KB Brookins is trying their hardest to be brave. The Black trans masculine poet and author of the collections How to Identify Yourself with a Wound and Freedom House just released their first memoir, Pretty. In the multimodal narrative of their life growing up in a classically strict and religious Black household in Fort Worth, Texas, KB takes several bold steps to address how the traumas of their upbringing have made them a complex being who is becoming ever more comfortable in their skin causing discomfort in oppressive environments. At the AWP 2024 conference in Kansas City, MO, I met up with KB for lunch and a great conversation. After some small talk in a mid-range American restaurant chain, we got into the heavy stuff of what it means to reconcile Blackness, transness, religion, and family in 21st-century America. 

Ashley-Devon

So KB, you’re primarily a poet. Why write a memoir? Why do we need to see the artist behind the curtain? 

KB

I think it was a matter of form. I started writing about my trans experience during the medical part of my transition in December 2020. It felt like I was watching the way that I was perceived change in real-time. I started feeling the effects of testosterone on my body, then I suddenly had hair, and my voice dropped multiple octaves. I also got top surgery at the same time. It was so jarring to see how people now perceive me as much more dangerous. I live in Austin, Texas, which is a mostly White city, and I know that has a certain level of things to do with it. But I think just in general, the perception of Black men is very stranger-danger driven. At that time, I really wished that I had some kind of literature about what the change is like for transmasculine people who are Black. There’s not a lot of literature out there about that experience. 

I started making personal journal entries, and then I found myself not relying on the things that I usually rely on in poetry, like rhyme or line or form. I was just writing, just getting it outta my system. Once I started reflecting on those things, I was like, “Oh, my current experience is related to my past experiences,” and there were all the signs that I had of “I’m clearly not a girl.” So, I think the form was memoir simply because the content came out as journal entries rather than poems, and I tend to try to trust myself with, however it comes out. That’s maybe how it needs to be. Then, I started learning more about the memoir form in general, pitching some essays to some places, placing said essays, and just getting invested in making this a throughline thing. I sent some things to my agent, we did some edits on what I had and realized it was a book. Then, I sent it to Knopf, and here we are. So, I think it just was a matter of trusting myself and writing myself into history, writing the experience that I and other trans masculine people have, that I know other people who grew up in Texas have and other Black queer people have had. I just tried to trust myself to write that in the most honest way possible. 

Ashley-Devon

That’s so beautiful! Although Pretty is a memoir and most of it is prose, you do have a lot of poems in there. Can you tell me about the choice to make the memoir multimodal? What is gained from presenting some stories in paragraphs, but others in poems? 

KB

That was a choice encouraged by my editor. Honestly, at first, I was like, “No, I’m writing a prose book. I don’t want to include poetry. I don’t want people to just see me as a poet.” But then I looked at other poems I had and found that a lot of poems that I was writing around that time were about the same subjects—growing up the way I grew up, becoming the person that I am, being in this place of people not actually seeing me as who I am, and trying to make peace with that. So, I thought that maybe I could try to mishmash them into a prose chapter, or I could just let them be poems. They’re all on the same subject, they’re all advancing what I’m trying to say, so why not? Once I showed my editor some poems, he was like, “Maybe put poems in between the prose parts?” At first, I said, “I don’t know,” to everything he said to me during the editorial process, but I thanked him for being patient with me. I ultimately decided that there are some things I don’t have in the prose parts that could be better represented in poems—things that are at a complexity level that would take too much effort to put into prose. So why not just let it be what it is? 

Ashley-Devon

So, it was really a collaborative process and urging from other people to keep going along that poetic journey within the memoir. Do you think that it paid off? 

KB

We’ll see; I’ll let the readers decide, but I think I’m happy with it. That is the thing that most matters. But still, I’m interested in getting feedback. 

Ashley-Devon

Wonderful, and so, thinking about the contents of the memoir itself—the story of your life—it begins with a rather intense separation. You’re put up for adoption as a toddler by your teenage birth mother and your grandmother. Unfortunately, the separation of mothers from their children is a status quo violence in the Black community. What are your thoughts on that and yourself as one embodiment of the continuously disrupted narrative of the African diaspora? How have those disruptions affected the memoir writing process? 

KB

Hmm. That’s a large question. It was very important for me to not have heroes or villains in the memoir writing process. So, I start with that because it’s the beginning of life, right? Still, I hope that as the memoir goes on, it’s clear that I don’t see my biological mother as a villain. I very much stay in contact with my bio grandma and mom. We’ve developed a relationship over time. I think it’s just a matter of circumstance, right? I think that for a lot of Black families, we’re just not really set up with the resources necessary to actually give kids a good life. I think over time, I’ve learned to understand that decision of “I literally was not ready to be a parent,” so would you rather have had an ill-equipped parent, or would you rather have had people who were ready to have a kid? I understand that, you know? Of course, it took time for me to not be like, “Why?” I think a lot of adoptive people have those questions of, “Why did this happen?” I think it’s a matter of circumstance more than it is a matter of not wanting to in my case. But of course, I can’t speak for everybody’s experience. 

Ashley-Devon

Yeah, and I’m thinking about the idea of narrative as memoir and narrative as a communal experience for Black people. What do you think about current systems that continue to disrupt Black families and their narratives? 

KB 

When people make these hard decisions to give up their children, it’s usually due to economics. We live under capitalism, which is a very violent system towards Black people. I think before we are even born, people ascribe things to Black people just due to stereotypes around what we’re able to do and what our intentions are with our kids. In my case, a thing that would’ve “kept my family together” is just giving Black parents the resources necessary for survival and not shaming. In my mom’s case, like in a lot of families’ cases, it’s so frowned upon to have a kid young. But once that kid is there, the parents shouldn’t feel that regret. The family shouldn’t feel “this is a mistake,” you know? After a while, a child is gonna know that you feel that way, and you should never let a child feel that way. Luckily, I was so young that I hadn’t started feeling that way by the time that I got new parents, But I have had friends where that has happened to them. I think one way to prevent that is to just support parents, have more things in place for parents to congregate with each other, for communities to support parents more, and for capitalism to not keep making people make decisions like the one that my mom had to make. 

Ashley-Devon

Wow, thank you. So, thinking about aging far beyond the beginning of your life, you stated in your memoir that you saw your teen self as belonging to “a group of Black kids who dared to do shit mostly attributed to White people,” citing your love of the Odd Future collective. As someone who was a full-on emo kid, I really felt that. Why do you think our kin in the Black community penalize certain “White” traits while uplifting others? What’s going on there? 

KB

 I think for me, it’s just a matter of people being scared of what they don’t understand. Emo culture was my first foray into genderlessness because regardless of gender, those emos were wearing those parachute pants! The angst, being very outward-facing, and you’re already different, right? The goths at my school were not ridiculing you if you were queer. One of my first-ever friends who was queer was an emo kid. There was this little emo couple, and they were just in their own worlds and okay with being outsiders. Emo embraces the different, the weird, and (maybe) genderless. I think colonialism has done a big one on both Black folks and folks of other races. We’re not really encouraged to be different, and anything that is different is seen as pushing up on the barriers that people have put around who you can and can’t be. So, I think it’s a little bit of that. I have also heard from friends the “you talk White” thing when I speak in full sentences. That just sounds like self-hating stuff to me, and you may just have some internalized stuff that you need to figure out. I don’t know, I just know that people already told me that I was different. So, why not double down and embrace being different like the Odd Future kids? I was like “Yes, finally Black people are also doing the emo thing!” because let MTV tell it, there are only White emos. So, I was happy to see Black people skating and doing all kinds of stuff like that.

Ashley-Devon

That’s interesting how you attribute a lot of things to hate and fear, both of which are encapsulated in the word “phobia.” In reflecting on Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange, you speak on Black cis men, their fear of being perceived as gay, and how that encourages them to, in turn, reject vulnerability and tenderness. You said that “there is nowhere in the world where Black masculinity is treated like something expansive and real…we are queer by design.” However, homophobia and transphobia still remain rampant in our community. How might we get to a place where our people are no longer afraid to fully pursue freedom and unshackle ourselves from this “allegiance to queerphobia?”

KB

 I think that it would start with people being okay with cracking the performance. As in, now that I’m perceived as a man, I have access to conversations that men would not have in front of women. There’s something really beautiful and sinister about brotherhood and how men will say exactly how they feel about women and queer people amongst other men. I think more men should be okay with calling each other out. Sometimes I’ve heard things, and asked “Why do you feel that way?” Sure, now the room is tense, but I want them to answer the question and not be afraid. More people need to be unafraid of making the room tense for a second because people need to think more about the things that they believe and think. It’s not the duty of queer and trans people to stop queerphobia and transphobia. It’s the duty of non-queer and non-trans people to make it happen because y’all have access to conversations that we don’t have. It’s the same thing with Black people. We can’t be the people that bring racial justice; others must do the work as well. Otherwise, it looks like only one group cares about it, and you need to prove that’s not the case. You need to be that person in the room that’s going to disrupt. So, I think amongst men and masculine people, there need to be more people in those conversations challenging each other. And yeah, maybe at the time, people might be like, “Ah, it’s not that deep blah blah,” but double down. Stop being afraid of each other. Ask yourself why you’re so afraid of someone you think is your friend. That will, hopefully, lead you to question why your friend is violent to the point where you’re scared to say that you disagree with them about something. No friend of mine is gonna be going out and abusing people and doing bad. You need to have standards for your friendships. People need to lose things when they’re being intentionally harmful. You need to have people in your life that you’re willing to call out when they do something fucked up. Conflict is a way to grow closer to people. When you have an opportunity to tell someone, “Hey, that was messed up,” now they know more about you, and now you know more about how they show up in conflict. So, make real friendships. Men and masculine people need to make real friendships amongst each other and feel comfortable calling each other out. Hopefully, that’ll make people show up better in the world.

Ashley-Devon 

It sounds like your solution to a lot of the hate and fear and confusion is bravery. Coming out is brave. Transitioning is brave. Confronting people is brave. Where do you source bravery? 

KB 

I mean, it’s a source that I didn’t have for so long, but I think at this point in my life, I’ve constantly had to come out. I’ve constantly had to tell people why the humanity of people like me matters. So, I think I’m a bit practiced in sticking up for myself in ways that others may not be. Also, integrity is important to me, and I want it to be important to other people. When we have no integrity, then we just allow shit to continue to exist that shouldn’t. 

So, I think the source of that bravery for others should be education, reading books like Pretty. I imagine that non-trans and non-Black people are also readers and learners who can take what they’ve learned from Pretty to their community. I imagine Black and trans people and people from Texas reading this book and seeing something that they can recognize and feel validated in their experiences. For a lot of my life, I was the only queer person in the room. I grew up around a lot of Black people, and sometimes I was the only queer person (or only person that people could tell might be queer. Sometimes I didn’t feel comfortable enough to be brave. I think if other cis or heterosexual people in the room had spoken up, then I would’ve acquired that bravery earlier. 

Ashley-Devon 

As a nonbinary person who has transitioned to be more physically masculine, how have your privileges and oppressions shifted over the course of your life? 

KB

So, from age zero to about 15, I was socialized as a woman in a very Black space. I was clocked very early as more masculine leaning, and I just didn’t like things that people assumed girls would like. It was like, “Well you’re a girl, you’re supposed to be getting into boys and you’re supposed to be asking these kinds of questions and not these.” I was in middle school thinking “Oh shit, I’m not attracted to the people I’m supposed to be attracted to.”But still, people called me a girl. From 15 to about 24, I started to present as more masculine. I think that when I learned that people just stare at you if they feel like you don’t fit in. Gender nonconforming people tend to have discomfort due to this when they go out in public, and I had a bit of that. I had people saying things to me that are insensitive and weird. I don’t feel like I had privilege at that time, at least not in these spaces. Then, I went from an all-Black high school to a PWI college, and being Black and masculine in that space but also perceived as a girl was so different because you already stick out because you’re Black, and now you also stick out because you’re gender nonconforming. You stick out like a sore thumb. The spotlight is on you. So that was that. 

Then, I had a bit of time between 24 and 25 when I started my medical transition where people couldn’t quite “figure me out.” We gender people as soon as we see them. I think it’s just a reflex that is egged on by gender roles and bioessentialism, so as soon as we see somebody, we wanna put them in a box. I think that I was the most scared that I’ve been between 24 and 25 where people didn’t know “what I was” because people get so frustrated with themselves. They start asking questions that they don’t need to ask. They start treating you like you are a nuisance. I would go to a gas station and be so nervous because I’m like, “I don’t know which restroom is gonna be the most like socially acceptable for me to use,” and I’d already had instances as a masculine lesbian where people were being weird about me being in a women’s restroom. Now, they’re gonna be even weirder now that my voice is dropping, and I have these whiskers. So, that little period was probably the most unsafe that I’ve ever felt in my life. That was also during the pandemic, so I had a lot of incentive to stay in because I didn’t like how people were interacting with me in public spaces.

Since 25, I have “passed” as male. What I’ve noticed with that is, it’s a privilege in the Black community in the sense that I have (limiting degrees of) access to Black maleness. I’m sensitive to that, and I try not to speak over Black women, I try to platform Black women, cis or trans. I try to platform people who are not passing and are still in that liminal space of danger, and they want to be there. I try to be cognizant of that privilege of passing with perceived maleness. Still, I don’t think I’m ever gonna completely pass. I’m still gonna have to go to the restroom and go to a stall and people are gonna be like, “that’s weird.” I’m still gonna have to take off my shirt to go swim, and that immediately outs me. I’m still gonna have to take a shot every week in order to maintain the features that I have and pay for medication and things like that. So, I’m never gonna be in this “100% passing” category. I also have a different perspective on maleness than my cis Black male counterparts. I can feel the hypervigilance that women have around men, and I just interact with women so differently now because I don’t want women to feel held hostage by me in a conversation because I’ve felt that before. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable with me coming towards you on the street because I’ve felt that before. So, it’s just different. But I also think that, especially with the non-Black people that I interact with, everything that I say that is “not nice” is seen as potentially violent in a different way than it used to. If I’m unhappy about something, I have to overthink about how I show that or whether or not I do show that because everything that I could do could be seen as me getting irate or me getting potentially out of control because of the perception of Black men as violent people.

Ashley-Devon 

That is a lot, but that’s the whole point of having a nuanced life, a multifaceted existence. Despite Texas being the site of countless traumatic events and policies for indigenous people, Black people, immigrants, women, poor folks, and you as an individual, Pretty makes it clear that Texas will always have a pretty large piece of your heart, describing yourself as a “career Texan.” Why do we love what has so deeply and regularly harmed us? 

KB 

This is a question I ask myself every day because I wanna set the record straight. I want less people to feel sorry for me when I tell them I’m from Texas because there’s a lot to love in Texas, and I want my writing to reflect that. Even within our literary industry, there’s just not enough representation of Texas writers, and I want that to change. I want Texas to be not just what people see online, but instead what has kept me here. I think I grew up in what felt like a Black utopia for a little bit. Of course, Texas has its quirks and things that I wish would change, but I don’t know that I ever felt completely unloved, and I want people to know that. I want people to know that there are queer and trans people in Texas that I regularly converse with, that I grew up around. My first ever queer community was at my high school in Fort Worth, Texas. I know people who grew up in the big cities who were not afforded that luxury, but I was afforded that luxury in Texas because there are queer and trans people there. There are queer and trans Black people there, and those were my friends in high school. We found each other.

So, I know that Texas has a long way to go as far as politics, but I just want to tell people that [what they see] is an oligarchy. That is a small group of people that are really invested in misinforming everybody about what Texas is and what Texas stands for. I just try to write about it because I love Texas despite what is said about it, despite the narrative that exists about it. I want other people to have a more nuanced look at my home state. If you wanna learn more about Texas, you need to follow Texas writers.

Ashley-Devon 

How do people avoid becoming victims to that level of propaganda? How can the young queer person living in a small Texas town resist propaganda? 

KB

Well, I think the internet has done us a lot of good. The internet gives young people access to experiences beyond what is right in front of them, and I really love that. For poems that I’ve written, I’ve gotten letters from youth in places like Mathis and Odessa, and I love getting those letters because I’m glad the work is reaching them. I think we as writers can do more to reach out. When we’re reaching out to bookstores to do events with, why not reach out to a place that is in those small cities? It matters what your reach is and you should make sure that your reach is as big as it can be outside of the literary world. I think politicians who are trying to win elections in Texas need to stop campaigning just in big cities. They need to campaign in small counties as well. Sometimes I think, “Why are you in Austin? We’re gonna vote for you regardless.”Go up the city that’s like 30 minutes out. That is where your resources will be better used. Likewise, it makes more sense for us as writers to take our book tours beyond just a few major cities and call it a day. People are just too limited with how they push a book. If I’m gonna say that I’m a Black trans writer from Texas, I think it’s on me to make sure that different Texas cities have me there. With my last book, Freedom House, I was able to get a good amount of books into libraries around Texas, which I was happy about because library books are free. I hope to continue to make the work as available as possible.

Ashley-Devon

Thank you for that. I think a lot of times people think, “Propaganda exists. Education’s the answer,” but there are many barriers to education. There are many barriers to real information. Speaking of social harms, in the poem, “The Game of Letting Go,” you tell the reader that you’ll throw a bucket of assorted liquids onto them if they quote, “don’t get [you] out of this nonconsensual landscape.” Thinking on this, what is the responsibility of the reader to the artist, and what do we owe to those artists whose art we consume? 

KB

I think the responsibility of the reader to the artist is to read the work on its terms. My terms are that of a Black trans masculine experience. You’re allowed to critique my work, as anybody is, but maybe don’t come to the book expecting it to be something that is not. For example, if you look on any Goodreads account for a Black author, people are mad that it’s not a White author. You can tell based on the words that they’re saying, like, “I don’t know, this just didn’t remind me of Mary Ruefle,”or “this was a little too blah blah blah.” Reading the book expecting it to be something that it’s something else is isn’t fair to the work. So first, come to the work knowing that it is what it is and be ready to learn. I’m not always gonna be preaching to the choir. Even with Black people that pick up this book, some of them need to figure out their homophobia and transphobia. Some queer people need to figure out their anti-Blackness. Come ready to learn, and don’t discount what you can learn from irony and humor because I have some humorous parts in there. It’s not all doom and gloom. Don’t discount what you can learn from personal narrative. I think it’s a powerful way to tell stories about yourself and where you come from. A book is more than a collection of paper; it’s a tool that you can then use for other things. One of the best things that has ever happened to me is hearing that something I wrote is being used in an abolitionist conference or being used to teach more about transphobia at a political organization. I’m like, “yes, use it as a tool!” Sometimes, storytelling is a better way to connect with people than history text, and a work like Pretty is an opportunity to find connection. I’m not saying to go be the next revolutionary, but you can adjust. You can stop looking at people and immediately gendering them. I don’t think that’s asking you for a lot, and maybe that’s something you realize you need to do after reading this book. Maybe you say, “I need to talk to this person in my life who is a misogynist.” That’s not asking you for a lot. Be ready to make some changes. I’m not trying to hit people over the head , but if I can galvanize someone into change, then I think I’ve done a good job. 

Ashley-Devon

I think I agree with what you were saying about the second step in between consuming literature and transformation; it’s what a lot of people are missing. A lot of people think if they understood the literal words on the page, if they read every book about anti-racism, then by tomorrow, they will simply have unlearned every bias they were raised to have. 

So finally, memoirs are always incomplete when the writer keeps living and breathing post publication. As a social scientist and a professional nosy person, I’m always wondering about the remainder of an author’s life story, the part that’s yet unwritten. Who does KB wanna become that they are not yet? Can you tell us what you’re doing to become that person and whether there is anything standing in your way? 

KB 

I think what I try to do every day is just the least amount of harm possible. I try to learn something new. I’ve been reading pretty regularly lately, even more so than writing. It’s been teaching me about other people’s experiences, and I want to continue to do that because I think it feeds me as a person. It feeds like my craft and can make me a sharper writer who is more intentional about my words. 

I see this memoir as just one facet of my life. There are surely other perspectives that I have, and I’ve been thinking a lot about what perspective or what thing would I’d want to center a new memoir around. Pretty centers Blackness, transness, and masculinity in Texas. I have other things about me that I could write about, but I think I still have to live a little bit more in order to execute the other things that I’m interested in writing about from my past, the present, and hopeful future. I just wanna become the best person I can be, the bravest person, the person that is most committed to the things that we do as writers. Hopefully, I’ll make a thing that is better than the last thing. I think that Pretty is a photograph of certain moments in my life, and I think I’m on to collect new photos. To do that, I just gotta live. 

Head to KB’s website (earthtokb.com) or follow them on Instagram and Twitter (@earthtokb) to catch a reading near you!