When I chose Strayed for my name, I wasn’t looking at the word’s negative connotations. I was aware at that time in my life that I’d really lost my way, that I’d gone off the path. But the other definitions of that word ‘strayed’ are very powerful too, you know? A stray is somebody who makes, or has to make, his or her own way in the world. A stray is someone who lives without the essential mother and the essential father, which is how I lived. So I was embracing that word, that name, for all of its darkness and all of its light, and I hoped I would keep growing and living into the name, sort of embodying it in my life, you know…It’s like my heritage. I feel it is my real name.
Alexandra Billings, Actress and Trans Activist, via Instagram
My first encounter with the work of Alexandra Billings was through her role as Davina Rejennae on Amazon’s Transparent. Luminous is too dim a word to describe what she brings to her performances, because it is apparent that she is imbuing each character with the wisdom gleaned from her own lived experience as a trans woman of color.
Today’s quote is taken from a video post Billings made on Instagram a few years ago. Sadly, I didn’t bookmark the exact day but I did write down the quote for posterity because it was too good not to. What exactly, though, does it mean to stand in the center of your own grace? For me, it means that you accept everything that has brought you to the present moment, acknowledging that what you’ve been through has made you into the person you are. It also means that you absolve yourself of blame, and its fugly cousin shame, for what you’ve done to survive. It means that you are cognizant of the fact that you are here because of what you’ve been through, not despite what you’ve been through, and you do not owe the world an explanation or an apology for taking up space.
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We bother with the ‘old stuff’ because it’s really what’s important to you as a human being, what’s important for your soul. The real value is the art, and it gives us sustenance. It’s something we have to cherish, and we have to make sure it survives.
I give everything away and it goes away, into the dusty air, onto the face of the water that goes away beyond our seeing. I give everything away that has been given to me: the voices of children under clouds, the men in the parks at the chess tables, the women entering and leaving bakeries. God who came here by rock, by tree, by bird. All things silent in my seeing. All things believable in their leaving. Everything I have I give away and it goes away.
If you drive past horses and don’t say horses you’re a psychopath. If you see an airplane but don’t point it out. A rainbow, a cardinal, a butterfly. If you don’t whisper-shout albino squirrel! Deer! Red fox! If you hear a woodpecker and don’t shush everyone around you into silence. If you find an unbroken sand dollar in a tide pool. If you see a dorsal fun breaking the water. If you see the moon and don’t say oh my god look at the moon. If you smell smoke and don’t search for fire. If you feel yourself receding, receding, and don’t tell anyone until you’re gone.
This Is Where I Leave You: A Novel by Jonathan Tropper
You never know when it will be the last time you’ll see your father, or kiss your wife, or play with your little brother, but there’s always a last time. If you could remember every last time, you’d never stop grieving.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please follow, like, comment, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at thevoraciousbibliophile@yahoo.com or catch me on Twitter @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
I don’t want the people who love me to avoid the reality of my body. I don’t want them to feel uncomfortable with its size and shape, to tacitly endorse the idea that fat is shameful, to pretend that I’m something I’m not out of deference to a system that hates me. I don’t want to be gentled like I’m something wild and alarming. If I’m gonna be wild and alarming, I’ll do it on my terms.
Thank God for Lindy West. When I first read Sbrill, which in my opinion is one of those books we’ll look back on in twenty or thirty years as a seminal feminist text, it enlightened me to something I had never before considered—that I didn’t have to experience shame surrounding my identity as a fat person. Shrill taught me, or perhaps reinforced for me, the idea that shame is a cultural construct wielded as social currency by dominant groups to keep the outgroups marginalized and silent.
Shrill taught me, or perhaps reinforced for me, the idea that shame is a cultural construct wielded as social currency by dominant groups to keep the outgroups marginalized and silent.
I’ve had so many loved ones, so many friends and family members, shy away when the topic of conversation shifts to my body. Or worse, they say something like, “You’re not fat. You’re beautiful.” Ergo, I can never be beautiful and exist in a fat body. Meanwhile, I know they’re lying to my over 300-pound ass. I know it. They know I’m fat. I know I’m fat. We are both cognizant of the shared knowledge of my fatness. To pretend otherwise, to tacitly ignore the reality of my body, is an act of erasure. And it is unacceptable.
Ergo, I can never be beautiful and exist in a fat body. Meanwhile, I know they’re lying to my over 300-pound ass. I know it. They know I’m fat. I know I’m fat. We are both cognizant of the shared knowledge of my fatness. To pretend otherwise, to tacitly ignore the reality of my body, is an act of erasure. And it is unacceptable.
There’s also a nuance, just below the surface, subtextual, corrosive—that implies that I’m not like those other fat people, those disgusting people who shovel in food at buffets—I’m one of the good fat people who does everything right and just remains fat as a cruel act of God. It rains on the just and the unjust. Being fat, though, is neither a punishment nor an unfortunate act of God. It is not a consequence of poor choices or diet or any sort of ableist bullshit you’ll encounter on daytime television—that blesséd time of day when we degenerate fatties are vacuuming up potato chips with our hungry mouths and finishing everyone’s leftovers from the night before.
…I deserve—we all deserve—the unabashed and unadulterated truth of our bodies. Let us be celebrated or let us be damned. I will not accept a third option.
Fat just is. And I deserve—we all deserve—the unabashed and unadulterated truth of our bodies. Let us be celebrated or let us be damned. I will not accept a third option.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please follow, like, comment, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at thevoraciousbibliophile@yahoo.com or catch me on Twitter @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
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