Shaun Dawson (00:05.698)
Hey, y'all, you're tuned into Assigned Sex Unarchived. I'm your non-binary cousin, Shaun Dawson, and this is a safe space where we're honest about what it means to show up as Black, trans, and genderqueer. Last time we linked up, we talked about transphobia in the Black community. So today, we're going to shift the energy a little bit. I'm sitting down again with Nandi K. and we're talking about Black trans joy and celebration. We're going to sit with joy next to grief, talk about the people and the projects that keep us going, and send a little love note forward to the Black trans kids coming after us. Let's get into it.

Nandi K. (00:41.112)
So I think the first time I remember really being in my body was probably like four years ago. And it wasn't necessarily a positive feeling, but it was a feeling of I know how I feel. I know that if I felt safe, my body would not feel like this. I know that when I feel safe, my body feels a different way. And for me, that was really profound as someone who has had to hide my feelings for a long time and then lost that connection to what they even are. So that was like four years ago, so pretty new for me.

Shaun Dawson (01:40.591)
Um. That didn't sound like a happy moment. I was asking for Black joy. Black trans joy.

Nandi K. (01:46.198)
It was happy for me because I had never been able to name that before.

Shaun Dawson (01:54.038)
Hmm

Nandi K. (01:56.408)
There's a joy in being able to name your feelings when you didn't even know how to distinguish them per se before. I was really, really happy because when I could recognize that, then I could act to treat myself accordingly and keep myself safe and do the right thing for myself.

Shaun Dawson (02:21.43)
I get it. Yeah, I think maybe I was thinking about that differently. I was thinking about, for me, it was like, I used to always have this thing with my hair, because my mom was a hairdresser and mom always did my hair. And I remember growing up, as I got older, I preferred to have my hair in short cuts to have my hair in shorter cuts and everybody would be like...that's like very like masculine like presenting and I used to like really feel away about that and like, oh, they calling me a man. I didn't like it. Like I was really uncomfortable with it. And as I got like older and it wasn't like four years ago, I think it may be like it was around the time when, um, when we first met actually, when I cut all my hair off and I was like, oh...

Like, I was like, this is it. Like, this is me. Like, I was, it was the first time I had cut all of my hair off and was like really comfortable, like, in my body and like who I was and didn't really care.

Nandi K. (03:34.574)
When you like hacked it off with the scissors in the mirror that time? And then you cut it all off. Okay, I was just trying to make sure we're talking about the same time. I love when you get a haircut.

speaker-0 (03:37.6)
Yeah, that time. Then I had to get a haircut.

Shaun Dawson (03:43.135)
Yep, we're talking about that moment.

I do too. I like not having no hair. It's just that when you go into that phase where you got to grow it out because eventually I'm going be like, want some hair because my head is cold. It's that. it's like for me, it's like I either like to have long hair or no hair. Right now I'm in my bald headed hoe phase where I'm just like...

Nandi K. (04:09.646)
I mean, you're not that baldheaded.But your hair is, but you're in a grow out phase. Like you're not bald. You didn't just cut your hair. It's been a couple years. I like that story. I think for me, when it comes to how I present myself, that's a big part of who I am. I used to be a stylist. I have always cared about the way that I look and I have never let other people dictate what that means, but that didn't really ground me in my body. So that's why I think my moment of joy is around feeling inside my body as opposed to how it's perceived by others and how I think I look. Because how I look is an ongoing curation for me. I'm in costume. I'm in perpetual costume.

Shaun Dawson (04:11.625)
I'm kind of baldheaded. kind of...

Shaun Dawson (05:02.902)
That's real. That's true, that's true. It's very true about you. How would you explain, like, Black trans joy to, like, your nephew, like, a six-year-old, if they asked you what it was?

Nandi K. (05:16.686)
Oh wow. Black trans joy. I would just say a Black trans person existing doing what they wanna do. A Black trans person at the grocery store unassailed is Black trans joy to me. Yeah, just being able to be. Be, without being assaulted. It's honestly, it's kind of sad, but it feels like it's just so little.

Shaun Dawson (05:52.128)
Yeah, I think I would just start maybe with a video of a trans person getting ready. Doing their makeup or getting dressed with some music because that's them in their moment, becoming themselves.

Nandi K. (06:07.192)
I couldn't show my nephew any of the trans people I follow.

Shaun Dawson (06:12.888)
Why couldn't you?

Nandi K. (06:16.12)
They're too adult. Their content, you know.

Shaun Dawson (06:22.414)
yeah. You know, I was recently I was taking a walk with Kalena. Kalena's my niece and we were talking and she was like. I think we started talking about you and I had said like they and she was like, why do you keep saying they? And I was like, Kalena, we've been through this. I was like, Nandi, I use they and she was telling me she was like, you know, that's just so confusing because that's not how you're supposed to talk. Like, it doesn't sound right. I was like, oh no. Kalena, that's not true. She was like, why wouldn't you just say she or he? I was like, because some people want you to say they. And then she was like, oh okay. And she left it alone.

Nandi K. (07:10.54)
Really, kids really get, this is how the conversation always goes with Kalena, honestly. Every time I have the conversation with Kalena, it goes pretty much exactly the same way. Where she asks a clarifying question, explains, oh like this? I say yes, that's the end of it.

Shaun Dawson (07:34.744)
Remember that? She kept calling Pig a he. I was like, Pig is a girl and she's a she. And I was like, why do you keep calling her a he? And she said, because it's a brown dog.

Nandi K. (07:53.474)
Yes. She is handsome, isn't she? Not that dogs have genders, right? That's just us projecting our own things. But I would say our sweet pig is a trans dog. Very masculine, presenting, very feminine personality.

Shaun Dawson(08:06.36)
She's a lady.

Shaun Dawson (08:12.19)
Would you?

Shaun Dawson (08:29.738)
Okay, so it's time for a little Black trans and genderqueer history. Today we're centering the story of Audre Lorde.

Audre Lorde
When you live on the edge of any structure, you have to know that survival is not theoretical. I know that as a Black woman, I know that as a lesbian. Whenever you are conscious that your identity is on the edge, survival becomes very, very real. And once you live on the level of survival as a reality, you learn that you have to value and critique the particulars all the time.

Shaun Dawson
Audrey was born in 1934 in Harlem to strict West Indian immigrant parents who were very much on their, you better not embarrass his family energy. She was the youngest of three girls and grew up in a strict Catholic household going to Catholic schools where she was sometimes the only black girl in the room. And from a very young age, she knew she was different. When people asked her how she was doing, she'd answer in poems that she memorized. And when no poem existed for what she felt, she just wrote one herself. That's who little Audre Lorde was.

Audre Lorde
I know lot of things that happened to me when I was younger that made me feel crazy all the time had a lot to do with what was going on around me that didn't even belong to me. They were never acknowledged but here these people it's like the persona but the personas were actual tangible. when you feel them and they assault you like ghosts constantly. But when you proceed to act on what is actually occurring, then they tell you you're either crazy, perverted, drunk, or weird.

Shaun Dawson
As an adult, Audrey started naming herself out loud. Black. Feminist. Lesbian. Poet. She worked as a librarian in New York public schools, got degrees from Hunter College in Columbia, and then stepped into teaching at places like Tougaloo College.

Audre Lorde (10:27.616)
I had never been south before, south than Washington. The opportunity to go into the south, and of course you remember what was happening in Jackson, Mississippi. This is 1968, the beginning of 1968. Tougaloo was still under attack, right, as a center for the Freedom Riders. There were night riders shooting up the campus, you know, every other week practically.
and working with Black students, working with students who really questioned and caused, forced me to question what we were doing, how did we move, and what was the place, for instance, of our writing, of our poetry.

Shaun Dawson (10:59.832)
Her most famous line, your silence will not protect you, wasn't just something she wrote, it was how she moved through the world. She refused to make herself smaller to make anybody comfortable.

Audre Lorde (11:15.502)
Survival is not a one-time decision. It's not a one-time act. It's something that goes on and on and on. And you make a commitment. In the same way I make a commitment to myself. I make a commitment to my working. I make a commitment to my survival.

Shaun Dawson
Her personal life was layered too. She married Edwin Rollins, a white gay man. In the early 60s had two kids and later divorced. She built long-term partnership and community with women like Frances Clayton, a white professor she met while teaching in Mississippi. And she stayed in conversation with Black women and lesbians who were being pushed out of every room that was supposed to be for them.

Audre Lorde (11:57.805)
Do you follow what I'm saying? My existence does not deny you yours.

speaker-0 (12:10.222)
But you know what saying. I'm saying everybody's problems seem to be just as much of a crisis and if you're so involved in your own that on the same hand the other person isn't going to be interested in helping you out of yours. If you know what I mean. The same way you seem to be, uh, rejecting the fact that the other prejudices do exist or that yours seem to Yes, when you said you're the ones that were dragged over here, this and that, didn't, you know, you were ignorant of the fact that maybe someone else did have it harder and that yours was the plight.

Judy Simmons (12:23.832)
No but you keep on imposing that construction on us. Nothing that we have said admits of that conclusion. Nobody said that. I said that mine was the one I was dealing with. I declined to answer the question the way you posed it because I didn't like the framing. I am not concerned about whose discrimination is greater or the lesser.

Shaun Dawson (12:38.254)
When mainstream publishing kept ignoring Black and brown feminist work, especially queer voices, she just didn't complain about it. In the 1980s, she helped build Kitchen Table Women of Color Press with Barbara Smith and others. Because if the table doesn't have a seat for you, apparently you just...build the whole table

Audre Lorde (13:05.602)
And we decided that each one of us in our own way had spoken of the inability to get what we had to say out. Or, having heard the night before, so many wonderful women share their work with us that we knew would never be shared. And we thought this is the time. with our necks in the noose, with Reaganomics sweeping the country, with homophobia and sexism and ageism and racism totally on the rise. This was the time for us to do.

Shaun Dawson
Then in 1977, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had a mastectomy and instead of going quiet, she wrote the cancer journals. She refused to wear prostheses. She wrote plainly about her pain, fear and anger.But also she wrote about wanting other women going through it to see her. To see themselves. Because the stories that existed were not built for her.

Audre Lorde
I had a biopsy for a breast tumor which they told me was probably malignant. As it turned out it was not. But I spent, there was an interim of about three and a half weeks between the time they told that I was to go in and the time I went into the hospital. And during that time I completed the whole trip - of dealing with mortality, of the rage, the fury, and so forth.

Shaun Dawson
And through all of that, the cancer, the organizing, the parenting, she kept writing. The Black Unicorn, Zami, Sister Outsider, books where she broke down how race, gender, class, and sexuality don't exist separately. They stack. She was doing intersectionality before it even had that name.

Audrey didn't identify as trans and she was working in a time when trans organizing wasn't really centered the way it is now. But her ideas cracked something open. When she wrote about the erotic as a deep source of power inside of us, she wasn't just talking about sex. She was talking about that feeling of being fully yourself in your body. And that language has given black trans and genderqueer people a way to claim their joy is something serious, something political, something worth defending.

Audre Lorde (15:14.446)
And what I wanted to talk about today was the erotic as a source of that power and how urgent it is that we recognize that within ourselves and that we not confuse the pornographic with the erotic. The name of this is uses of the erotic, the erotic as power. She showed that telling the truth about who you are, building chosen family and creating spaces where your people can see themselves isn't being extra, it's survival.

Shaun Dawson
Audrey died in 1992 after her cancer return, but before she passed, she took on an African name. Gamba Adisa, meaning warrior. She who makes her meaning known. So when we talk about black trans joy and celebration this week, her work is in the background of all of that. A black trans or genderqueer kid can pick up one of her books today, see that name, hear that voice and feel like, wow, somebody was making space for me before I even got here.

Audre Lorde
We're going to be afraid because we were programmed to be afraid, right? And we can learn to work when we're afraid, same way we can learn to work when we're tired. And that, out of that, this form arose. was called a litany for survival. And actually the title of it is a litany for survival number 40. Because you should know that of course survival is an ongoing thing.

Shaun Dawson (16:42.136)
You have a lot of chosen family.

Nandi K. (16:44.462)
That's like all I have. I mean, that's not true. Yes. Wow. Maybe you're not. Maybe I'm finding out right now in this episode that maybe actually you're my chosen family, but maybe I'm not your chosen family. I don't know if that's true. And now.

Shaun Dawson (16:48.438)
No it's not. Am I your chosen family?

Shaun Dawson (17:06.935)
Your my chosen family too.

Nandi K. (17:10.952)
If you're listening, you decide. Get it in the comments. Do y'all think that Sean has chosen me as their family based on that line of questioning?

Shaun Dawson (17:23.731)
And how does chosen family show up?

Nandi K. (17:28.174)
The same, to me, the same way that family does, that not chosen family does, except, you know, they choose to do it. Like, we choose each other. We weren't forced together by proximity or, or sometimes that's how we ended up together, but we're not forced together by blood or biology.

We met each other in some turn of events. We choose to be in each other's lives. For me, I think I let people show up how it's best to show up. Everybody isn't the best showing up for everything. So I'm like, you show me how you show up and then that's how I will expect you to show up. I like for my family to tell me who they are.

And then that's what I expect.

Shaun Dawson (18:26.764)
So is there a difference between like your chosen family and your friends?

Nandi K. (18:32.024)
To me, no.

Shaun Dawson (18:33.662)
okay. I was going to ask, does chosen family, are you more lenient with your chosen family? Can they beat up on you more? Can they be terrible people and you're like, that's just my family. I got to deal with it.

Nandi K. (18:46.784)
And I don't, but I also don't tolerate that with my family.

Shaun Dawson (18:50.636)
I mean, yeah, real.

Nandi K. (18:52.46)
Yeah, I don't tolerate that with my family, so I wouldn't tolerate it. And it actually kind of happened the opposite way for me. My chosen family kind of has always treated me better than my real family. And that helped me realize why would I tolerate that for my real family? If these people who I met who, you know...don't know me from Adam. If they treat me nice and well, why would I let my family treat me bad? I mean, do you wanna talk about how hard it is to continue to keep up relationships and even make new ones as life goes on? Because I think we've both lost some friendships and had some relationships change in really deep ways.

Shaun Dawson (19:47.904)
I have very few friends. I think I can count them all on one hand. And that is because it's so much work maintaining relationships, I think. So I'm always very... Like I just don't be jumping out there trying to like meet new people and like meet new friends, because I don't feel like I can barely can juggle the relationships I got right now.

So if it doesn't feel like natural, don't really like, I'm just not willing to go like the extra, put any extra effort. But the relationships I have now, they are very solid. I feel like I know who they are. And like you said earlier, like I know how they can show up for me. And they're all very, very different. I was talking to someone recently about

Like how my like friend groups, like I don't think I could put all of my friends in one room together. I don't think. And we'd all get along.

Nandi K. (20:53.006)
No, definitely not. I'm like, damn near don't like your friends.

Shaun Dawson (21:00.638)
Yeah, like we all couldn't hang out together, but each of them serve a purpose. Each of them serve a purpose. And when I need them, like I can hit them up at like two in the morning or whatever it is. Like I know they'll be there, but.

Nandi K. (21:16.598)
That's why I don't go too hard because I'm like, but they can also get the knife if they get caught slipping around me. And that's really like, the reason I don't like your friends is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I'm like, don't let me catch you slipping on my boo. Don't be, I don't forgive.

Shaun Dawson (21:28.75)
But who, you gonna kill my friends? you would.

Shaun Dawson (21:42.808)
I don't forgive either. I don't forgive either.

Nandi K. (21:45.814)
No, you don't. But I don't forgive in a much more tangible way. Yeah. We're like, if I don't forgive you, you can't be around me. But I also think that's the autism sometimes. Like I really struggle with kind of like thinking.

Shaun Dawson (21:59.938)
Yeah, I feel like, I think that's like, you were saying like with chosen family, how like sometimes we have, well, I won't say sometimes, like when you were like growing up, like, you have these like abusive relationships with your parents, which kind of form all of your relationships later in life and you just start tolerating shit you shouldn't. But with my friends, like we've definitely had some fallouts, but not, to a point where I'm just like, I'm never talking to you again. It's just like, I can't depend on you to do that thing. Like I know how you're gonna show up for me here.

speaker-1 (22:42.008)
Real. Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (22:46.06)
Yeah. That's people like I like people be who you are now if you do like some wild shit I Will like there have my have had friend like some friends that like we still cool But we might go like a year or so without talking because you did something fucked up and I was mad and I never forget I never forget

Nandi K. (23:06.346)
Why still be cool? See this is what I'm saying. Why we where we differ is like, why would I still be cool? We're not

Shaun Dawson (23:14.658)
People like apologize and I have a thing. Like for me, know that I, I can, like I'm, I also think it's problematic to never forgive, but I know that's like a part of me. Like I always like hold grudges. hold deep, deep, deep grudges.

Nandi K. (23:34.376)
But never forgiving is not the same as holding a deep grudge Being like I don't fuck with you for what you did and I don't fuck with you forever. It's not holding a grudge like

Shaun Dawson (23:46.84)
But if they came to you and was like, I'm sorry for that thing I did.

speaker-1 (23:49.998)
Okay. I'm glad you're sorry. You can't be in my life. Okay. You're sorry. We know you're sorry. That's why you're not in my life anymore. Like, why weren't you sorry in the moment? Why are you now sorry now that you've suffered consequences? Like the timing matters too, when it comes to like conflict resolution. Timing matters a lot. You can't let a year go by and then come and apologize to me. I've moved on.

Shaun Dawson (24:20.046)
I mean, no, I'm not saying they apologized after a year. I'm saying they apologized and I was still mad and didn't talk to their ass for a year. And then I thought about it and I was like, Shaun, don't be like that.

Shaun Dawson(24:36.792)
So this episode is still about joy. But also we've got to be real and to say that like, I feel like joy and grief do have the same body. every year in November on the trans day of remembrance, everybody comes together and they read all of the trans people that were killed for the previous year. And I feel like even in moments of grief, there is still like a little bit of joy there too. Does that make sense?

Nandi K. (25:14.082)
Yeah, it makes me think of the Richard Smallwood funeral.

Shaun Dawson (25:17.696)
Yeah. Most funerals actually.

Nandi K. (25:21.014)
Most Black funerals. Well, obviously we're not talking about white funerals anyway. This show is not for white people.

Shaun Dawson (25:28.428)
Because you have to think about like, let's say the person that drove like five hours to be in that room or like the person that's doing the makeup before the ceremony or like the meal everybody has after and everybody's like sitting close and laughing even if they crying a little bit.

Nandi K. (25:48.482)
They call it a celebration of life. Yeah, I think it makes it so much sweeter because I actually went to a reading recently of people sharing some works in progress and all of them, one of the short stories was about the death of a trans person, but it was such a beautiful story because in a story from the perspective about death, it was about the fact that she lived. And that's how joy and grief kind of live in the same body when it comes to death and people passing away. Yes, they're not here with us now, but also they lived, they touched us, they shared themselves with us. And that also is so special and as long as we have that in some ways, parts of them won't ever die. And I think that's always really beautiful.

Shaun Dawson (26:50.04)
It is, yeah. How does joy help you survive loss?

Nandi K. (27:02.798)
Grief, that hoe got hands. Yeah, she'd just be popping up out of nowhere. You could just be having a regular day. You could just be scrolling on social media. All of a sudden, boom, bam, bam, you just remember that there's that person that you can never call again. And I think that...

Shaun Dawson (27:06.638)
She do and she just be popping up.

Nandi K. (27:26.988)
when I reach for the joys of some of those things, for me, a lot of it is music. A lot of things for me are music. And I know in some of my grief, there have been times where I felt like there was music that was lost to me forever because I could never talk to the person again who would know it. But then like little things happen and those songs have been slowly coming back to me. And that's been really joyful and making the grief not so deep, like along with time.

Shaun Dawson (28:09.624)
Mm-hmm.

Nandi K. (28:11.33)
Yeah, it's bittersweet.

Shaun Dawson (28:13.838)
It is. I lost a cousin a few years ago and that music channel that I always have playing in the background, well now we don't have any music playing in the background, but there was always like after school, we would go to my aunt's house and we would play, we would watch like 106 and Park and...It was just like, it's after school music videos and we would just watch it all day. And that channel that we used to have on, I don't remember, it's like a Samsung, like R &B. Yeah, I remember right after she had passed and every time I would walk in the living room, I would hear one of the songs. Sometimes it would make me sad, but sometimes it would also make me happy. It would be funny, especially there's this one song by Aretha Franklin, A Rose Is Still A Rose. I don't know why that song, my cousin loved that song. Is it?

Nandi K. (29:18.612)
A banger. Yes, and it was also written by Lauryn Hill.

Shaun Dawson (29:24.62)
Are there any black, trans artists that pop off top of your head like any music you listen to?

Nandi K. (29:31.714)
Here's the thing, I don't know how people identify. I don't know how people identify, but there is an artist named Arlo Parks. They're British and Nigerian it looks like.

Shaun Dawson (29:55.95)
I think you told me about this person.

Nandi K. (29:58.198)
Yeah, they have pretty dope music. If you like The Internet or Syd the Kyd from Odd Future, it has that kind of vibe. If you like my music, it has.. But it has that kind of like electronic alt R&B vibe. I really like them. Oh, Michaela Jaé who played Blanca on Pose. Sings down.

Shaun Dawson (30:31.63)
I gotta check that out. I didn't know that.

Nandi K. (30:36.472)
She sings down. Ooh, she can sing. Angelica Ross also sings, but I don't think she's put out a lot of music. That's also my wife.

Shaun Dawson (30:46.698)
I recently heard her doing some voice acting and I thought that was pretty dope. She has an amazing voice and she's like a black trans creator that I get excited about because she's everywhere. She's so talented. And she started like, I was looking her up, like she started with Pose.

Nandi K. (30:51.49)
Yeah, she has a great voice.

Shaun Dawson (31:17.006)
American Horror Story and then she like left Hollywood. She's done with that now. And now she's in politics.

Nandi K. (31:25.986)
Yes, she's on Butch Ware's campaign. Yeah, she's his communications director.

Shaun Dawson (31:32.436)
And she's a tech. She's a techie. Yeah, like I love her.

Nandi K. (31:36.79)
Yeah, same. I've loved her for a very long time. When I found out that she had started Black Girls Code, I was swooning.

Shaun Dawson (31:47.534)
I remember.

Nandi K. (31:49.678)
Yeah, those are some really great, great... yeah, Angelica Ross is really...

Shaun Dawson (31:57.792)
Is there any other black trans creator that gives you joy?

Nandi K. (32:04.91)
I don't know. I feel like if I was more...

Shaun Dawson (32:14.634)
Or projects. recently, think I'm very, very late, but I recently came across this project called the Okra Project. And I was this is so dope.

Nandi K. (32:24.35)
I've known people I knew about the project in New York City. I remember when it first started. I knew some people that worked with The Okra Project when they were just like doing meals. Mm Yeah, that was in that was like right around the time when we first met. Yeah, when we first met was when I first started hearing about the project like 2017. OK, super dope. They do grants.

Shaun Dawson (32:40.63)
Yeah, they've been around for a while.

Nandi K. (32:54.23)
Yeah, they do a lot of really cool stuff. Dominique Morgan, what am I thinking? Imagine. My God on today, I almost left her out.

She is just, she used to be head of the Oka Project. Now she is head, she is the person who worked with T.S. Madison on the T.S. Madison Starter House as well. She works with some kind of giant philanthropy fund. But also she just talks her shit online. She does a lot of commentary on current events and things that are going on. She's a Brandy enthusiast and she's super funny.

Shaun Dawson(33:45.026)
What do you wish you could've seen or heard when you were younger?

Nandi K. (33:49.644)
As a trans person?

Shaun Dawson (33:50.763)
as a trans person.

Nandi K. (33:55.118)
I wish that who I knew sooner that who I was, especially gender wise, was up to me. I spent quite a bit of time doing what I thought I was supposed to do. I came out late. I think it was late and I was 25. I know people come out later, but I...was probably gay the entire time. When I look back, just see like, was never, I never fit any of the things like girl or straight. And so I wish that I would have known that I, very young, that's like, hey, whoever you are is up to you. You don't have to do what people say. You can just be who you are.

Shaun Dawson (34:51.883)
Yeah, I wish I could have seen, just seen like in person, like another gender nonconforming person besides like on TV because I grew up like in the South. And I think the first time I saw a trans person was on Maury or like Jerry Springer. Yeah, like that was.

Nandi K, (35:16.43)
Yeah, Maury. Yes, guess if it's a woman or a man.

Shaun Dawson (35:21.582)
Yeah, I don't remember any like gender non-conforming people like around me like growing up. I do remember like some gay men at church.

Nandi K. (35:32.43)
Yeah, my mama used to play the piano at a bunch of pageants. And when I was younger, I didn't know what pageants were because I wasn't in the queer world. But now that I'm older and I can put the dots together, my mom used to play in drag pageants. Like, one of her best friends who died from AIDS. He used to do drag pageants. So I think my mom's friend's death really affected her. And I think the AIDS epidemic as a whole really affected a really big group of people in a profound way, where I think if my mom's friend hadn't passed away, I would have a very different life. And I would have been around way more queer people. Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (36:24.674)
Mm-hmm.

Shaun Dawson (36:28.344)
Yeah, I wasn't really around any queers. That's where I was saying the ones I can think of that I was like, something's different there. They were in church.

Nandi K. (36:30.562)
They be in church though.

Nandi K. (36:37.036)
Yep. Yeah. Almost every minister of music at every church that I went to was a gay black man, except for one.

Shaun Dawson (36:53.43)
Alright y'all, that's all I got for today. If you want to connect with Nandi, you can find them on Instagram, Facebook, and Blue Sky @nandikayyy. The clips you heard from Audre Lorde in today's episode came from a few sources. The 1982 Blanche Cook interview, the 1979 WBAI radio interview with Judy Simmons, and a 1974 reading at the San Francisco State Poetry Center. All the links are in the show notes so you can go listen to the full recordings yourself. If this episode dragged you a little bit, or if it hugged you a little bit, please share it with someone you love. You can find me, your non-binary cousin, Shaun Dawson on all platforms @iamsdawson. Y'all be safe out there.