Sassafras Patterdale's Blog, page 28

I'm so excited that I had the chance to be a guest blogger at 'I'm from driftwood' today.  The premise of the site is queer folks writing stories about their life, and as part of that owning where they are from.

I was excited to have the opportunity to share part of  my story of being kicked out, family rejection, the building of chosen family, and the way in which being kicked out is a piece of our past that never goes away.    I really love the way the site connects us back to the places we come from — I grew up in an extremely homophobic county and so to discuss in such a public way who I am, what I experienced and to tie that back to where I come from is really powerful for me.  You can read the whole story   here

It's been two days and yet I'm still sitting here in complete shock at the news that I have been chosen  by Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund as an honorable mention this year. The lesbian and feminist literary community has always been my home, and to be honored so publically in this way completely takes my breath away.  I'm so grateful to Astraea and to the whole community which has and continues to support me and my work in really profound ways.

As I was finding out about receiving this award I've been reading articles about  the ongoing financial troubles of 'In Other Words' feminist bookstore in Portland Oregon. They were just forced to lay off their only two staff members and how it's looking pretty certain that they are moving towards closure.  In Other Words has barely been hanging on for years now, but still I'm broken hearted over what I fear is the inevitable closure of what had been my home bookstore for many years.

I remember  first walking into that little storefront on SE Hawthorne and feeling like that place could be a home for me. I would wander  the store marveling at how there were all these books about my people. It never even occurred to me that one day I might be writing them. I don't really know what they thought of my scruffy baby dyke self back then, but everyone was always incredibly nice to me. They knew I'd been homeless and the volunteers always made a point to know my name and pronoun (no matter how many times I changed it). They would ask how I was doing and in general just made me feel part of the community regardless of if I was their to window shop at books, or if  I was paying my $3 or rent yet another lesbian VHS tape that I would put myself to sleep at night watching.

flyer from 'the last word'

A couple years after first stumbling into In Other Words I was asked to take on 'The Last Word' which at the time was the bookstore's monthly open mic which I turned into a monthly queer zine read and ran for three years.  The Last Word was one of my first attempts at combining community organizing and art and was a really pivotal moment for me both as an activist and an artist.  In Other Words was incredibly supportive of all my early writing. They sold each and every one of my zines and gave me my first writing award, in 2004  naming me one of Portland's Top Emerging Writers. I'll never forget putting on a clean shirt and going to the honorees fundraising dinner with my chosen big brother at my side. We stood out from the mostly middle aged lesbian crowd with our tattoos and facial piercings but never felt judged or out of place. I remember sitting at the table with the other honored writers dreaming that one day I would be a published author like them.

To in the same week learn that I'm receiving this  honor as a lesbian writer, and that my first home bookstore is likely heading towards closure is heartbreaking. In a day when authors are clamoring towards higher Amazon rankings, I believe we as queer authors have an obligation to recognize that independent LGBTQ and feminist  bookstores are the fertile soil that nurtures our souls and art. They are our heritage, but they are also our future and I feel it is our responsibility to support them anyway we can. It was at In Other Words where I found the types of stories I'd never seen on the shelves of mainstream corporate bookstores. It was there, that for the first time  I was able to find the stories of people like me, and where I found the encouragement and support to begin writing my own stories.

Yesterday I got the exciting news that Ozone House has raised over $12,370 in the Kicked Out Fund to support direct services for homeless LGBTQ youth in Michigan!

The Kicked Out Fund is an opportunity for partnership between Homofactus Press, the Kicked Out Anthology, and LGBTQ youth homeless shelters, and agencies providing services to homeless LGBTQ youth. The goal behind the fund is to work in collaboration with direct service agencies to raise awareness about the epidemic of LGBTQ youth homelessness, and as a fundraising tool for participating organizations.

You can see more about the Ozone House and how they have put the Kicked Out fund into action here and more information about the Kicked Out fund as a tool for engaging community members can be found here

Yesterday I got the chance to be a guest blogger over at The Bilerico Project talking about why I think 'family reunification' as a model for working with LGBTQ homeless youth is dangerous and damaging.  Check out the full post here

This is one of my favorite photos of all time.  It was taken by Joseph Ambrosini of the New York Daily Newsappearing in the paper, as the first photograph published of the beginning of the Stonewall Riots. Specifically, it documents homeless LGBTQ youth fighting back against the police, and is one of few photographs of that first night of the riots.

I always keep a printed copy of this photo at my desk where I work and write.  It gives me hope and strength, and reminds me where the revolution came from, and just how profoundly powerful we can be.

When you go to pride this year, please take a moment to think about the bravery and strength of the homeless LGBTQ youth that birthed our "modern LGBTQ rights movement."  In their honor and legacy, we must not abandon the youth of today. It is our responsibility to listen to them, fund programs that provide direct services, and partner with youth as together we work towards equality for all LGBTQ people.

Also connected to pride my friend and colleague Syd London and I have come together with a new project: Hard Won Home.  The first installment is PRIDE includes new writing from me and previously unreleased photos from her exploring what this time of year means to us. With much love and fight in our hearts is our gift to the community

Happy Pride Y'all!

I'm so excited to announce a new collaboration between myself and my good buddy and incredible photographer Syd London — Hard Won Home! The ongoing project is about  paring of new writing by me, with mostly unreleased photographs of Syd's.  Our first installment 'Pride' features her photos from 2008-2011 from NYC street actions, marches, vigils etc. and my words exploring the meaning of Pride for us.   Our hope is to help draw a line between our past, present, and futures.

With much love & fight in our hearts I'm thrilled to present

Hard Won Home

kestryl and i our first summer together (7 years ago)

Seven years ago I said I was done with love. I was done with butches who saw it fit to wipe their muddy boots on my heart and give it a swift kick, before swaggering out the door. It was Portland Pride and though I spent the weekend at the festival I'd sworn off love, sworn off fucking even, but then I went to the drag show. It was late on Sunday night, the last pride gathering at a crusty punk venue for all of us who just weren't ready to let the energy of the weekend go for another year. I stood in line next to a hot activist drag king that I'd seen around in the community but never really spoken to.  Back then I was a crusty punk zinester. I'd just quit T, was finding my groove back in dyke, back in an in-between place and the pack of trans fags I ran with had grown distant.

We started talking.

We talked gender, and activism. We talked about the zines we were working on for the Portland Zine Symposium the next weekend.  We sat together on the sticky, dusty, glitter covered cracked concrete floor and ever so slowly our hands touched. I turned down a ride home from a friend to stay later and watch hir dance. I remember I was wearing a green  muscle shirt, carhartts and boots. Ze wore cutoff cords, vegan combat boots, an anti-scout shirt, and spirit gum sideburns. We left late and walked to the bus stop together, made plans to see each other the next day. The militant vegan used the corniest

Photo by: Syd London

pickup line about  having recently gone fishing and spreading hir arms to demonstrate the size of the fish caught, left arm landing around my shoulders. I didn't see it coming, fell for hir hook, line, and sinker. Ze didn't kiss me that first night.

Every seven years a body replaces all it's cells.  Today marks seven years since that drag show, and we are quite literally not the same people we were that night. Seven years and eight genders, a cross-country move, books, performances, and more picnics than I can count. I can't even express how blessed I feel to have been able to spend the last seven years in this relationship that is far more than anything I could have ever imagined I would find.

Honestly, I didn't know that a life like this was possible. It was more than I'd ever seen anywhere. I thought it was more than was possible, more than I deserved. I had no idea when I walked into that drag show I would be meeting someone that would show me what it meant to truly be in love, to be cared for and nurtured in ways I couldn't even bring myself to fantasize about. I had no clue that my life was about to be filled with magic.

Happy Anniversary Kestryl

In many ways, Kicked Out is a YA book, though on the whole it resists being boxed in and tied to any one genre.   'Kicked Out' is the book I desperately wanted when I was a homeless teenager, and so while of course I wanted the book to appeal to all readers, I wanted to specifically make sure I didn't in anyway alienate teens who might come across the book, beyond that, I wanted it to specifically speak to them.  There is a special introduction/dedication 'to the youth reading this book' where I said:

"There are lots of people whom I hope will read this book: parents, educators, counselors and more. But the most important readers this book will ever have are you. This book is more for you than anyone else."

When I say I wanted the book to specifically speak to LGBTQ teens I don't mean that I wanted to in anyway limit the content to conform to some arbitrary definition of what equals "age appropriate." Quite the contrary, I wanted it to be real.  I know that as a youth my friends and I was an expert at seeing through the bullshit that adults pushed in our face. The last thing I want to do is be the kind of adult that as a teen I saw as phony, condescending, and completely out of touch.

I was particularly troubled by an article I read last week where it was being argued that YA as a genre has become too "dark" full of violence, and abuse and that many of the books within the genre are not appropriate for teen readers. Essentially the author was arguing for censorship under the umbrella of what she calls "parenting." I was left with deeper concerns. As a youth, the only LGBTQ teen representation that I found was positive, it was parents inviting their daughter's girlfriend over for dinner, and baking cookies for their son's GSA at school. It was about as far from my life as I could imagine. I will always remember how acutely painful it was to not be able to find my life reflected in any books. It's part of why I was so honored that the American Library Association recognized Kicked Out as a top book for LGBTQ youth this year, and why  I'm so excited about being part of the NYPL event next weekabout LGBTQ YA books

I was thrilled this weekend to come across Sherman Alexie's beautiful essay titled 'Why the Best Kids Books Are Written in Blood' about the power of bringing reality into the YA genre and responding to the concerns raised in the above mentioned article.   In this essay he talks about how books have the power to speak to youth, how he wishes desperately that the books he'd written, and all the others critiqued had been available to him when he needed them.    In general, identified incredibly strongly with all that Alexie wrote, but particularly this last paragraph:

"And now I write books for teenagers because I vividly remember what it felt like to be a teen facing everyday and epic dangers. I don't write to protect them. It's far too late for that. I write to give them weapons–in the form of words and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters. I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed." – Sherman Alexie

Teens don't live easy lives. The "dark" themes that some think are "inappropriately" featured in some YA books are the reality of what teens have lived lived through, and the world they awake to every day. I remember how desperate I was to see any book that looked anything like my life and how devastated I was to never find it.  Youth consistently write me letters  come up to me at events to thank me, and talk about how what speaks to them most about 'Kicked Out' is the honesty. Again and again people talk about seeing their lives and their community reflected back to them for the first time in these pages.  How dare adults try to take that truth away from teen readers.

Who are we without histories? We don't raise our young, don't usher them to adulthood. Queerness is a legacy that must be found, uncovered, claimed.  I'm always hunting for herstories. Desperate to know where we came from, to see myself, my life, my hand-built family, reflected in the lives of others that came before. I'm always searching for proof that someone has done this, that we are not alone.

This weekend I went to one of my favorite queer places in all of NYC, The Lesbian Herstory Archives. It's somewhere that I don't spend nearly enough time (something I hope to oneday change), but one of the places that I'm always so grateful to know exists in the world, and more specifically in my city. I remember visiting the first time years ago when Kestryl and I were just in the beginning stages of planning our move to New York.  It was the first time I'd been to Brooklyn, the first time I'd been anywhere dedicated to the preservation of dyke history. I was enthralled.  This weekend was the archives annual book sale, an event  I somehow manage to miss every year but was determined to catch at least part of this weekend. I'm very interested in queer herstories, the act of remembering, and the importance of preserving whatever glimpses of that past we're able to come in contact with, and for me books play an important role in that.  In these older books I mourn the lesbian feminist presses that are gone, and take great pleasure in the early words of so many authors who have shaped my conception of self, and paved the way for me to tell my stories.

There is something magical for me about walking into the Archives. I'm acutely terrified  of death, I'm also profoundly afraid of being forgotten. While the archives do little to curb my death fears, their existence  is a profoundly poignant reminder that there are others committed to ensuring we are never forgotten.

I walked away yesterday with five new books:  three from the 80's  and two from 1965. These little treasures are currently sitting on my coffee table as I make my way through their stories, both the ones literally printed on the now brittle yellowed pages, but also the ones deeper than the typeset. These are the stories about the time and place where these books were written, and what they have to say about a dyke cultural legacy.

Libraries are super important to me, and I'm so excited that Kicked Out and I will be part of a really fantastic queer teen event organized by the New York Public Library on June 20th!

Boy meets Boy while wandering in the Vast Fields of Ordinary? Kicked Out Tales from the Closet? From Glee to DADT to It Gets Better, what's hapening in the world of LGBTQ youth? Hear from authors and illustrators as they talk diversity, identity and visibility in the YA book world. For ages 12 and up.

Mulberry Street Library  10 Jersey Street, NYC