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A Note From the Editor By Amy Sonnie
Thank you for picking up Revolutionary Voices, a creative resource collection by and for queer and questioning youth. A first-of-its-kind anthology, this book was created as a forum for today’s queer youth movement to address the issues that shape our lives. As youth who have “grown up” during the ’80s and ’90s, we are the product of a unique historic moment in which queer youth are increasingly visible and coming out at younger and younger ages. These days many of us have greater access to community and support. From gay-straight alliances to GLBT centers, from media visibility to the Internet, queer youth are finding and creating community all over the globe. Increased visibility, however, also means an increase in the number of attacks against us. And with youth coming out in larger numbers and from more disparate communities, it is all the more urgent that we talk about how our identities as young queers intersect with our cultural, racial, and economic backgrounds. Revolutionary Voices attempts to open up this dialogue for youth: to move beyond coming-out testimonials and recognize the process we go through in questioning, understanding, and requestioning our identities as queers. Whether exploring gender or racial identity, eating disorders or organized religion, substance abuse or mental health, each contributor wrestles in some way with how the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, age, and ability impact our lives. We have unique stories to tell and distinct cultures and experiences to communicate. We have something to say about how our world is run and who runs it. And in a world that constantly tries to speak for us, this book asserts that we are our own experts—that we can speak for ourselves.
Countering the Silence I started this project in 1995, when I was 19, to create a venue for young queers to discuss the questions we are facing and the issues we are passionate about. I envisioned the project as a ’zine, hoping to find grants to fund distribution and production. In 1996 I began circulating calls for submissions (through flyers, letters, E-mail, word of mouth), and over the next year I grew even more convinced of the need for a book in which we could respond to the world around us. All around me I saw that marginalized communities were under attack. In 1996 conservative politicians waged war on affirmative action; its abolition in California led to a 50% decrease in the enrollment of students of color in the state’s top universities by 1997. This was also the year almost every major city in the United States welcomed the antigay, antifeminist Promise Keepers with open arms and money bags. This was the year I met Krista Absalom and learned that being gang-raped while unconscious is not considered rape in New York State. This was the year I first heard about Brandon Teena, a 21-year-old who was brutally raped and murdered for being transgendered. Across the country young queers continued to take their own lives, young women starved themselves for Kate Moss figures, and the United States continued to build more prisons than schools. Our communities were being pitted against one another. And we were failing to see the connections between these attacks, and further, our responsibility to act as allies to one another. As young queers from divergent backgrounds, we lacked a space and a common language with which to understand one another’s stories. And it did not stop in 1996. Over the past four years, I have met and worked with queer youth from all over the world, and by all accounts, the attacks have increased. Some have even made headlines. Matthew Shepard has become a queer community icon, his murder a cornerstone in legislation against hate crimes in the United States. But why was his the only story about hate violence to dominate the news that year? Why was there no significant media coverage about the murders of trans queers of color such as Marsha P. Johnson or Tyra Hunter? Why no media martyrdom for James Byrd Jr., a black, differently abled man in Texas whose body was dragged behind a truck by three white men? Why does the bombing of a gay bar in London make international news, while violent attacks against queers and queer organizations in Zimbabwe receive no mention? These are the politics of the world we live in—under a system that dictates whose lives matter and whose don’t. Presenting the work of more than 50 individuals, Revolutionary Voices retaliates against these mandates. We speak to counter the silencing imposed on us; we speak to break the silence we have internalized. It was with this in mind that I sought a publisher who could help distribute this collection as widely as possible. We have created a family here. And standing in solidarity, we say, “We matter. Our survival is news too.”
Who Are We? From its inception to the published collection you have in your hands, the youth involved in creating this book have become a community, one that continues to inspire and nourish me. The contributors come from the United States, Puerto Rico, Canada, the Middle East, Europe, Asia, the Pacific Islands, Africa, and the First Nations of North America. They range in age from 14 to 26 and come from diverse ethnic, racial, social, and economic backgrounds. Many of these brave writers and artists are sharing their work for the first time. Because so much published material simply reflects the status quo, Revolutionary Voices represents a conscious commitment to overrepresentational politics. I have deliberately created a collection that prioritizes the voices of the traditionally underrepresented: young women, transgender and bisexual youth, youth of color and mixed-blood youth2, differently abled youth, and youth from low-income backgrounds.3 Still, this collection could be even more overrepresentative. The voices of trans and differently abled youth are, by my standards, underrepresented here, in addition to youth of color, especially Native American and Southeast Asian youth, queers under 16, and those from outside the United States. But it must be understood that this anthology is a starting point. It is a challenge for us all to continue creating and diversifying the mediums from which we speak. To create a forum that reflects divergent as well as common histories, Revolutionary Voices presents a multicultural, multigendered, multigenre cross section of today’s queer youth movement. By multicultural, I mean: This collection includes the voices of youth from a variety of ethnic, racial, religious, economic, artistic, political, and gendered cultures. This is not a “melting pot” approach to multiculturalism, which erases individualities and tokenizes certain voices. We speak for ourselves, as ourselves, and recognize that more work is needed so that the nuances of our individual experiences are understood. By multigendered, I mean: Many of us challenge traditional gender roles and assumptions that our assigned sex (male/female) must inform our gender (masculine/feminine). There are not only two sexes and two genders. Our lived experiences tell us otherwise. Some of the artists and writers in this book speak as FTM (female-to-male), MTF (male-to-female), trans-identified, gender-benders, fence-sitters, tranny girls, tranny boys, or something else entirely. This book is not just about the voices of gay and lesbian youth. It is about the voices of queer youth: gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersexed, questioning, and many others. In being multigendered, we advocate an end to a strict sex and gender system. By multigenre, I mean: What you’ll find within are not just diverse identities but diverse styles of communicating those identities. This collection includes poetry, interviews, essays, prose, performance pieces, sculptures, paintings, letters, diary entries, etchings, and collages in an effort to legitimate the many creative forms we use to express and represent ourselves. For this reason as well, the contributors’ bios appear next to their writing or art. We see these as equally important pieces of writing in which we give both ourselves and our work a context. Revolutionary Voices honors the artistry in all the things we have to say and all the ways we find to say them.
Language Lessons Unlike previously published works focused on queer youth, Revolutionary Voices is written and edited by youth for youth, not by an adult who analyzes and filters our experiences for us. Though these collections are also important, it is necessary for us to claim the autonomy to represent ourselves. Claiming this authority over our own experiences is particularly critical for us as youth because so often we are not taken seriously. Parents and teachers, peers and society tell us we are in a “phase,” that we will “grow out of it.” We are seen as works-in-progress, underdeveloped. Or, as queer Chicana poet Gloria Anzaldúa writes about her sisters of color, “The ability to respond is what is meant by responsibility, yet our cultures take away our ability to act—shackle us in the name of protection.”4 The same can be said about us as young people. Part of the problem is that we have accepted this devaluation. From suicide to substance abuse, from apathy to violence within our own communities, the hatred we internalize is one of the most threatening and universal constants in our lives. Shame and self-hatred wound us, dividing us from ourselves and one another. This is precisely why we must find ways to strengthen and build our community, so that none of us are isolated, so that we discourage all forms of discrimination, so we learn to take care of one another, and continue to brave the elements of our own lives. Revolutionary Voices has provided an alternative to self-abuse, a chance to use art and writing as a means of self-healing, self-exploration, and resistance. The pieces themselves are arranged to reflect this journey: from questioning to understanding, self-acceptance to resistance. The pieces, as well, demonstrate that art and writing are mediums for truth, rawness, and honesty. They are the sites where we are often most real and most vulnerable—in our journals, in our sketchbooks, in our dialogues with each other. These are the spaces where we overcome silence and self-doubt, where we sketch out representations of ourselves and our reactions to the world around us. For this reason, Revolutionary Voices foregrounds creative work. Creative work is political; words and images move people and have the capacity to dislodge deeply entrenched systems, if we arm ourselves with a voice and surround ourselves with allies. Writing and art are radical, especially when what we produce, why we produce, takes on the politics of necessity. We write about what we need, what we’ve fought for, how we’re surviving, and the obstacles in our path. Our creative work is the starting place where we entreat larger social change, the place where we develop a radical consciousness—a revolution of words, ideas, and self. This artistic expression takes many forms, but for a generation that has grown up on the spoken word and image—with hip-hop, punk rock, MTV, digital culture, ’zines, and slam poetry—it’s not surprising that many of us feel compelled to express ourselves with rhyme, rhythm, image, and a pen. Neither is it surprising that I received more poetry and spoken word submissions than any other genre. These are forms we can call our own. In many respects, they have become a common language we share. A language that tells our truths.
What’s So Revolutionary About These Voices? The young writers in this collection, like so many revolutionary thinkers of the past and present, are moving toward a radical consciousness by questioning heteronormativity and positioning themselves as young and queer in a world that tells us queerness and teen sexuality are discrepant. We think critically about regimes of gender, race, class, ability, and age. We see that we live under a system of heterosexism, white supremacy, misogyny, and capitalism—where homophobia is wielded as a weapon of sexism; where most of us are taught a Eurocentric version of history in school; where young people, especially young people of color and poor people, are being tracked into prisons. This is a system that justifies spending more money on the military than on education and health care combined; a system where foreign business interests control peoples and nations of color and the United States bombs and sanctions whoever it pleases. This system makes possible a society that packages queer identities with rainbow ribbons and sells them to the highest bidder. A society in which Pride has been commodified. We see that this is a system that privileges some of us at the expense of others—a world where we learn to hate and fear difference, but where we must relearn love of ourselves and of each other. And we are committed to challenging that system. Unlearning mainstream society’s teachings is a difficult process requiring visible alternatives and open dialogue. This collection is our attempt at opening this dialogue. We share our work to counter our own invisibility, to become allies to one another, and to demonstrate that we believe in ourselves enough to take up a pen, a paintbrush, or a camera in our own defense. As a resource collection, Revolutionary Voices models some of the ways we defend ourselves and stand together in solidarity. It includes youth at different places in challenging and unlearning the deadly ideologies we have been taught. It allows us to teach and learn from one another. It demonstrates that prioritizing the voices of the underrepresented and speaking out as young people in a world that says we should be spoken for is a revolutionary act. This type of revolution begins in the heart. And in making heartfelt connections with others, we are able to build a consciousness with a holistic vision of social change. In building this community, the contributors to this collection have inspired each other. Some have even begun editing other first-of-a-kind anthologies—by trans youth, by “crip queers,” by queer mixed-bloods. We hope to inspire you as well. Whether you write a poem or start a gay–straight alliance in your school; whether you get involved in antiracist education or volunteer at a community center, we intend Revolutionary Voices to be a call to action for the creation of new, more diverse forums through which we can speak. —Amy Sonnie
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©2000 Alyson Publications
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