KB Brookins on the SL Book Club October 16th @ 12pm SLT

I AM THE NEW KB SUPERFAN = "Pretty" is pretty incredible!!

Oct 10, 2024

So I have learned that our guest for October 16th at 12pm SLT, KB Brookins, identifies as Black American with preferred pronouns they/them.

And while I honor and respect this, OF COURSE, I will have to add another classification: they are a DAMN DAMN FINE WRITER !!!

kb’s debut “how do identify yourself with a wound” is on my shopping list

KB’s poetry is intense and hits you hard and that is just wonderful.

the book club manager hovers and reads !

Their various collaborative projects, including (free downloadable) zines with themes around abolitionist activism and hyperlocal issues that concern police brutality in the Texas town of Fort Worth exude (com)passion for regular and regularly beaten (down) human beings.

you can get this book free from kb’s website

But KB Brookins’ very open and personal memoir “Pretty” is simply incredible.

I rushed through it in 2 sittings, taking notes, colored post-its are all over the hardcover edition, just good, such good, such much needed … stuff.

virtual dog, virtual avatar, virtual tea + real real book ….

KB just turned 30 y/o and they already wrote a memoir? You serious? YES I AM! AND SO ARE THEY!

As a cis male, who is enraged by transphobia whereever it originates, as a German born US resident, who has been married to a woman of color for over 20 years and is appalled by the casual and daily racism and sexism and now ageism in both countries we lived in (all the while this fact being routinely denied by almost everyone in the whitey middle-class milieu I originate from), “Pretty” is the book I waited for.

Read it. Read it now. Because if you consider yourself an ally to marginalized folks then this memoir will challenge you to get off your butt and DO MORE / DO SOMETHING.

KB’s lived experience from being adopted at a very young age by - as they put it - “boomer parents” - which basically translates into being raised by your grandparents, their abuse within and outside of church settings, high school, college, transitioning to a black man - starting with top surgery in 2020 early COVID time - without the benefit/pain of learning how to be a black boy and being hit hard with the ubiquitous perception that black male equals violence, the book has impact.