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Nov 26, 2024 | 
them.us | KB Brookins
Sign up for The Agenda — Them's news and politics newsletter, delivered to your inbox every Thursday. Upon hearing on August 21st that the Texas Department of Public Safety quietly revoked the ability to change your gender on driver’s licenses and birth certificates, I was flabbergasted. Shattered. An already-near-impossible process of officially changing one’s name and gender marker was taken away. Trans Texans are now without a right that granted me the ability to live with less fear.
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Jul 8, 2024 | 
newsbreak.com | KB Brookins
Welcome to NewsBreak, an open platform where diverse perspectives converge. Most of our content comes from established publications and journalists, as well as from our extensive network of tens of thousands of creators who contribute to our platform. We empower individuals to share insightful viewpoints through short posts and comments.
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Jul 8, 2024 | 
lithub.com | KB Brookins
Often, I’m asked, how does it feel to be you? I wrote my memoir, Pretty because the few trans stories that make it through publishing are overwhelmingly white, and though I haven’t seen people like me—Black, trans, and masculine—dressed up on book covers, there are many books that gave me permission to be myself, and that alone is life-saving. Career-making.
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Jun 10, 2024 | 
barnesandnoble.com | Isabelle McConville |Miranda July |Chloe Caldwell |KB Brookins
Recognizing the years of struggle for civil rights and equality is one of the many reasons we recognize pride and amplify queer voices throughout the whole year. Celebrate the contributions to art and literature that pioneers of LGBTQ+ civil rights worked toward. From true stories of indelible figures and places in history to incredible works of fiction, these picks are a great way to kick off the month. Please enable javascript to add items to the cart.
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Jun 8, 2024 | 
nocontactmag.com | KB Brookins
KB Brookins is a writer, cultural worker, and artist from Texas. They are the author of How To Identify Yourself with a Wound (Kallisto Gaia Press 2022), Freedom House (Deep Vellum 2023), and Pretty (Alfred A. Knopf 2024). Follow them online at @earthtokb.
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Jun 5, 2024 | 
texasobserver.org | KB Brookins
Editor’s Note: The following is excerpted, with permission, from Pretty: A Memoir by KB Brookins. The book, out May 28 from Alfred A. Knopf, blends prose and poetry. Before the Texas heat could cut through bodies like glass, there was a nighttime breeze. My mother felt a rumble in her belly that sent her hurling over a toilet seat—gunks of upchuck getting stuck in her hair. Sure, she’d gotten food poisoning or a bug that upset her stomach before, but this rumble was different.
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Jun 5, 2024 | 
inkl.com | KB Brookins
Editor’s Note: The following is excerpted, with permission, from Pretty: A Memoir by KB Brookins. The book, out May 28 from Alfred A. Knopf, blends prose and poetry. Before the Texas heat could cut through bodies like glass, there was a nighttime breeze. My mother felt a rumble in her belly that sent her hurling over a toilet seat—gunks of upchuck getting stuck in her hair. Sure, she’d gotten food poisoning or a bug that upset her stomach before, but this rumble was different.
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May 29, 2024 | 
lithub.com | KB Brookins
Contending with My Want (To Be Normal)In all my childhood dreams, I was a boy. Meaning in all my dreams I had 3C hair,yellow skin, phenotypically Black featureslike full lips and a crisp hairline only a Black barbercan bless you with. I was a cis boy. In this version, the most the desirable by those I wantedto desire me—Black girls of any shade and body type,Black boys with long torsos and too much shameto waste on footballs and bad dreams. I had clothes.
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May 24, 2024 | 
deepsouthmag.com | Kent Wascom |Nick Medina |Terah Shelton Harris |KB Brookins
It’s 2026, and Rally is 13 years old. The long, hot Louisiana summer looms before him like a face-melting stretch of blacktop, and the country is talking civil war while his adoptive family acts more vicious than ever. Rally spends his days wondering about his dead father’s people, the Woolsacks of West Florida, who long ago led a failed rebellion to carve their own state from the swamp and sugar-sand of the coast.
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Apr 17, 2024 | 
therumpus.net | KB Brookins
“Sir?,” “Ma’am?,” and Other Things I Miss1. Black Kid enters a coffee shop, stage right. They sport a graphic tee with the words sugar, we’re going down and Black jeans with a studded belt. The fake studs are falling, only saved by an occasional push-in-place by the Black Kid, their eyes smeared with clumps masquerading as mascara. Their eyes are blurring out everything on the way to the counter.
