Browsing Tag

personal narrative

Small Town, Big Dreams: Jacob Kelley’s Journey to Spread Queer-Inclusive Sex Education

Posted on October 25, 2023

I grew up in a rural town where being unapologetically bold and beautiful was the mark of a troublemaker. I was raised in an area where being queer or identifying with the LGBTQIA+ community was considered a sin, a bedroom secret never to be talked about. In my reality, it felt more like I should move or disappear in order to please the traditions of a predominantly white, heterosexual, cisgender, Christian, and country mindset.…

Mi cuerpo es un mundo: Translating My Lineage, Language, and Body

Posted on January 24, 2020

At some point in time, somewhere in Guadalajara, Mexico, this picture was taken. My Abuelita Guadalupe, my mother’s mother, sits between her sons David and Moises. In 1973, she would take my mother, Patricia, and her son Carlos with her across the border here to Houston. Some of her other children were already in Texas, while some never crossed. Abuelita would be diagnosed with Leukemia just four years later and, as such, decided that she wanted to die in her…

Free to Be: Navigating My Queer, Non-Binary Identity as a Child of the Southern Suburbs

Posted on January 14, 2020

A photo of Spectrum South writer Addie Tsai.

For the last month, I’ve been on tour for my first book, Dear Twin, a queer Asian young adult novel about twins and childhood trauma. The book centers a queer Asian romance between Poppy, a half-Chinese, half-Japanese queer teen and her girlfriend, Juniper, a self-identified butch Korean girl. When audiences ask me about the characters’ relationship, I say that, when writing this book, instead of envisioning a queer future, I instead envisioned a queer past—one in which I could have…

Coming Up to and Above The Surface: Finding Strength in My Non-Binary Identity

Posted on July 25, 2019

A photo of non-binary Houstonian Jayce Tyler.

The first time I “came out,” it was more of being pulled out. My parents had just discovered I was gay and the world turned upside down. My father was angry with me, but I couldn’t understand why because he has a lesbian sister and a gay brother. My mother simply ignored me. I spent the next few years silencing the things about myself that I knew my parents would never understand. …

Be The Woman You’ve Always Needed: Standing Tall in My Truth as a Black Trans Woman

Posted on July 16, 2019

A photo of Black trans woman Joelle Bayaa-Uzuri.

I live my life by two mottos: “Be an unapologetic, bad bitch,” and “Be the woman and person you’ve always needed in life.” I am a strong, confident, and bold Black trans woman who is not afraid to embrace the intersectionality of her identity; one who is unafraid to take the road less traveled and to be a trailblazer.…

Nothing Good Happens After Midnight: Being Noah Diaz

Posted on July 2, 2019

A photo of Spectrum South writer Noah Diaz.

I turn off the rumbling window air conditioning unit at my apartment. It hasn’t worked in weeks, and I’m finally ready to come to terms with it. I open up the windows to my apartment, a building I tell people is 100 years old, but if I’m being honest, I don’t know if that’s true or not. I feel a breeze—warm, of course. It sweeps through the middle of my studio apartment, making my unopened mail join my dirty laundry…

Coming In and Coming Out: Embracing My “Too”

Posted on June 5, 2019

A photo of writer Jay Stracke and his coming out story.

For most of my life, the word “too” held great weight. It was the weapon used against me, the chain that held me down, the prison in which I felt trapped, and the sentence I believed I was given for my crimes, for being the person that I am. I’d hear the hushed whispers from the other boys in my class. My face felt flush and warm. The feelings of embarrassment and shame were pumped from every nervous heartbeat to the…

Full Spectrum: My Queer Evolution in Texas

Posted on June 14, 2018

A photo of queer Texan Kelly M. Marshall.

At first glance, my upbringing was unremarkable. I grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas, a Padre Island beach baby. I was firmly white upper-middle class. My mother was white collar, a second-wave feminist trial attorney who carried me in her womb during her last nine months of law school. My father was blue collar, a master electrician and a newly-recovering alcoholic who likes to constantly remind me that I am an eighth-generation Texan. Our ancestors settled here from the Czech…

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