships to fulfill their same-gender cravings. They are often cloaked in and forced into a silence. If it is a very male dominated society like parts of Africa and Africa-America and the spouse is a woman ,she is silenced even more for the sake of respectability and pride, the forced need to protect the black man, and the threat of economic ruin. Many of those in secret lives are controlling of the money or access, a must to keep their activites hidden from plain view.
The Hairdresser of Harare touches on this issue in three different vantages points, very subtly. One encounters the young woman in love and touched by the man's desire to "wait until marriage" only to discover he wasn't waiting at all but having lots of sex with other men. There is the older and long married woman whose husband has been stepping out with other men and her final act to take care of the problem and protect her position of influence. Finally, there are the young men, one run out of the country, another beaten to within an inch of his life and ultimately rescued by the woman he betrayed. It is a tangled web that can strangle life out of everyone involved.
One of the things that comes up is the support that must be given to those who are "brave" in coming out or in identifying. That is true for those who are young or perhaps are not married. It is harder to accept that as a requirement for those that intentionally marry someone to cover for their deceipt. That is part of what was underneath the story. One young woman was spared the living death of a sexless marriage, another was not, she was older and trapped, but found a way to live with it.
The final hope in the book and perhaps in the modern facebook discussions is that no one has the right to destroy anyone else's life because of their secret. There is always someone left in the destructive wake of these acts. While the nation moves closer to acceptance, it is incumbant upon those who do other identify, to be completely honest. Then we won't have the tragic murders of trans young black women because their romantic partners were lied to. It is all a very tender topic and one that should be handled with care for everyone, not just the one who is LGBTQI. And for the record, no, I am not homophobic, but I am prohonesty.
The issues of homosexuality are not new. They have been around forever. They were there with James Baldwin and Richard Wright. They were there with Ella Fitzgerald and Eleanor Roosevelt. They were there with Barnyard Rustin. There are throughout the movement for black lives with some of the most vocal and prominent voices rising up among LGBTQI individuals. The open discussion of gender and identity, even among middle schoolers, is not something that was a part of my growing up.
I admit I had and probably still have a hard time understanding the transgender identified individuals than I do in understand someone who is gay or lesbian. My older sister is as she says, "a proud, same gender loving woman" and was like that long before it became the thing du jour to "come out." She is the first lesbian and partner I met as far back as 1987 when I was barely married and understanding my role as a new wife and mother.
On my facebook page, I engage with a gentleman who underwent surgery to identify with the gender he relates to. He recently changed his name and in all outward appearance, is presented as a man. I get it, I have never seen him as any other way. On my same page, I engage with a woman near my age who is in a same-gender relationship, both cisgendered females who were once married to men. I also have young lesbians that I met after August 2014 and a few gay men. There are numerous restaurants and establishments that I boycott because of their policies that discriminate.
There is an emotional aspect attached to gender and sexuality that can become murky when someone intentionally hides their orientation and potentially destroys the emotional well-beings of their romantic partner. There remain closeted men and women, in marriages that are struggling, because their status in the community, their religious beliefs, or their fear of losing it all, keeps them trapped. Some act on their want and have clandestine relationships that are often revealed to much embarrasment, others just languish and hide behind addictive behaviors, trying to stuff down their feelings, remaining distant from their spouses. Their spouses are often trapped behind this veil of unintended secrecy and shame, they must not tell anyone they haven't had sexual relations with their spouse since they had a child or must not tell that they can not leave because the spouse has a tight control on all the assets as a way to maintain cover for their secret identity. In all of it, a lot of hurt exists.
When the movement brought a lot of LGBTQI issues to the forefront, it shifted the narrative from a black boy lynched in broad daylight and his body left baking in the sun, to the orientation of individuals who are less than 10% of the total population. Accusations of being homophobic were thrown about when some protested the infusion of the the dominate white gay and lesbian community into a very black issue of inclusion and life. Others accepted that as a way to "all get free" with their being ministers at pride parades, even being ordained in certain denominations, and language being formed to educate people about what it means to be in a body outside one's birth designation. This was all against the backdrop of former Olympic medalist who decided in the sixth decade of life to undergo a partial gender reassignment. There was also the professional basketball player with the very public marriage and divorce, her former spouse now in a relationship with a man. There were numerous stories from the fraternity/sorority identifying with very masculine black male fraternities, right down to calls, steps, and images. There were questions of how young one can be to know when middle schools were hosting days of silence and someone as young as 14 refusing to attend graduation because the male name was not used. The stories flooded my timeline.
The connecting feeling I had was what about the ones left behind? The ones forced to keep silent about those in the closet? Or the ones grappling with reality that their life was a lie and they had no way to get out? Just like the support given to the addicts that get clean, there is very little support or discussion of the ones left in the destruction of their addictions, whether that is food, drugs, alcohol, gambling, or porn, there is always damage and debris left on the family.
This brings me to the unexpected connection of the book I recently reviewed.
I had no idea the tale would turn to include commentary about homosexuality, masculinity, femininty, identity, and politics.
It was set in modern Zimbabwe. Like a lot of African nations, homosexuality is frowned upon and those in that lifestyle are in grave danger. That danger played itself out in the lengths that one goes through to keep hidden a sexual orientation that is deemed taboo. Again, left behind is often the woman (or man) on the other side of somoene's secret life. They are often held hostage, emotionally and sexually. If they are married, they can not have a lover to meet their unmet sexual needs even as their spouse if out in clandestine relationships to fulfill their same-gender cravings. They are often cloaked in and forced into a silence. If it is a very male dominated society like parts of Africa and Africa-America and the spouse is a woman ,she is silenced even more for the sake of respectability and pride, the forced need to protect the black man, and the threat of economic ruin. Many of those in secret lives are controlling of the money or access, a must to keep their activites hidden from plain view.
The Hairdresser of Harare touches on this issue in three different vantages points, very subtly. One encounters the young woman in love and touched by the man's desire to "wait until marriage" only to discover he wasn't waiting at all but having lots of sex with other men. There is the older and long married woman whose husband has been stepping out with other men and her final act to take care of the problem and protect her position of influence. Finally, there are the young men, one run out of the country, another beaten to within an inch of his life and ultimately rescued by the woman he betrayed. It is a tangled web that can strangle life out of everyone involved.
One of the things that comes up is the support that must be given to those who are "brave" in coming out or in identifying. That is true for those who are young or perhaps are not married. It is harder to accept that as a requirement for those that intentionally marry someone to cover for their deceipt. That is part of what was underneath the story. One young woman was spared the living death of a sexless marriage, another was not, she was older and trapped, but found a way to live with it.
The final hope in the book and perhaps in the modern facebook discussions is that no one has the right to destroy anyone else's life because of their secret. There is always someone left in the destructive wake of these acts. While the nation moves closer to acceptance, it is incumbant upon those who do other identify, to be completely honest. Then we won't have the tragic murders of trans young black women because their romantic partners were lied to. It is all a very tender topic and one that should be handled with care for everyone, not just the one who is LGBTQI. And for the record, no, I am not homophobic, but I am prohonesty.
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