Kicked Out Anthology

Last Saturday I had the opportunity to guest curate Queer Memoir: Pets and make one of my homeless dog obsessed  baby-dyke dreams come true — creating a space where queers talked about how much they loved animals!  The evening was absolutely fantastic attended by nearly 80 people and featured incredible storytellers!   You can check out some of my thoughts about the dog focused part of the evening at The Bark magazine

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Sitting here on the last day of 2011 I’m sitting here speechless at what a huge year it was for Kicked Out.  This little book was a tremendous labor of love not only for me, but for each and every contributor whose relationship to this book was deep, and raw in a way I’ve never witnessed with any other anthology I’ve seen.  It’s been a humbling and awe inspiring year to witnesses and be part of.  When I first began working on Kicked Out I’d hoped to reach a few people — I couldn’t even imagine how many lives this book would touch, nor could I have pictured the year we would have.

2011 brought two honors from the American Library Association marking it as  a top 11 book for LGBTQ adults, and another which recognized it as a top 10  book for LGBTQ youth. Then there was being a Lambda Literary Award Finalist. The experience of being there at those awards and seeing my baby’s cover projected multiple times my size brought me to tears and served as a poignant symbol for how much bigger than me and my story this book became.

As 2011 draws to a close, I’m thinking about all the incredible people i’ve been privileged to connect with literally all over the world.  People who’ve reached out to me after reading or hearing about Kicked Out who previously had felt alone, but because of the stories alive on these bound pages for the first time felt like they were seen and understood and had community.  I’m thinking too about the incredibly brave folks who have put pen to page and told their stories — Asheville, Portland, San Francisco, New York and other places.  Having the privilege of witnessing the creation of stories matters as much to me as any honor or award. It’s the starfish moments that ultimately make this work meaningful to me.

In addition to the awards Kicked Out received this year, I was shocked to receive an honorable mention in the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund for Fiction.  When they called to tell me, I nearly dropped my phone. Let me be real, I’m a primarily self-taught writer. I don’t have an MFA (nor do I plan to get one). I can’t diagram a sentence, I didn’t start writing until I was 17 and homeless. I’m dyslexic. I have no idea why what I do works, but I’ve learned to accept the magic and innocence of how writing works for me. 2011 was a year of having that seen, respected and understood in ways that continue to blow me away.

This past year was one of growth and excitement. I also spent a tremendous amount of time writing. 2010 had been about finding my voice and rediscovering my love of writing after the stress and pressure of actually seeing Kicked Out through the publishing process.  2011 was about accepting and falling in love with the novel that had me in a chokehold.  ‘Roving Pack‘ is not the novel I expected I would write, it is certainly not what I planned as a sophomore book but it is the story I needed to write.  Sitting here on New Years Eve with a manuscript for this upcoming novel (don’t worry way more details to come in 2012) I’m thinking back to the horoscope I got a few weeks ago:

“you have a sacred duty not only to yourself, but also to the people you care about, to use your imagination more aggressively and expressively as you contemplate what might lie ahead for you. You simply cannot afford to remain safely ensconced within your comfort zone, shielded from the big ideas and tempting fantasies that have started calling and calling and calling to you.”

I don’t set new years resolutions, and I’m not super into woo woo astrology,  but these are the words left me shaking and speechless when I read them.  They are the words I’m using to guide my actions and work for the next year.  I’ve got a good feeling about 2012. I can’t wait to begin aggressively using my imagination, and take the creative risks I feel deeply called to.

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I first posted this last year right about this time……

Credit for the inspiration behind this post goes to my friend and unofficial ‘Kicked Out’ fan club president Kelli Dunham who commented on my facebook this weekend suggesting I make a blog post about reclaiming holidays and saying “You are an expert on that. Beyond an expert. You’ve made it a damn art form.”  I don’t know about all that, but Kelli’s comment got my blogging gears in motion because I LOVE holidays and by all “logical” reasoning’s I shouldn’t.

Growing I had moments of enjoying various holidays but on the whole dreaded them. The holidays were filled with fighting (more than usual) drunken misbehavior, and usually violence. They were pretty consistently more stressful than joyous.  When I was kicked out as a teenager the holidays continued to be far from my favorite days of the year, and were (like they are for so many other homeless and formerly homeless queer folks)  pretty depressing. Everyone from the cashier at the drugstore to the commercials on the radio seemed hell bent on reminding me that unlike seemingly everyone else I didn’t have a family that loved me, and would not be “going home” for the holidays.

I spent a couple years on my own struggling through holidays before reaching the realization that I was not willing to let my biological family take one more thing from me, and goddamn it all I was going to find a way to take the holidays back, and I was going to make them my own and have a damn good time in the process.

Here are my five tips for reclaiming  holidays*

1. Caller ID- your cell phone likely has it built in, it’s there for a reason, use it. This is a little tip that in my experience can be applied to any day of the year but is especially useful on holidays of all kinds (birthdays absolutely included).  Know whose calling, and decide if speaking with them (even briefly) has a chance of ruining your day. If it does? Well, that’s what voice mail is for.  If you know your grandmother is going to call and lay on the guilt about how you are breaking her heart by not coming to spend thanksgiving with her and your abusive parents, don’t pick up the phone.  If you know your mother’s number showing up means she’s drunk, don’t pick up.  It’s your phone, your day, and you have the right to not subject yourself to abusive, or manipulative people or conversations.

2.  Go Traditional- I know this sounds a little funny especially coming from me, but stay with me.  One of the things I remember very clearly about growing up were these very classic things that my family was either too dysfunctional to do, or had no interest in.  As I began reclaiming the holidays something important to me was looking at these things that hadn’t been possible growing up and recognizing that now they could be.  For me as silly as it might sound this included things like sending holiday cards every winter, cooking a huge feast on Thanksgiving (although we do subvert this by making an unturkey and having everything be vegetarian), setting up and decorating a Christmas tree, nonstop Christmas music, baking and decorating cookies,  etc. etc. etc.

3.  Invent your own traditions- I think one of the best or most empowering things about being queer is having the freedom to disregard expectations and build a life the way that works best for you.  I think that this can be especially important around holidays which may be steeped in tradition and expectations that leave you feeling stifled, abused, or left out.  For example one tradition my partner and I have is most years we go to the zoo on Christmas Eve day.

4. Share – I’ve found that the holidays are a lot more fun when you spend them with people that you like, people that respect you, and don’t put you down. I encourage spending holidays only with people who will think that you look handsome or beautiful in your outfit of choice, and who don’t spend belittle you across the dinner table. Invite other orphans to dinner, make silly gifts, send letters. For me it’s all about finding ways to reach out to folks who I like/love/adore and sharing a little bit of the sparkly magic that this time of year brings.

5. Feed your inner child - I saved this one for last, but for me this is perhaps the most important aspect of reclaiming the holidays.  Don’t be afraid to let out your inner five year old.  Go to the library and check out a huge stack of holiday themed picture books, make ornaments (the more glitter and glue the better), create a paper chain to count down to Christmas, write a letter to Santa, decorate cookies, sing carols really loudly.  I think this can be especially fun and freeing for those of us who grew up quickly, or for whom childhood was at times traumatic. I know this has made all the difference for me with reclaiming the holidays.

For me, more than anything the holidays are about home, family, and community – all of those things chosen, built, created and not connected to family of origin.  They are about being unabashedly queer, about not apologizing for my life, how I dress, who I love, or what our life looks like. For me the holidays are a time of celebration, I spent 17 years in my mother’s home watching holidays be crime scenes, I spent another couple years with holidays being some of the most difficult days on the calendar and I flat out refuse to give my family of origin that kind of power anymore.

* I celebrate secular Christian holidays so my tips (some more than others) are based in those traditions. I know other folks are great experts at reclaiming holidays from other traditions and I would love to hear some of your suggestions in the comment section!

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I’m really excited that this winter I’ll be facilitating a storytelling and zine writing workshop with the New York Public Library and Queers For Economic Justice!  The workshop is open to all LGBTQ youth and we will be meeting on Wednesdays 7:30pm  January 11th – February 8th at QEJ .  Over the 5 week workshop participants will be exploring the power of personal storytelling as part of social justice work and working together to create a group zine about what life for queer teens in NYC looks like! We’re also going to have the chance to look at different collections from the New York Public Library including zines from Stonewall!

Please share info about this workshop with LGBTQ youth you know!

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This is a video that I made last year as a response to the conversation that so many of us dread, yet so regularly have this time of year. I was speaking at NYU last night and had some wonderful conversations durring the Q&A and then later one on one with folks and something that came up as it does every year is that we get pretty sick of EVERYONE – person at the grocery store, neighbors, co-workers and even other queer folks who should know better asking this question…

Are you going home for Thanksgiving?
by: kickedout

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For years I have defended Sylvia’s Place the emergency shelter for LGBTQ youth run by MYCCNY, but today with tears in my eyes and a knot in my stomach I no longer can.

I have been to their dark  cramped  windowless basement room more times than I can count, ran a writing workshop from there- the resulting stories were published as part of Kicked Out and have stood up for them against onslaughts of critiques locally here in NYC as well as across the country and to lobbyists, and other national leaders in Washington DC.  I have defended them through the accounts of youth needing to have bedbugs showered off of them, and the rat infestations  because as much as I would like there to be a wonderful clean and safe bed  for every  homeless LGBTQ youth in this city, there isn’t.

I’ve defended them because I talk to youth whose only other option  that night is literally the sidewalks covered in snow, or subway cars.  I’ve defended them because I’ve talked to tearful kids who have been abandoned by everyone they have ever known or trusted and who are begging for answers  and checking themselves into psych wards after being brutalized on the streets, praying that the hospital will be safer than sleeping on sidewalks all  because there are no beds for them.

Sylvia’s has been the only emergency shelter in NYC. It functioned without a waiting list (other agencies in the city have a wait list that extends into the hundreds).  For many youth it was the first and last stop in the NYC queer youth shelters- it’s where they went when they first arrived in New York or first became homeless, and it’s where they ended up when they were kicked out of every other shelter program.   I have defended Sylvia’s consistently for years because while I was the sort of  kid that would have excelled in the regimented structure of other shelter programs,  the youth I loved and built family with as a crusty homeless queer youth in Portland wouldn’t have.

When they were shut down by the police two weeks ago and two dozen youth were put to the street, my heart sank. Because of Kicked Out, I have maintained a close relationship with the shelter over the years and was in immediate contact with the church prepared to rally and support the shelter anyway that I could. This morning I am left grappling with the reality that for years I have been explicitly and implicitly lied to regarding the legality of what they are doing.

In recent days, I have learned that in addition to numerous fire code violations including lack of marked exists and broken fire sprinklers that MCCNY/ Sylvia’s Place doesn’t even have permits of occupancy for either the church or the shelter itself and that the single room where the youth eat and sleep is legally only permitted to be used for “storage, showroom or office space.” Additionally although the shelter took a grant from the New York City Council to become a licensed shelter unlike other programs they never fulfilled the requirements to become licensed.

I still maintain, and always will that we need low-threshold emergency shelter for LGBTQ youth. We need immediate access to LGBTQ specific and safe beds for the youth our society and our queer community has systematically turned our backs on.  I no longer can support Sylvia’s or believe that it is a safe place for our youth and in its current condition believe should be shut down, something I never believed I would find myself saying. The heavy reality I’m grappling with this morning is knowing that the real and ongoing victims of Sylvia’s mismanagement are the youth for whom will be left with no option but the streets as we move into the coldest months of the year, and the reality that our community as usual, will likely fail to care.

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