REVIEW: Rage: On Being Queer, Black, Brilliant… and Completely Over It by Lester Fabian Brathwaite

Reviewed by Brian Watson

Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw coined intersectionality in 1989 to describe the compounding biases experienced by people with multiple marginalized identities. Women, for example, must contend with systemic misogyny in North American societies, immigrants encounter xenophobia, queer people face homophobia and transphobia (and misogyny), Black people (and other people of color) swim in an ocean of systemic racism, and disabled persons are forced to interact with ableism. Intersectionality occurs, therefore, when you are both a woman and Black, a woman and queer, a queer disabled person, a disabled immigrant, etc.

Lester Fabian Brathwaite inhabits an intersection — a mother lode of bias — where racism, homophobia (and therefore misogyny), ableism, and xenophobia collide. Thankfully for his readers, he writes through that experience with brutally honest yet also laugh-out-loud prose.

Rage: On Being Queer, Black, Brilliant… and Completely Over It is a memoir-in-essays, and Mr. Brathwaite leads off with an essay that considers his internalized racism, titled “Fucking White Boys.” The writing here encapsulates much of what I fell in love with when reading Rage. There is literary criticism—the author dissects writers like James Baldwin and Richard Bruce Nugent, a queer participant in the Harlem Renaissance—and there is self-analyzing memory. There, too, is cultural criticism.

“As an adult, you have some agency, albeit very limited, in defining what life is and how you fit into it. By the time I got to that point, I had already been questioning everything, all the lies—so then I had to figure out what the truth was. I’m still figuring that out, but in the figuring out I’ve learned to love being Black, to love being gay, and to love the densely layered and beautifully textured nexus of both identities.”

The second essay, “I Worship at the Altar of His Body,” was the only one of the ten where the author leads the reader into an aspect of gay male culture that is truly divisive: the bodybuilding cult. Some gay men, and Mr. Brathwaite admits he is one, are susceptible to muscle dysmorphia, that feeling that your body lacks in a self-defined surfeit of muscles. The author spells out several potential causes for this dysmorphia: “…internalized heterosexism; internalized beauty standards; homophobic bullying; long-term effects of the AIDS epidemic, both physical and psychological; and just the constant pressure (and competition) to be seen, to be wanted, to be fucked.”

On the other side of this divide are queer men, who, like me, reject heterosexism, fatphobic beauty standards, and homophobia (both from others and that which we internalized in our youth). But as Mr. Brathwaite embarks on the history, both societal and personal, of bodybuilding, from “noted heterosexual” Eugen Sandow, who organized the first competition in 1901, and whose eponymous award was subsequently won seven times by another noted heterosexual, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to Bob Mizer, they gay photographer who launched a prototype of bodybuilding-inspired gay porn magazines, Physique Pictorial, in 1951.

And yet, Mr. Brathwaite is sufficiently skilled in his introspection to inspire less cringe and more empathy.

“I understand all too well the conflicting emotions… being a minority and wanting to be viewed or treated differently, and how that suddenly happens when you look a certain way, but then a whole new set of troubles arises. And the old troubles don’t go away; they simply get bigger and louder. I often feel invisible in the gay community. It’s why I avoid gay bars and clubs, as any sort of traditionally ‘safe space’ feels anything but for me. And while I hate the apps, there’s a certain safety in knowing that I can find men who are attracted to me. As RuPaul has warned queen after queen not to do, I began relying on that body-ody-ody.”

The essay I returned to the most, delighted with the humor and self-awareness, not to mention the identity I shared with the author, was the fourth one: “Memoir of a Blouse.” Within the queer lexicon, a blouse is a feminine top (and a top is the insertive partner in a sexual relationship). “Memoirs of a Blouse” is an exploration of being seen, the moments when other people in your life, be they friends, family, or strangers, not only recognize your authentic self, they also signal that they share in that aspect of authenticity. In a capitalist society that seeks to divide us, one from the next (and therefore extract more money from our isolation), those moments of shared identity, shared intersectionality, are balms for our souls, and Mr. Brathwaite celebrates that experience with rich prose and his exquisite wit.

“For some reason, I thought gay men would be beyond the whole ‘masculinity’ thing because, well, taking a dick is perhaps the most effeminate thing a man could realistically do…. But I’ve never successfully bottomed, so I can’t tell you what it feels like. Not for lack of trying, by the way. When I first attempted to have sex, I assumed I would be a bottom because… she is me. I am she. Sissies aren’t tops. But penetrating me was like trying to get into Fort Knox—it involved tools, methods, and skills very few men possess. So I became a top out of necessity. I always told myself, and anyone who’d listen, that I’d one day be vers [i.e., both top and bottom], just as soon as I found someone I was comfortable enough with to pop my proverbial cherry. Nearly two decades later, here I am. Still unpopped.”

The ninth essay, “Silence,” brings the reader to the death of Mr. Brathwaite’s mother in 1999, when the author was fourteen. This essay painfully illuminates how the young Mr. Brathwaite chose to remain silent in his grief and takes the tragedy of death even deeper. The poignancy in this paragraph hit me the hardest, reflecting my experiences when my father died when I, too, was fourteen.

“So many things are left unsaid in Black families, especially between parents and their queer children. I never got to come out to my mother. I think I would’ve sooner than later if I had the chance. I knew she had said she would never want a gay child when I was younger and within earshot, but I really feel she would’ve been fine with it eventually. Living in America had loosened the old girl up. All those pro-gay episodes of The Golden Girls we watched together must have seeped into her brain at some point….”

Rage offered me everything I look for in a memoir, things I suspect many readers both need and want: moments of laughter; tears of shared sorrow; new knowledge and wonderful trivia; and opportunities to think and learn more about ourselves. As a writer, I am deeply grateful to Mr. Brathwaite for sharing his intellect, his humor, and his honesty throughout, for beautifully illustrating how to share all of the human experience on the page.