Black and Beyond the Binary (with KB Brookins)

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Intro – 00:00

 

BLAIR HODGES: Welcome to Relationscapes. We're mapping the stories and ideas that shape who we are and how we connect with each other to build a better world. I'm journalist Blair Hodges, and our guide in this episode is author KB Brookins.

KB BROOKINS: I got very lethargic about being a girl. Like, "Okay, if this is what I have to be, like, fine. I'll do it in my own way." But then I met a nonbinary person for the first time probably when I was like 22, and I was like, "Okay, what does this mean?" Then I'm like "Oh my god I didn't even know this identity existed."

BLAIR HODGES: KB Brookins was struggling to know who they really were. And even though their quest for authenticity and self-actualization felt isolating, it couldn't happen in complete isolation. It took seeing someone else living more freely for KB to imagine new and better possibilities. That’s the paradox at the heart of becoming ourselves: We can’t do it alone.

KB is a Black, queer, trans writer and visual artist from Texas. Their award-winning memoir is called "Pretty." It traces how race, gender, queerness, and masculinity are deeply entangled, not just in theory, but in the body and in everyday life with other people. In this episode, KB invites us to break through our rigid ideas about gender roles, and to feel the liberating power of seeing—and being seen.

 

KB’s Hometown – 01:51

 

BLAIR HODGES: KB Brookins, welcome to Relationscapes.

KB BROOKINS: Thank you for having me today.

BLAIR HODGES: I asked if you'd open this episode with a reading from your new memoir, Pretty, and this reading speaks to three parts of your identity that are woven inseparably together: being black, queer, and trans. If you'd read this excerpt, it'll give people a good sense of where you're coming from in this book.

KB BROOKINS: Okay, perfect. This is from “On My Hometown.”

It's true. Black folks have come far in the realm of rights, but not far enough for all people and systems to love us or at least tolerate us enough to stop denying us life.

On every corner of every street, the possibility that a cop will stop me and decide I don't need to breathe exists. Then boom. Another lineage of Black people left with less. Black existence is worry that you will be cheated from life.

Queer existence is watching the best of Congress and the richest of our nonprofit sectors say that marriage and more carceral penalties will stop you from bleeding out on the sidewalk.

Gay marriage didn't stop a club shooter's dad from being happy he wasn't gay. Don't say, don't tell repeals didn't stop the homophobic shooter or cop from getting a battery in his back enough to brutalize you. Queer existence is waiting for another post club, another shooter getting a gun for his 15th birthday. Even in progressive cities, ones queer folk move to so we can be more ourselves, aren't 100% safe.

We know this. The fact that we can't be unless the Pride parade is ousted from our veins. We can dissociate, crowd ourselves with those who get it in clubs and centers. But Twitter user number-whatever and pundits on Fox News still remind us that we are unholy. Joe Biden will still tell his Republican colleagues that our rights can be negotiated out of existence.

Religious fundamentalism, which still forcibly runs the USA, will legislate us out of existence, or tell clerks and priests they can deny our already fickle rights. The streets, which are home to many LGBTQIA+ youth, still hurl epithets at us. In childhood I was told I was unfitting for the home of God, as if God themselves would approve of their followers condemning people. False prophets still tell queer people we must be less of ourselves to get into heaven.

And all of this won't stop the doctor's office from calling you the wrong name. It won't stop trans people from not being real in some eyes, usually when you're thin and white, and being what's wrong with America and others?

Transness is wanting fewer people to miss and instead getting pronoun pins. It's wanting forcibly elected leaders and @ names hiding behind cartoon avatars to stop worrying about what genitalia is in your pants. It's wanting many Americans to stop making your existence a one-up, a ploy to get the votes of losers who are too drunk on ignorance to learn anything about trans existence.

Transness is 49 lawmakers in 49 states wanting your carnage and spirit dead because you dare to be yourself, is being wrongfully accused of mutilating children, is knowing bigots and those who’ve fallen prey to bigot propaganda want you rotting in the ground they'll eventually mow over to build condos. You are a condo's base, the cold earth of misrepresented bodies that gets told its worth by government bodies if you are trans.

Try existing with all three. Try knowing that your state and your slice of Black heaven wants you dead and forgotten like all the other Black, queer, and trans people who didn't survive to get out like me.

Every day that I wake up able to live the life I do, I know that I'm walking unchartered territory, the newly self-acquired land of my body. I'm breaking into expressions and ways of being intentionally axed from history. I'm being everything I am as openly as I can because I want to do something better than just survive. I owe it to the ancestors that insisted on my living.

Still, there are many things out of my control—my childhood, the ways that I must interact with the places I call home for now and my family understanding me fully, among them.

But as long as I'm breathing, I'm challenging the deeply ingrained colonialist norms of gender and sexuality. 400 plus years after the original American mess-making and white supremacy is still fragmenting me for my people. I rebuke that in the name of whatever God exists.

What could my hometown, Texas, and the world look like if Black, queer, and trans people didn't fear every day that we will perish? What if those fears, mandated by law and those who claim to be our God-fearing loved ones, didn't exist? What God has told folk it’s okay, encouraged even, to treat other people so terribly? What God has told homophobes, transphobes, racists, and Bible thumpers to limit centuries of love? When will queer and trans people be seen as citizens in this place stolen from Mexico that we call Texas?

Will many Texas politicians ever gain a conscience? Aren't queer and trans people—people who simply have a different experience of gender and sexuality than our cishet counterparts—deserving of comfort, safety, and promise like everyone else? When will trans people be cleared of the long-standing lie that we are enemies of women and girls?

Through all this terror, I'm 90% sure there will never be a Texas without me. A handful of people can make this state livable if they fell out of love with bigotry and greed. Though we are a long way from it, and a long way from queer and trans people feeling fully safe in any place in the USA, it isn't out of reach.

I want the next generation of queer and trans kids to be celebrated, not made to feel abnormal. And they will be, when we are honest about our problems, and artists, policymakers, cultural workers, and people in all cities work with us to solve it. I'd love to exist in this place and be Black, queer, and trans without it being an issue.

I'd love a Texas where I can go to the doctor and pee and play sports like every cishet does without the added layers of sorrow. I'd love to see my family, be close to my family, get apologies from my family. I'd love to live in a stop six where I can say there will never be a Texas without trans people, and all the beautiful Black faces that populate the area, my area, believe me.

How would my love for other beings, for my hometown and state be if we could truly be out? These are the questions that keep me writing and chasing the past. Everything I am is of God.

BLAIR HODGES: That's KB Brookins reading from the memoir, Pretty.

KB, thanks for that. I wanted to start with that long excerpt because it does such a good job of putting these three different parts of your identity—which, by the way, is even bigger than those three things, but really those three act as anchors around which everything else sort of circulates—I wanted to start there so that could really get a sense for who you are. You said there's about a 90% chance that you'd stick in Texas. What does that other 10% look like?

KB BROOKINS: Funny. So I am kind of a career Texan in the sense that I'm born, raised, and based here. I've only ever lived in this state. And surely, you know, as many people probably have thought throughout their lives, they're like, what would life be if I just moved away, right? If I just moved to another state, moved to another country, whatever, what would that be? Because I am who I am, I have had these issues, this complicated relationship with my home state in the sense that, like, I know it's a lot of love and beautiful people and really great activism, really great art here, but I'm also like, you know, surely there is a place where I wouldn't have to work as hard to be who I am.

And that's constantly been kind of a back and forth with me. Especially, like, as I've been an adult and have had the liberty in some ways to move away at different points in my life. I think there are a lot of forces trying to push people like me out, trying to push my friends out, right?

We make do with what we have. I really want to combat the idea of Texas being—and the Bible Belt in general—being this unsalvageable area of the US. And I try to point out, even in the excerpt I just read, the issues that are happening in Texas are not just happening in Texas, right? And are just not happening in the South even, either. Like just last year, which I kind of pulled in that quote, forty-nine states had at least one lawmaker trying to pass some kind of anti-trans law, right? So no matter where I go, it'll just be a place with new issues.

BLAIR HODGES: It's especially tough because we don't have good federal protections that apply across states.

KB BROOKINS: Right.

BLAIR HODGES: And I also see irony in a place like Texas—and I'm interviewing you from Utah, which is similar in that the Utah government here is all about “local control,” right? It resists federal oversight. And of course, the irony there is they become their own sort of kingdom. Because there are pockets in Utah where queer people can have more or less great lives, where they don't necessarily bump into the difficulties here in Salt Lake City, for example, but they're still bound by the laws of the state.

And so I imagine Texas has pockets of good and pockets where it's better or worse or more difficult or less. But because of that overriding state control, the state gets to decide. So it becomes its own “federal” control point for people like you and for people who are in the minority.

KB BROOKINS: Right. Absolutely.

BLAIR HODGES: That's just frustrating.

KB BROOKINS: Yeah. I mean, Austin, which is where I live currently, is the third queerest city in the U.S. right? It has the third largest queer population.

BLAIR HODGES: Wow, I didn't know that.

KB BROOKINS: Yeah. So it's like, you know, we have our pockets. We do live here and exist and thrive here. It's just a matter of, like you're saying, folks at the state level deciding that they are God, really. Even in more queer friendly cities like Austin or Dallas or Houston or San Antonio. And notice that all the big cities in Texas are generally more liberal, right? Yeah, it's just overreach. And trying to strip us of the progress we are making.

 

A Forgotten Past – 12:44

 

BLAIR HODGES: So you say you wanted to start your memoir off—I mean, I laughed right at the outset. You're like, “I really wanted to start with a great sob story. Something to really pull readers heartstrings and make us want to keep reading.” You're like, this would be a great way to start a book.

But you said you had a problem, and it’s that you don't actually remember a lot about your childhood. You couldn't just conjure some really early memory to mind and that actually, that lack of memories is kind of scary for you.

KB BROOKINS: Yeah, absolutely. It's like, you know, offset of like, PTSD, right? When you experience something traumatic, sometimes your brain goes into like, “I want to protect you” mode. And sometimes the thing your brain knows to do, to protect you, is just to wipe the memory.

And it's so silly because I'm like, oh, I want to write nonfiction! And then it's just like, blank spaces. So then I'm like, well, I want to write creative nonfiction because I can spin those memories in a creative way and create hopefully a compelling story for the reader, and also kind of just pluck the things I do remember and tell you how they hit me now as a grown adult.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. You say in the past, you were likely to kind of just make up some stories. We're talking from birth up to age 17, no memories. We're not talking about when you were like 3 or 4 years old, when people might not have memories. We're talking about a lot of your youth.

Do you remember any of the fictions you came up with?

KB BROOKINS: Yeah. I’m adopted, and I was really conflicted, I guess, about not knowing who my birth parents were. So I'd be like, yeah, I know my birth parents. My birth dad did this and this and this. Meanwhile, I don't know his name. I don't know anything about this guy, right? But it's just that real want for these kinds of memories that my peers had. So I'm like, well, let me just make my own memories then.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. And these adoptive parents you had, they were church going folks. Tell us a little bit about that family you were raised in, your adoptive family.

KB BROOKINS: My adoptive parents are Fort Worthians. My dad actually was born in a small east Texas city, but like, only knows Fort Worth as the place he was raised. They graduated the same high school I graduated at, which was the only Black high school in the area. Lots of history in my hometown for that reason. Like, all of my extended family are also from Fort Worth and all of them kind of like stayed local too.

Both of my parents came from very Christian Baptists, some missionary Baptist kind of backgrounds. My mom played the piano in church and my dad was a preacher.

So like I was the kind of kid that was in church on Wednesday, on Sunday, some Saturdays, you know, like all the time. And was kind of expected to be memorized in the Bible type of thing.

BLAIR HODGES: They did provide you with a bunch of Barbie dolls though, right? [laughter]

KB BROOKINS: Yeah.

BLAIR HODGES: And like pretty much everybody, at least of our generation and even to today, we were told what gender we are from birth, right? There's an announcement. We have, you know, you're a girl. This is what society told you, and this is what your family embraced.

So you have these Barbie dolls and you have a memory of playing with them kind of in your own way, you had to kind of play with them in a secret way. And even as a kid you kind of knew you were being secretive, which is really interesting. What was your childhood play like with these dolls?

KB BROOKINS: Yeah. It's so interesting how products definitely place. Because I've even read other memoirs where they talk about Barbie dolls. Like, people who grew up as girls, in my instance, you know, a thing that little girls often did was play house with Barbie dolls.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

KB BROOKINS: And in my head, as a young person, I was like, well, I'm playing house, but I'm also kind of working out my feelings that I don't know how to express, right? When I was 4, I didn't have the best grasp on the English language, right? You're not the most emotionally intelligent person, but you do have a sense of self, even that early, right?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

KB BROOKINS: In the sense that, you kind of know, okay, I'm a girl, right? And this is where I live, and those kinds of things. Maybe you even know how to spell your name, that kind of stuff. So I was already kind of having these ideas as a really young person of, like, “okay, I have these things that people have told me, but, like, what if they were something else?” you know? I was kind of playing with Barbie dolls in the way that, like, little boys play with Transformers, where they're like, oh, let me take the head off. And, like, now it's another doll, you know?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

KB BROOKINS: But I'm like, okay, what if Barbie just, like, never wore clothes, you know? I put mine in the splits all the time. Like, was just doing all kinds of weird stuff with them because I'm like, well, they're kind of genderless in the sense that, like, yes, Barbie has all of this pink kind of feminine, whatever. But it's like, they don't have a body in the same way that we do. So, yeah, I was just kind of working out the boundaries of what I had been told at a really young age, like, through action figures, Barbie dolls, et cetera.

 

Gender Police and Fitting In – 17:57

 

BLAIR HODGES: And you're doing this with toys because, like you said, you don't really have the higher concepts about what all this means. And you were experiencing a lot of the gender policing kids go through. You describe a moment when you were five years old, your mom was driving you home from school, and she tells you, “Close your legs, girl. There are men around.”

Talk about some of these rules you start getting policed by and how those came across to you.

KB BROOKINS: Absolutely. You know, I was a spreader. Like, I just love to open my legs super far. And then people would be like, oh, because you're a girl, you have to close your legs. But like, specifically saying there are men around is such a loaded statement. Because it's like, why am I as a little girl responsible for men, right, and their reactions to like a body.

BLAIR HODGES: At that age, they're not even going to really go into detail about that either. They just sort of leave it out there. Like you're supposed to know there are men around, so, okay.

KB BROOKINS: In my head I was like, well, I live with my daddy every day and he's a man. Like, why should I care? But yeah, it's just really early. You’re kind of told as a young girl your body could be the thing that gets you in trouble, could be the thing that like people look at that they aren't supposed to look at.

So you're told to do this kind of defensive thing. And I'm like, on the backside of that, instead we should be asking boys and men why they can't control themselves. Why do they see bodies as something to be violated?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. I think that's an important turnaround you call out. Back then you'd ask your mom to explain. But you wish you could sort of go back in time and be like, actually, maybe dad should explain this. And in the course of having to do that, maybe some things could change a little bit.

KB BROOKINS: Absolutely. Exactly. And I mean, I was one of those little kids that would be like, why? Why? If you've ever been around one of those two-year-olds or four-year-olds, they're like, “why” to everything. And it's so annoying to the adults in the room. But I'm like, I'm genuinely curious, why is this in place. And there are so many things like that, that are everyday life that we don't question enough.

BLAIR HODGES: And the lesson to you, I think the biggest lesson was that the way you existed in your body needed to bend around the expectations and presence of men.

KB BROOKINS: Right.

BLAIR HODGES: Being gendered as a girl meant very specific things about who you could be, who you're supposed to be, and how you could even position yourself in a chair. That's a lot of control; that's a lot of power over a little kid.

KB BROOKINS: Yeah. You know, I'm hoping at the beginning of the book to just like point out the things that we maybe don't think enough about that are pretty commonplace. Like I would say like “there are men around.” That's not something specific to me. I've heard other people say they were also told that as little girls, right?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. And you also say it was generally hard for you to find a place to fit in at school. You describe yourself as being kind of a larger kid, kind of built, and you dealt with kids who would tease you and refer to you as being manly. How did you start to see yourself in relation to how other kids started to relate to you? Because kids police each other too. It's not just the adults.

KB BROOKINS: Right. And kids learn it from TV or like the other adults that are in their lives. Right?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

KB BROOKINS: Because I don't like to believe the idea of a six-year-old waking up and being like, I'm gonna bully people today. Usually that's something enforced by many other forces in our lives. I think gender is not just a thing about clothes and even not just a thing of how you carry your body. It's also a thing of size—like fatness and body weight, people even gender that, right? And in the book I'm trying to point out the fact that there is kind of like a picture of womanhood. It’s like, you know, a thin, dainty person.

So when you're not thin and dainty, people try to even strip your “womanness” away from you. And I would think even on the kind of like “male” side, having a bigger body is even different than, you know, maybe someone with a six-pack and whatnot. So we even gender our bodies based on kind of what they look like in that way.

BLAIR HODGES: Right, you also saw as a kid, boys being policed and schooled about gender. There's one story you tell that's, I mean, I really felt it. There's a dad who yelled at his son to knock off—I think the son was crying or something and the dad just really laid into him about it and it's heartbreaking.

KB BROOKINS: Absolutely. And I saw that quite a bit. And even now when I see it, I try to point it out, where it's like, oh, okay, this five-year-old boy is crying and people are like, “you need to suck that up.” And I'm like, why? Why does he need to suck that up?

Asking more questions about the conventions we've decided on, like what being a man is for a little boy who maybe is not even potty trained, right? Even for a little boy who doesn't know his timetables, you're telling him and trying to put him in the position of a man.

And why does a man need to be in a position of never crying? You know, never showing that emotion? Because even if you think that makes someone tougher, those emotions come out in other ways, Often, other volatile ways. Whereas okay, if someone wants to cry, I’d rather let them cry than you know, go on an angry tirade 10 years from now or whatever, because they were never able to cry.

BLAIR HODGES: Or they can't have a conversation about it. There's a name for this. It's in another episode, and I forget the name. [Ed: The name is “alexithymia.” Ironically I couldn’t think of it…] But there's actually a condition where men can't put labels to some of their feelings. They literally don't have the language because of the way they were brought up, the things they were taught.

And so therapists are finding one of the earliest interventions they're doing with some of these men with really strong emotional problems is to start just giving them a basic vocabulary about different things they feel. So it's something that lasts throughout life.

 

The Cis Agenda – 23:44

 

BLAIR HODGES: For you, the pressure continued to build as you got older. And I'm thinking about when you were nine years old. This is really funny how you put this. You say people talk about “the gay agenda,” but you were nine years old and didn't have an agenda. But there was definitely a really big cultural agenda being put down on you, speaking of agendas. It was the rumors you heard about a singer, and these rumors started to make you think even harder about what gender meant to you.

Talk about what happened here when you were nine.

KB BROOKINS: So I was really captivated by this singer when I was younger called Ciara, which, shoutout to Ciara. She's still doing the singing thing now.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

KB BROOKINS: And she was what I would call in the early 2000s the pinnacle of the video vixen type of Black woman. These washboard abs, and she's dancing all over the place and singing and blah, blah, blah.

And then it was like, all of a sudden, I really don't even know where it came from, people started accusing her of being intersex, right? And then all of a sudden, I saw these kids at my school saying, oh, all of a sudden she's not desirable to me anymore. Because there's this, what I would think, thinly veiled transphobia being directed her way. And this rumor caught wind. So much that she talked about it in her interview with this entity called 106 and Park.

And it was a palpable discomfort with her talking about it, with the host talking about it. And yeah, she, I think, shut it down by saying you know, “There are always people that are going to be trying to bring you down”— you know?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

KB BROOKINS: —“when you get to this level of fame,” and whatever. And, you know, watching that on TV as a young person, I'm like, oh, people are bringing you down by accusing you of being intersex. That's interesting. Right?

BLAIR HODGES: And also, can I say it's interesting, because she didn't say “oh, gross, how dare you? Like, that's not me.” But it also doesn't sound like she said, “Well, if I was, what would be the big deal? Like, who cares?” It seems like she was just, I don't know, maybe she was trying to thread a needle here by not being down on folks who are intersex, but also not necessarily being positive about either.

KB BROOKINS: Right, right, right. She was just like, “I feel like you're trying to bring me down by doing this.” And then like, also at the same time, there would be people being accused of being gay, blah, blah, and they'd be like, “You're just trying to bring me down.” And I'm like, it's just so weird that y’all think of being queer or trans or in that community as someone trying to pray on your downfall, right?

BLAIR HODGES: Like, it's a negative thing about you, if that was the case.

KB BROOKINS: Yeah, yeah. But when you see things on TV like that as a young person, it does kind of shape your worldview, shape how you see yourself, because you're like, dang. Well, if I was gay, people would think that was a negative thing.

And, you know, it wasn't just that. That was just one example of that. But there have been other examples of TV shows that I rewatched now that I had watched as a kid. And I notice transphobia or queerphobia was just the norm. And luckily, we're moving into a place within, you know, TV and movies where that's not the case.

But just, yeah. Reflecting on that moment, I think it was just so interesting how the desirability of someone can just plummet based on something as innocuous as this.

 

A Weird Middle School Kid – 27:12

 

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. So as a kid, you're negotiating and trying to figure out your own gender identity, but you're also seeing how it's playing out at church and with your family and at school and in popular culture. And by the time you're in middle school, you call yourself a “weird kid.” [laughs] Those are your words.

You're wearing skinny jeans and rhinestone belts, and you say you kind of have the aura of an emo kid. And you stayed to yourself a lot.

But there was this moment when you were 13 when a popular girl crashed into you and told you to get out of the way and called you a gay slur. And at that age, you didn't quite know what that word meant. You only knew that that was bad. Was hearing language like that at school a common occurrence? And how were you making sense of it at 13?

KB BROOKINS: Well, yeah, it was middle school. Middle school was kind of the worst of times, right? Everyone's just all of a sudden, like. So, not all of a sudden. I mean, I think it's gradual. Even in elementary school, where you're aware of your social status you're trying to maintain whatever social capital you have, and then that leads to bullying, that leads to cliques, all of that stuff.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

KB BROOKINS: And, yeah, she ran into me randomly and then called me this word. And I didn't know what it meant, but I knew it was bad just based on everybody's reactions around me. Like, everyone was just like, “gasp!” Or like, you know, “oh, my gosh, she said that to you?” And I was just like, “man.”

But I think I could infer that it had something to do with queerness, because at the time other people in my life were also projecting that onto me. Even though I didn't necessarily know what being gay meant, I had not had any, you know, romantic relationships in a real way at that age. So I was just like, “Y’all are telling me something about myself that I have not even had the space to explore.” And also, people are actively trying to shut it down, even though I'm like, nothing's happened. I haven't kissed a girl. None of that stuff. So, yeah.

BLAIR HODGES: And you weren't even thinking about it much. How did you go from that, to starting to identify at first as a butch lesbian? That was kind of the first, I guess, identity you embraced as you started to not resist queer identities.

KB BROOKINS: Yeah, I think that was just language and an identity that was available to me at the time. You know, I met a butch lesbian for the first time when I was 12, and I was just like, “oh, I didn't know people could dress like this. I didn't know girls could cut their hair, like X, Y, and Z,” right?

And sometimes just someone existing in front of you is enough to show you possibility or at least show you an option of being. So I was like, well, I definitely know I'm not straight, right? Once I started getting attraction in a real way to other people. And then also I was like, I know I'm not straight, and I also don't like wearing girl clothes. And, as always, girl clothes. And that's always been the case since I was a young person. So I was like, maybe this identity is the one that fits.

BLAIR HODGES: But, yeah, there needs to be sort of these examples and people trying things out for us to find our place. And everybody kind of does this, whether they're queer or straight or whatever. I mean, whether you find yourself with the kind of people that listen to a certain kind of music, or you're a band kid, or you're a choir geek, or you're in sports or whatever.

 

From Church Kid to Butch Lesbian to Trans – 30:15

 

BLAIR HODGES: There's all kinds of different ways we find our way in the world. Yours was more wrapped up in complicated gender questions because, as you said, there were rumors about you. And this caused problems at church, too, right? Like, people heard rumors about you, and if you were gay there, that would be a problem.

KB BROOKINS: Absolutely. Because, you know, I went to the kind of church which—I now know as an adult, right, not all churches are this way, but I went to the kind of church that really was just like, “being gay is a sin,” kind of thing. So I knew, even if that was how I identify, I had to keep that a secret within the church world.

And also, before I even started dressing butch, you know, when I was wearing these ridiculous emo outfits, people would be just like, “this is not becoming of a young church girl.” So it was a whole thing.

But I was like, I also can't change myself. Like, I've tried that. You know, I've tried to pray it away, whatever “it” is, and it's just not working. So then I just, you know, swung super left, and by 10th, 11th grade, I was like, okay, well, I'm a butch lesbian. I'm the exact opposite, right? And that's just what it is.

And at my high school, it was really like, you were a butch lesbian, or you were femme lesbian, or you were straight. Like, those were the only options. There was just no room for bisexuality, which is ridiculous in hindsight. And then it was also like if you were a butch, you had to be like stone butch or people would question that. And I myself have always, just like personality wise, not necessarily been like strong masculine. I've just been kind of like flowing. Not necessarily in the middle, maybe like farther masculine, but like not so far there. So even within that kind of like very small, as in like 30 people, lesbian bubble, they were still just like, “you don't fit here.”

BLAIR HODGES: But yeah, there's boundary policing just all around. The gatekeeping that can go on. What years was this? I don't remember what years you were in high school.

KB BROOKINS: Late 2000s, early 2010s.

BLAIR HODGES: Okay, cool. How did you start to identify as trans then? How did you make this transition from thinking of yourself as a butch lesbian to thinking like, ah, maybe that actually doesn't fit for me.

KB BROOKINS: Probably college. So my college, shout-out Texas Christian University, had what people at the time called Gay Straight Alliance, but a lot of people have now renamed them to like Gender and Sexuality Collective or something.

BLAIR HODGES: Cool.

KB BROOKINS: Yeah, yeah. So then like I met through the couple of meetings that I went to—because I was not consistent in any way in most things in college, a couple of meetings I went to, I like met people who were queer in different ways than me and then also people who were trans.

And again, it was a matter of like just knowing that it was possible. I met a non-binary person for the first time probably when I was maybe like 22. And in my head I was like, okay, what does this mean? But I know I can't ask this person, so I'm going to ask the Internet. And then I'm like looking in the Internet and I'm like, oh my God, I didn't even know this identity existed, right?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

KB BROOKINS: So now I'm just thinking about myself like, oh, okay, that language fits better than what I've been doing over here. Because I knew it wasn't quite a fake fit for me, but I didn't know why necessarily. I got very lethargic about being a girl. Like, okay, if this is what I have to be, then fine, I'll do it in my own way.

But then I was like, oh, well, these other folks around me have decided I don't have to accept these kind of boxes given to me. I'm going to jump out of the box and I'm going to do something else. So yeah, it was just a matter of exposure for me.

BLAIR HODGES: And it involved social transition and also medical transition. So your appearance, hair, you know, hormones, pronouns, all of this stuff. Your voice is going to start to change. But you also pursued surgery, top surgery. So this is the removal of breast tissue.

And, you know, that's a pretty big step. It's not cheap. And so it's interesting to hear you talk about how maybe you didn't experience long-term body dysmorphia. For some people, it's really serious, I mean, it can really affect mental health. And other people make that choice as more of an affirmation of who they are. It doesn't seem like that urgent kind of a necessity. And it sounds like maybe that's kind of where you were at with that? How did you make the decision?

KB BROOKINS: Yeah. I don't want to say I didn't have body dysmorphia. I want to say it was shown in little ways, like maybe in things I avoided. Like, I avoided hugging people, for example, because I'm like, oh, I don't like that compression on my chest, right?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

KB BROOKINS: One thing I especially didn't like is when people would be trying to see like, oh, are you a boy or a girl? They just look at my chest. So I felt like that was an identifier immediately that I just didn't like.

So looking into top surgery, I think it was a thing honestly that I kind of avoided for a while because I knew it would be expensive, and I knew it would be a super invasive surgery.

And like, you know, being in trans community and talking to other trans people, it's just like, you know, I work a blue-collar job. Like, I don't have the time to take off, all that stuff.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

KB BROOKINS: So I started kind of doing chest binders for a while just hoping that like, okay, if I just make my chest flat with something like a gc2b binder, maybe that's enough. But it's like, binding long term really does do some like, damage to your body also. Or at least like, if you're like me and don't follow the instructions, which they're like, “don't bind for more than X amount of hours per day.”

But I would just be wanting to wear mine all the time because I'm like, well, this is the one time where I feel like people at least pause before gendering me and don't misgender me all the time. So it just became apparent, you know, after maybe a few interactions and after a year or two of binding that, I was like, I have to make this work, right? I have to just corral the money.

 

Stop Postponing Your Happiness – 36:32

 

BLAIR HODGES: Okay, so here's a question. And tell me if this is a transphobic question too, right? You didn't like being "clocked," like when people mistakenly believed you were a woman. And so you could change that through transition. “If I change the way my body looks, people aren't going to look to ‘figure out’ who I ‘really am,’” quote, unquote.

If that social context changed, if people weren't assuming your sex and gender based on appearance all the time, people clocked less, do you think you'd still want to have changed your body by undergoing top surgery and so forth?

And like I said, is that a transphobic question?

KB BROOKINS: I don't think it's a transphobic question. I do think, you know, I push back a lot on the idea of like, “Oh, I grew up in the wrong body.” I think that's kind of an assumption that people make of trans people. And I'm like, no. Not wrong body. Just wrong world.

Like, people are immediately gendering people based on what they look like, based on how their voice sounds, whether or not they have facial hair, do they or do they not have a flat chest, do they or do they not have curves? Like, we just assume these things about strangers as soon as we meet them.

And I was in my head at the time, “Okay, if I just eliminated one thing, maybe people would at least question,” right? But then literally that same day I got my first binder, someone was like, “Right this way, ma’am,” or something like that. And I was just like, yeah, that's not enough, you know?

And then, even post-op surgery, I had to really give up my ideas of passing, right? Even now, most people in my day-to-day life assume I'm a man. And it doesn't bother me as much as maybe it would have bothered me like five years ago, because I'm just like, I have a stable sense of self. Me and my community, they understand me.

And also I know that I feel good in my body. Top surgery is something I'll never regret because I even just like hugging people, right, without thinking twice about that. Like, it's something we all should be able to do. We all should be able to feel like our bodies are things that we don't want to distance ourselves from.

So ultimately it was the right decision for me, and it should be just the decision of individual folks as to whether or not they want to do any gender affirming care. But yes, you know, I do think if people stop gendering folks, if that was a cultural thing we could agree on, right—

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

KB BROOKINS: —stop gendering folks based on what we perceive their bodies to be, I think that would do a lot, honestly.

BLAIR HODGES: Okay, thanks for that. I'm also wondering if you could go back to meet pre-surgery KB, if you could go meet with pre-social transition, pre-medical transition, if you could go back and give yourself advice, what did that person need to hear that you wish they knew starting out? Because there's a lot of unknowns there and surgery can be a scary thing.

KB BROOKINS: Stop waiting is what I would tell my older [former] self. Like I waited a long time to do the steps of my transition because I was too worried about what people would think, what my family would think, you know, what my workplace would think, what X, Y and Z would think, what jobs I wouldn't be able to get after that.

And it's just, you figure all that stuff out, you know?

And I feel just like much more like myself and at home in my body. I feel much more at home with the people that I consider friends now and the people that I consider family now. And like I was just so worried about maintaining things that I didn't necessarily need to maintain. So I would tell my older self, do not postpone your own happiness because of other people's comfort.

BLAIR HODGES: That's good advice from KB Brookins. And we're talking about their book, Pretty, a new memoir. And KB is also an award-winning Black, queer, and trans writer, cultural worker, and visual artist from Texas. Their writing has been featured in Poets.org, HuffPost, Teen Vogue, and other places. Their debut poetry collection, Freedom House is an award-winning book that you'll also want to check out.

 

Being Misperceived as a Black Man – 40:33

 

BLAIR HODGES: So KB we're kind of at a point of the interview where things seem pretty good in your life. Like you've transitioned, you're talking about the positives, and people might expect a story like this to have a pretty neat resolution. You experienced incongruity with your gender. You took steps to make that go away, to become more of who you are, and now you live happily ever after.

As we find out in your book, it has not really been that simple for you. In fact, you say that in the past two years—here's a quote from you. “These past two years, ones where I've been perceived by the gender-ignorant eye as a Black man, have been the hardest, most traumatizing years of my life.”

What's going on?

KB BROOKINS: Well, simply put, my transness comes with Blackness, right? And like, the perception of Black men is not—like, overall within the larger USA culture, is not a positive one. You know, I started to kind of see the way people saw me and treated me change, right, as I got farther and farther along in my medical transition.

It's like, okay, all of a sudden I actually can't show anger without people around me thinking they're now in danger. Right? Or like, I can't show really any emotion that's not, like, complete happiness without that causing an issue, whether it be in the workplace and, interpersonal relationships, et cetera.

And I was kind of like, well, why is that? And also this kind of like—though I never felt particularly like a girl or a woman, all of a sudden I feel like I was put in the position of an adversary against women. Yeah. It was just a weird kind of social phenomenon where I'm like, oh, now I am the enemy, you know, or I am something to be afraid of. So I was like, just processing those things, you know, with other Black trans men and Black trans-masculine people.

And it really ultimately is like a matter of gender, right? A matter of people perceiving gender as it pertains to Black men as something negative, right? And that impacting going from a Black womanhood to a Black manhood is not just like, “Oh, I went from being dainty to now I'm privileged,” right? It's just like one type of violence to another.

And really, processing that with friends and other folks in my community and through the book, my hope is that other people who have transitioned in the way that I have—who are expecting just bounds and bounds of privilege, and who were instead met with this kind of new social dilemma—I'm hoping they see what I saw newly, just like, with fresh eyes.

And also, I was really trying to find a book when I was kind of going through those earlier stages of transition and noticing these things, and I wasn't able to find one. So then I just kind of started writing things down.

BLAIR HODGES: I'm so glad you did because in producing this podcast I've seen the same thing. I'm trying to find more trans-masc books. There's really not a whole lot of stuff out there, and especially not that deal directly with being Black in America and the things you're bringing. It's a really important book, and we need more of them, but I'm glad that this one exists.

 

Toxic Masculinity – 43:54

 

BLAIR HODGES: I also wondered, you talked about being perceived more as a Black man and the kind of issues that could bring up, but it also seemed like there were times when you experienced toxic masculinity coming out in yourself in the way you related to people.

There's a confessional angle in the book where you talk about a difficult relationship you had with someone called Gina, and it seemed like you learned more about toxic masculinity from your experience in that relationship.

KB BROOKINS: Yeah, absolutely. Masculinity is a social construct, right? It's not a thing that is owned by men. It's a thing that, even when you are butch, like I was, and consider yourself a woman, like I did during that time of that relationship, you can still perpetuate toxic masculinity and reinforce it.

So, yeah, in talking about that relationship in this book, you know, I intentionally decided to do that because I felt like, well, if I'm writing a book about masculinity, I'm writing a book about gender. I'm writing a book about race. It feels like, why would I not also include the moments where I have maybe fed into these social conventions? So, yeah, I think, you know, sometimes you are a person that is just pantomiming the masculinity that you've seen around you, and then you lose things, right? Like, there should be consequences to one's actions, and the consequence in that case was that I lost that relationship.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

KB BROOKINS: And I think deciding after I was dumped, to think more about that rather than deciding to make myself the victim ultimately makes you a better person.

And that piece was also the hardest one for me to write.

BLAIR HODGES: Oh.

KB BROOKINS: I turn to writing because I want to figure out things I feel like I haven't figured out. And sometimes I have a hard time relaying shame on the page without making it a “woe is me.” Like, nobody wants to read that. Right?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, that's the hard thing, is to not make yourself into some kind of pitiable creature or something.

KB BROOKINS: Right, right. It's like, I don't need you to feel sorry for me. I need you to see what I have done so we get out of this idea that people can never change. That toxic masculinity is just a virus that people just have for the rest of their lives, right?

And I'm not saying I've been healed from this or whatever. It's like constantly growing and learning. But I think openly talking about those things empowers others, and I've seen this, others around you to then admit to their faults. Because if you can't admit to your faults how can you ever be better?

And how can you also be a person preaching these ideas of “let's dismantle this” when you're not actually dismantling it in your personal life? So, yeah.

BLAIR HODGES: Are there particular behaviors you find yourself having to resist? What kind of toxic masculinity behaviors are you seeing in yourself, saying, actually, that's not what I want to do as it pertained to that relationship?

KB BROOKINS: Definitely just ownership. Feeling like you own someone, like they are yours and yours only, and you have to regulate their perception of you by, I don't know, I think there was a level of unintentional but nonetheless manipulation I was doing in that relationship just to try to keep this person in my good graces or trying to, you know, keep them on my side kind of thing.

Whereas it's like, you have to let people make their own decisions and you have to not try to gaslight them into seeing you a certain way. If you want them to see you as a good person, then you have to be a good person. If you want them to see you as the love of their lives, well, I don't know if you necessarily can make that determination.

You have to let people make those decisions on their own. And I guess seeing partners and seeing people in your lives as not things to be owned. And like, letting people live their own lives, even if that means they break up with you, right? I think is healthy and necessary. Right?

 

Trans Healthcare and Trans Fatigue – 48:04

 

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. Another part of the book that seemed really personal was your discussion about navigating reproductive care now as a transmasc non-binary person, some of the difficulties. What do you wish was different in the system when you have to go seek reproductive care? What are the obstacles you're hitting and what do you wish was different?

KB BROOKINS: I guess I wish trans healthcare wasn't treated as if it's like, a specialty. I wish trans healthcare was just the norm. Because I'm like, trans healthcare is not the same thing as going to a podiatrist because you need a foot doctor, right? It's not the same thing as going to, you know, a physical therapist, X, Y and Z.

It's like, no, this should be a thing that's just ingrained in all care. If you want to be a place that serves people right, you need to know the ins and outs of people. And too many times, as I'm relaying in this book, I have to go to a person who's certified in transcare or who's LGBTQ inclusive.

And even with LGBTQ inclusivity, I can't always trust that, because sometimes people will be like, you know, “I've went to one ally training and now I'm an LGBT inclusive doctor.” And I'm just like, that's not true.

BLAIR HODGES: I read a pamphlet.

KB BROOKINS: Yeah. It's like, that's not true. And, you know, I think it's a palpable discomfort sometimes that I feel with providers talking to me about my health care, talking to me about just regular things that I have to get done just like any other person.

BLAIR HODGES: Cancer screenings, stuff like that.

KB BROOKINS: I just wish there was just like, “well, I feel uncomfortable because you feel uncomfortable,” you know? Like, expose yourself to different ways of being and that's on the bounds of race, gender, sexual orientation, all of those things. I just wish it was more common for people to just know the information and for me to not have to step into a doctor role to just tell people more about what my life is like.

BLAIR HODGES: And this is an important part of your book where you talk about trans fatigue and how to deal with it, because the extra things you have to do can really wear on a person, dealing with their assumptions about who you are.

Even going into that appointment, you're going to run into a receptionist who might be like, oh, hi, sir, are you here for your girlfriend? Like, stuff like this. And it takes that extra little bit of extra effort for you to be like, no, I'm here for myself. And now we gotta to do this whole thing. There's just these things that can wear you down over time, and they can add up, and when you add race to that, it becomes even more so.

There's the concept of weathering. There are actually physical negative effects that racism puts upon people and you're experiencing that with being trans and being black. So I thought it was helpful for you to specifically talk about trans fatigue and give real examples from it. I hope people check out the book so that they can see how these everyday experiences just wear on a person.

 

Are You Hopeful? – 51:07

 

BLAIR HODGES: The question I have is, as your book reaches people, as people hear more stories, as people get to know more people who are non-binary or who are trans, sometimes in the book you seem hopeful that we can look to a future when enough people will know so that the trans fatigue decreases. You won't run into as many obstacles anymore.

Sometimes you seem pretty hopeful about that and then other times not as hopeful. I wonder where you're at right now with that thinking, future-oriented, if you're optimistic about change or if you just think there's so much work to be done.

KB BROOKINS: Yeah. I had a conversation with another person not too long ago about this book. And they were saying, “I think you do a good job of like cataloging rage.” And I really do feel like books and creative writing is a place where I can actually feel those emotions without ridicule, without scorn, without violence being done to me.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

KB BROOKINS: Because when I'm in a doctor's office, I'm not actually like yelling and being like, “My pronouns are this,” like usually I'm just like, “okay, you know, they/them are like, oh, actually I am here for me…”

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. And by the way, the videos you see where someone does lose their sh*t, my heart goes out to those people. And I also know that for every viral video of a trans person finally just unloading on somebody, there's so many more people who suffer the indignity quietly.

KB BROOKINS: Right? Right. And I'm definitely the one that suffers the indignity quietly. So like when I do write, I'm telling you how I actually feel. Which I don't always feel empowered to do in my day-to-day life.

But so going back to hope, right? I feel really privileged to come from a lineage of people, my adoptive parents, who can still tell me stories about segregation. Like they still know how that felt, right? They still know what shops were here and for Black folks only, what X, Y and Z.

Like, there was a time in America where we thought this was just how it was going to be forever. There were times in America where we thought, you know, we would never get gay marriage. But culture changes over time. People change over time when they're given more information, when other people who are not just “the oppressed” also step in that role of education and disrupting harmful opinions, right?

And I think we're seeing a phenomenon of people trying to drag the U.S. back to the 1950s, because we have, you know, “progressed” too much. But regardless of those people, who are actually a fraction rather than the rule, and like, everyday people, regardless of those folks, we are still making progress, making headway. Like you can't even just say it's an age thing anymore, right? I'm explaining pronouns to people who are in their 50s, and they're getting it, you know, because they're open to getting it, right? So I think I have a lot of hope, you know, even in the moments where things feel bleak. I live in Texas. Like, all I have is hope, right?

I see people every day getting up, going to the Capitol, telling folks there—who are really committed to not hearing anything that's outside of their echo chamber, they're going to those folks and showing trans people are a part of Texas, and we always have been and we're not going anywhere.

Black folks are a part of Texas despite your anti DEI laws that you're trying to pass, right? X, Y and Z. So we're making do with what we can. And I'm also making do with what I can, as in retaining hope for a more hopeful future. Because there was a world in which I never saw trans people on TV, and now I do, right?

There was a world where someone could get away with saying something homophobic. Nothing happens now. People say homophobic things on TV, and usually there is at least a little outrage, you know, so things are changing, and they will continue to change regardless of, again, those people who are trying to drag us into the past.

BLAIR HODGES: I mean, I think the big pushback we're seeing right now, the rise in all these bills, is partly the outcome of the progress that's been made and is a symptom of that progress. If so, it can be a spur to further progress. It just requires people to use their voices, and it requires people to educate themselves and to learn and to be willing to keep pushing forward for more.

I think for me, one of the reasons I love doing the show is to just try to give people more ideas about how things could be different and to hear real people, people like you, people who are putting great books out, who are helping change the conversation, who are being visible and who are willing to express that hope. Because sometimes, hope is hard to come by. It's a precious commodity. And I appreciate that you're willing to share it.

KB BROOKINS: Absolutely. And I won't say I don't have days that are like, everything is horrible, you know?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

KB BROOKINS: But I get myself out of those days, I get up the next day, and I do what I can. I donate to the, you know, GoFundMe. I go to the rally. I write a sentence, you know, just about something that people would like to believe doesn't exist, like Black trans people in Texas, you know?

This book was a labor of love. It was a way of writing myself and my community into history. It's also a way that I've been able to connect with other people who also have the same experiences. You know, I get an email at least once a week from a stranger in some part of the world that's like, “Oh, you know, this helped me.” I really relate to this on so many levels.

And maybe they're not even Black and trans, you know, some of those people, maybe they are of other identities that have comparable experiences. Because you don't have to be queer to have experienced being othered. You don't have to be trans to experience medical dysfunction in the medical field. So, you know, I'm writing about things that feel specific but are universal. And the more that we talk about them, the closer that we can get to progress.

BLAIR HODGES: See, I love the fact that as a cisgender, hetero white dude in Utah, there were scenes in this book that connected with me on a personal level. I mentioned that scene of that dad correcting his son about his emotions. And my dad wasn't necessarily like that, but I got plenty of messages from people around me about what it meant to be a boy or what it meant to be a man. So there was much here for me to connect to.

And then also, the differences mattered just as much. I loved seeing things from your perspective because it reminds me what my perspective is, and that my perspective is just that, a perspective. So seeing the differences, I think, is just as important. Your memoir is a great way for people to see where they're situated, too.

 Again, I want to remind people the memoir is called Pretty, by KB Brookins. You can learn more about it at KB's website, earthtokb.com. They also have a substack, Out of this World. You can check that out.

 

Regrets, Challenges, & Surprises – 58:27

 

BLAIR HODGES: KB, before we go, let's talk about regrets, challenges, and surprises. This is how we end every episode, where you get to reflect back on if there's anything you would change about the book now that it's in print, any regrets you have about it, or what the most challenging part of writing it was, or if there's something that surprised you in the course of putting it together, something you learned about yourself.

You can speak to any of those things. It's up to you.

KB BROOKINS: I mean, the challenges probably is just like, within the literary industry there is a real push to make work—Like the work that I create is niche, right? Where it's like, oh, this will only appeal to certain audiences. And from after I write the book that's all I can do, right?

And I can of course, like tweet about it. I can post on Instagram, TikTok, whatever about it. But it's really like, we do have people in these kinds of high places within literary magazines that can, you know, make a book, right? A certain review from a certain outlet can really like, launch a book, right? You get on Oprah's Book Club, you're good, you know? Stuff like that.

So I think I was definitely a bit challenged in the sense that, there are some things that are out of my control, and there are some perceptions that are still out there about Black trans lit, about Black queer lit, about queer lit, about trans lit, about Black lit, where people think they can only speak to this amount of people, right?

BLAIR HODGES: And yeah, how many Black, queer, trans, non-binary readers are there going to be if you're a publisher, and that's who you think is only going to read it then, right?

KB BROOKINS: Yeah, it's an issue. It's a real issue. And I think like, you know, I've been changed by reading perspectives that are the opposite, you know, totally different than mine. I think I've been enriched that way. So I don't know.

BLAIR HODGES: This is what bugs me, KB, because I think Black and queer people have already had to do this all along because the canon itself is so white and so straight and so usually male. I was talking to Kiese Laymon about this in another interview, where he says Black people had to read yourselves into the canon. He says that's what he’s been doing his whole life. Now Black writers are trying to get into that canon and everybody's acting surprised. Like, you can read a book by somebody that doesn't have the same color as you or something. Like, nobody should be surprised by that.

KB BROOKINS: It's so frustrating endlessly, you know? And that doesn't just extend to books. It's in movies and TV shows. People act like you can't make a completely Black cast unless you throw some white guy who's the mailman in there, you know, and it's like, that's not true.

BLAIR HODGES: Like the token white guy!

KB BROOKINS: It's like, not true.

BLAIR HODGES: You know, redheads—I'm a redhead. And like, in the 90s, they always threw a redhead in there too. So when you had “diversity,” the Burger King Kids club had like a Black kid, a kid in a wheelchair, a white kid, and like a redhead. [laughs]

KB BROOKINS: So interesting. Yeah. So I think there are definitely challenges associated with the book, kind of, on the promo side. And it's not necessarily like writing it as I was writing it, you know, it was really like me playing single’s tennis. I was thinking a lot of these thoughts. I was bouncing them to my editor, Errol McDonald, and he'd be like, “This is great. This is awesome. Keep going.” Or “this, I don't know about this. Maybe you want to cut it.” But also, a thing that I did enjoy about working with Knopf is that they did give me a lot of fun free rein. Like, this is a experimental book in the sense that I have poems, I have photographs, it's prose that is not so hand-holding about things that maybe people may not understand, right?

I have some footnotes here and there that are like, okay, I'm going to give you the definition of this, if it's not an agreed upon definition even within the queer and trans community, but otherwise I'm going to trust that you can go look this up, right?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

KB BROOKINS: If you want to know more about it. Like, I'm a poet, so, you know, I brought a poet's sensibility to a lot of this memoir, where in poetry, when I'm reading a poetry collection, the poet is expecting me to go look it up if I don't know.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

KB BROOKINS: So, yeah, I appreciate it that they gave me the space to create a book that felt like mine, you know? It's nonlinear and it has poetry, it has these different mediums, but they ultimately work together to tell you a story about queerness, about masculinity, about race.

BLAIR HODGES: So yes, again, Pretty is the book. And by the way, Kiese blurbed the book! I forgot about that, right there on the back cover. Terrific book.

And hey, KB, I appreciate you. There's so much more we could have talked about. I want people to know we really did only scratch the surface of this. There's a ton more in here. Thanks for taking the time and talking to us.

KB BROOKINS: Of course. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for these really good questions. I love to see how the book is landing and I'm really glad it landed with you.

BLAIR HODGES: Thank you.

 

Outro – 1:03:30

 

BLAIR HODGES: Thanks for listening to Relationscapes. There's more to come soon. For Pride month I'm releasing FOUR full episodes instead of our customary two, so you've got two extra episodes this month! If this episode meant something to you, let me know! Leave a rating or review in Apple Podcasts or Spotify. That's what Terruh did, they gave the show 5 stars in Apple Podcasts and said, "Every interview is rooted in compassion, curiosity, and respect for the guests and the topics discussed." Thank you Terruh! I know you've recommended the show to friends because your review says so, and I hope others will follow your lead! 

Mates of State provided our theme song. Relationscapes is part of the Dialogue Podcast Network. I'm journalist Blair Hodges and I'll see you again very soon.