Kiki

I am queer and I remind myself every day that queers are my family. For me, being queer isn’t just synonymous with LGBTQ. Queerness is also about making a commitment to working for social justice, even – and often most importantly – when this means engaging in struggles that don’t seem to affect us directly as individuals. Queers are not complacent. I also believe that we have profound capacities to care for each other and ourselves as we work to bring joy, peace and badassness into the world. I grew up in a small northern Michigan town where I first witnessed how complicated it can be to balance visibility and safety, especially in the absence of queer community. In my adult life, I am grateful to be out, vocal and in a position to foreground issues of relevance to queers in my work as an activist-academic, educator, writer and community organizer. Queers rock my world.