The risk it takes to bloom : on life and liberation / Raquel Willis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Willis, Raquel, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Willis, Raquel.

Trans women--United States--Biography.

Trans women.

African American trans people--Biography.

African American trans people.

Trans people--Civil rights--United States.

Trans people.

Gay rights--United States.

Gay rights.

Civil rights--United States.

Civil rights.

African American transgender people.

Transgender people--Civil rights.

Transgender women.

United States.

Transgender people of color.

LGBTQ+ people.

Genre:

Autobiographies.

autobiographies (literary works)

Biographies

Transgender autobiographies.

Transgender literature.

Physical Description:

xvii, 363 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 22 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : St. Martin's Press, 2023.

Summary:

"A passionate, powerful memoir by a trailblazing Black transgender activist, tracing her life of transformation and her work towards collective liberation. In 2017, Raquel Willis took to the National Women's March podium just after the presidential election of Donald Trump, primed to tell her story as a young Black transgender woman from the South. Despite having her speaking time cut short, the appearance only deepened her commitment to speaking up for communities on the margins. Born in Augusta, Georgia, to Black Catholic parents, Raquel spent years feeling isolated, even within a loving, close-knit family. There was little access to understanding what it meant to be queer and transgender. It wasn't until she went to the University of Georgia that she found the LGBTQ+ community, fell in love, and explored her gender for the first time. But the unexpected death of her father forced her to examine her relationship with herself and those she loved. These years of grief, misunderstanding, and hard-won epiphanies seeped into the soil of her life, serving as fertilizer for growth and allowing her to bloom within. Upon graduation, Raquel entered a career in journalism against the backdrop of the burgeoning Movement for Black Lives, intersectional feminism going mainstream, and unprecedented visibility of the trans community. After hiding her identity as a newspaper reporter, her increasing awareness of the epidemic of violence plaguing trans women of color and the heightened suicide of trans teens inspired her to come out publicly. Within just a few short years of community organizing in Atlanta, Oakland, and New York, Raquel emerged as one of the most formidable Black trans activists in history. In The Risk It Takes to Bloom, Raquel Willis recounts with passion and candor her experiences straddling the Obama and Trump eras, the possibility of transformation after tragedy, and how complex moments can push us all to take necessary risks and bloom toward collective liberation"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction

Four blue walls

My interior world

Revelations

The playground of gender

An ill-fitting frame

Letter to my father

Death to expectations

Seen, differently

Chrysalis

For women who had a boyhood

Destiny's detour

Plausible deniability

The labyrinth of desire

Letter to Leelah Alcorn

Awakening to Black liberation

Between visibility and vitality

Slouching twoard liberation

Nobody's savior

An era of reckoning

Testing my faith

Letter to Chyna Gibson

Womanhood, expanded

Girls' night outing

I have a right to show my color

A peach in the Big Apple

This ain't no chick flick

Our ancestor's wildest nightmare

Letter to Layleen Polanco

Falling pillars

Revolution's knockin'

Welcome to the garden.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9781250275684

1250275687

OCLC:

1384445409