{"id":351648,"date":"2024-02-23T14:00:32","date_gmt":"2024-02-23T14:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gaytimes.co.uk\/?p=351648"},"modified":"2024-03-18T19:16:33","modified_gmt":"2024-03-18T19:16:33","slug":"raquel-willis-cover-interview-the-risk-it-takes-to-bloom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gaytimes.com\/culture\/raquel-willis-cover-interview-the-risk-it-takes-to-bloom\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI felt forever changed in that moment\u201d Raquel Willis on life, liberation, and ego death"},"content":{"rendered":"

The writer and public intellectual speaks to Jazmine Hughes about her radical memoir The Risk It Takes to Bloom: On Life and Liberation.<\/em><\/p>\n

Words by Jazmine Hughes<\/strong>
\nPhotography by Justin J. Wee<\/strong>
\nStyled by Isaiah Dorty<\/strong>
\nStylist Assistance Trevon Smith<\/strong>
\nMakeup by Laurel Charleston<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>

How useful it is, in the age of our phones \u2013 as our lives, our world, our education, our reality \u2013 that our intellectuals can traverse the screen with a bit of the ineffable, potent enough to slow us down. Raquel Willis does not compete for attention. She does her work, and if you start to pay attention along the way, all the better. (Not to mention: what took you so long?)<\/p>\n

In a world where anyone can garner a following, and anything can become public, the role of \u201cpublic figure\u201d is no longer synonymous with having something to say. Willis, though, is different, having caught attention for her words for decades. First, as a journalist, where she won a GLAAD Media award for her \u201cTrans Obituaries Project,\u201d and, increasingly, as a public speaker and activist. Attention, obviously, does not always equal respect: In 2017, she was midway through her speech at the Washington, D.C.\u2019s Women\u2019s March \u2013 \u201cAs we commit to build this movement of resistance and liberation, no one can be an afterthought anymore. We must hold each other in love and accountability\u2026\u201d \u2013 when her mic was suddenly cut off.<\/p>\n

The summer of 2020 was a flashpoint in collective social justice movements, bringing widespread, institutional focus \u2013 albeit temporarily \u2013 to racism, anti-Blackness, homophobia and transphobia. Willis was a speaker (and core organiser) for the summer\u2019s Brooklyn Liberation march while privately coming to terms with being laid off from her dream job as the executive editor of Out<\/em> magazine.<\/p>\n

Before that day, Willis rarely felt seen or respected as a leader. After? \u201cPeople who didn\u2019t really understand who I was and what I was committed to flipped,\u201d she said one bleary morning over tea and eggs. As many as twenty thousand people attended the Brooklyn Liberation March, and Willis addressed \u2013 and connected with \u2013 every one of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt forever changed in that moment \u2013 there was an ego death,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019d never felt more connected, not just to our community but to humanity in that moment.<\/p>\n

Last fall, Willis released her memoir The Risk It Takes to Bloom: On Life and Liberation<\/em>. The book kept me company on vacation. It was as if Willis was drinking a mezcalita beside me: the book is wry, and funny, and furious, with sweetness scattered throughout like chocolate chips in a cookie. The best parts are the most regular: there aren\u2019t many memoirs where Black trans women go to college, or have awkward dating experiences, or move to a new city with a suitcase full of dreams.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not giving you the narrative of \u2018I got it all figured out, oh, I\u2019m fully bloomed on the other side,\u2019 or that I found this forever love,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s not my experience.\u201d Willis\u2019 journey, then, feels only a few steps ahead of one\u2019s own: the next turn on a map, an outstretched hand bringing you with her.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>

<\/p>

Left: dress BAD BINCH TONG TONG | shoes STEVE MADDEN earrings | DEBORA MALOUF JEWELRY | Right: dress KELSEY RANDALL | earrings DEBORA MALOUF JEWELRY<\/em><\/p>

You decided to write this memoir about a decade ago, around the same time that Janet Mock released Redefining Realness<\/em>. Did you consider yourself to be joining, perhaps, an emerging movement of trans narratives?<\/h3>\n

It wasn\u2019t a fully fleshed out era \u2013 we weren\u2019t calling it the \u201ctrans visibility era\u201d yet. I felt so isolated being in Georgia, and it felt necessary for me to get to a point where I could write my story.<\/p>\n

Then you started writing the book in earnest over the pandemic, starting in 2020, which felt like a time of such progressive promise.<\/h3>\n

And, of course, the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade and so many others, I realised, \u201cOh, we\u2019re in a moment now where folks are hungry to figure out their commitment for social justice.\u201d So in writing this book, not only did I want to articulate my journey into my queerness and transness and how that connects to my Blackness and my womanhood, but also around how I developed a commitment to social justice and held onto it through all these various parts of my career. And I think that\u2019s even more relevant now, as we have all these moments where we\u2019re questioning our values.<\/p>\n

Beyond the writing process, I\u2019m curious about the remembering process. Growing up, were you taking notes on everything that was going on around you? Were you a big journal-er?<\/h3>\n

I\u2019m a person who\u2019s like, when a big important moment that I want to remember all the details of is happening, then I\u2019ll journal. For instance, when I came out to my father, that was really a moment where I realised that journaling can be an escape, because I can\u2019t tell them all the things I want to, and mean to, say, so let me just say it in this form.<\/p>\n

Was the journaling more of an account of what happened, or a way to process your feelings?<\/h3>\n

Both. I wrote the details of what happened, the details of, for example, exactly what my parents had said to me when I came out to my father. But I also wrote, essentially, a letter to my parents.<\/p>\n

Which is an approach that appears in the book: you write many letters, to your father, to Layleen Polanco. What effect were you going for?<\/h3>\n

It gave me a chance to look directly at the reader like, \u201cHey, this is the version of me that\u2019s processed a lot of this<\/em>,\u201d but I also want to take you through this moment with me, and to be able to hold the awkwardness and difficulties, and the complexities and nuances, of what\u2019s happening. It was a way to give life back to the folks that had died and had so thoroughly transformed my life. After having written all these letters, I really understand how much death has been such a catalyst in my life to grow into something else. I think that\u2019s true for a lot of folks on the margins, whether we realise it or not. We have an opportunity to do something different \u2013 to use this as fertiliser \u2013 and that\u2019s a testament to our movements. A lot of organisers are called to this work as a response to death whether we\u2019re looking at the police murders of Black folks, the murders of Black trans women, or even the genocide of Palestinians. We have a lot of opportunity to be transformed, and that\u2019s a lot of the struggle right now, in this moment. People are resisting being transformed in their humanity.<\/p>\n

\"\"

dress QUINE LI | earrings DEBORA MALOUF JEWELRY<\/p><\/div>\n

Was there anything that you were nervous about putting down on paper?<\/h3>\n

I was nervous about talking about my family and the complexity of our relationships, and to be publishing moments on the difficulties with my loving parents and family. But what helped me was having conversations with family ahead of time. It forced an acknowledgement of the tension that existed. In the process, I\u2019ve never been closer to my family. They were here for the launch event, and to have Laverne Cox and Elliot Page asking about some of these moments of trauma that I discuss with my family, with my family listening \u2013 it was a level of raw I could not have anticipated. The way that my family held those difficult moments with grace gave me a whole new appreciation for them and their evolution.<\/p>\n

We both, as formally trained journalists, are taught that, historically and institutionally, journalism and activism have to remain far apart. Do you look at your memoir as a form of activism?<\/h3>\n

I write with a purpose. I want my work to be a bridge between the transcestors and transcendents to come. I don\u2019t know we have to call that activism \u2013 I was going to say every writer writes with a purpose, but I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s true.<\/p>\n

I think a lot of writers on the margins write with a purpose, even if the purpose is \u201clive your truth.\u201d The way that we\u2019ve seen this get spun into \u201cactivism\u201d or proof of bias \u2013 both generally, but also in the course of our own careers, is so crazy-making.<\/h3>\n

And I do have a bias, and it took me a long time to own that. I have a fucking agenda. But I\u2019m not the only one. If you aren\u2019t clear about having this sort of purpose or bias in your work, as a storyteller, then you\u2019re feeding into the existing bias of white supremacy or cisheteropatriarchy.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s ludicrous that pretending to not have a bias legitimises you, but claiming your bias with your chest disqualifies you. And we both, as formally trained journalists, know how much that farce of neutrality is beaten into us as a central journalistic \u201cskill.\u201d How did you square the two?<\/h3>\n

I realised that not every environment was going to afford me to speak to everything. In my first job as a newspaper reporter in Monroe, Georgia, I was in a newsroom where I had to be strategic about how much I pushed the envelope because I was getting all these signals that I couldn\u2019t be too progressive. I couldn\u2019t be liberal. I had to give off this air of being moderate, which I was never able to really fucking do. I was lucky that I had a weekly column so I could voice my opinions on anything, so it became a bit of a sport to figure out what happens when I tried to push our conservative community. It was weird, figuring out how to profess my values without outing myself as a Black trans woman. And to say that now feels wild, but in that context\u2026<\/p>\n

<\/p>

<\/p>

Left: dress CHRISTOPHER JOHN ROGERS | earrings ALEXIS BITTAR | Right: coat TWIGGY MOORE<\/em><\/p>

You had to make a calculation.<\/h3>\n

It was a calculation, and it speaks to how ridiculous the argument is, that queer and trans people are always legible in our society. That\u2019s not true. People don\u2019t have the same fever around transphobia in their everyday life. You are not coming to me and telling me I\u2019m \u201cnot a woman\u201d because you\u2019re gonna look fucking ridiculous. And yes, I\u2019ll admit that some of that is tied up in respectability, some of that is tied up in privilege, but a lot of these folks are hard pressed to be as dismissive of folks on the margins in person as they are in the papers and on screen. Dave Chappelle and J.K. Rowling are not giving me the same fever in a one-to-one conversation out of the public gaze. So what does that mean about what they\u2019re trying to telegraph about themselves? I feel like a lot of that is validation. At some point, you felt like whoever you are was called into question, and so the way that you reassert your existence, or power, or privilege is by stomping on folks who you already know are the victims of confirmation bias in our society.<\/p>\n

What do you want readers to feel when they\u2019ve finished the last page of your book?<\/h3>\n

As I was writing the epilogue, I was thinking about what gives me hope. We have to figure out how to hold the hard things and give ourselves joy, and what gives me hope is remembering that it\u2019s all cyclical. Our ancestors \u2013 Black ancestors, queer and trans ancestors, whoever your ancestors are \u2013 endured difficulties, but they also had joy and pleasure. I don\u2019t believe that they didn\u2019t figure out how to have joy and pleasure. We\u2019re called to do that.<\/p>\n

Exactly. We \u2013 our joy, our strength \u2013 didn\u2019t come out of nowhere.<\/h3>\n

I also think about wanting things to look better for the next folks, which is an exercise in empathy. It\u2019s like, \u201cHow do you enjoy this life right here, and feel this power right here, and know that the world can be so much better, and to understand your duty to demand that better world for the next world who come along, so they can at least have their own baggage, and trauma, and not have to be working through your shit, too?\u201d I don\u2019t think liberation is this far-off distant thing, and the ways that we built joy and pleasure into our lives right now are the slivers of liberation that we have to cling onto. What are you willing to do to seize that? What are you willing to do to remember that you deserve that now?<\/p>\n

The Risk It Takes to Bloom: On Life and Liberation is out now.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This interview is taken from the March 2024 issue of GAY TIMES. Head to Apple News +<\/a>\u00a0for more exclusive features and interviews from the issue.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The writer and public intellectual speaks to Jazmine Hughes about her radical memoir The Risk It Takes to Bloom: On Life and Liberation. 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