Headnote

i have been thinking about how to start my MRPJ Guest Editors letter for Issue 60, reimagining the Journal's third issue, published in the fall of 1991, sometimes referred to as “Gender Disarray.” As a guest editor, I wanted to bring black and brown trans and queer people of color who are thinking and making poignant work that speaks to how we exist, thrive, and move through this world, conjuring new ones in our names and stories. It has proven to be an experience in drifting through oceans of pages, swimming from word to word, under, over and around text.

i’ve always been compelled by language. i remember growing up and sitting outside in my auntie Shirley’s front yard and listening to my aunties, cousins, and grandma Marva telling stories about growing up in my hometown—what some would call the deep south, although we were most certainly in central Florida/Flurda if you nasty! The south but nonetheless not at the same time. Surrounded by amusement parks: Disney World, Universal Studios, etc. Storytelling has always fascinated me — the act of reliving and reworking through stories and the lives (my chosen family) that carry them. These stories live within my spirit, our chosen family's collective dreams; but stories come in many different forms. Nowadays, I take stories apart. i want to reimagine, rethink, and reconfigure how stories lounge and worlds are built, float and travel. How stories move — like can a story move through my body; can i tell you a story through my ass shaking or my back sweating or an image, a poem? Do you hear our stories in the drum and bass on the dancefloor? Do our pigmented by melanin-filled sleeves speak our truths? I’ll start here: 

Can you please,
–PAUSE–
What I mean to say is breeeeeaaattthhheeee,
like...
TAKE  A B R E A K.
WAIT…
WAIT LIKE, 

a few minutes…  sit with yourself and take a deep breathe.       DRINK SOME WATER 

WASH YOUR FACE.                 REMOVE THE STRESS AWAY 

side-note: if you are reading this and wearing makeup, you got a full face on, I feel you, do you, boo. You can also use this time to:   WASH YOURS HANDS AND MOISTURIZE—   

I know makeup is expensive. I got you, too.

A gentle reminder:

DON’T FORGET TO TAKE BREAKS. IT’S GOOD FOR YOUR MENTAL HEALTH AND YOUr SKIN… YOU DESERVE IT. WE ALL DO! THERE IS NO PROPER TIMELINE, NO FINISH LINE. DO YOU :)

Yours,
Keioui