“Being black can get you killed. Being gay can get you killed. Being a black gay boy is a death wish. And one day, if you’re lucky, your life and death will become some artist’s new “project.” ArtDangerGayRacismPrejudiceLgbtqAfrican AmericansBlacks Book:How We Fight For Our Lives Source: How We Fight For Our Lives
“In reality, I was a lanky, black, obvious teenager, obviously effeminate too, if given an opportunity to move or speak. But from a distance, maybe my body transformed, as the bodies of young black men are wont to do when stared at by white people in this country. Maybe my spine stretched itself into a basketball player’s posture, this stranger’s gaze giving me something I could never quite seem to give myself: the sense of being a real man, strong, even intimidating.” RaceGayRacismPrejudiceTeensLgbtqAfrican AmericansBlacksTeenagersLgtbq Book:How We Fight For Our Lives Source: How We Fight For Our Lives
“You never forget your first "faggot." Because the memory, in its way, makes you. It becomes a spine for the body of anxieties and insecurities that will follow, something to hang all that meat on. Before you were just scrawny; now you're scrawny because you're a faggot. Before you were just bookish; now you're bookish because you're a faggot.” GayPrejudiceLgbtqSlursBookishnessScrawniness Book:How We Fight For Our Lives Source: How We Fight For Our Lives