Research Catalog

The risk it takes to bloom : on life and liberation

Title

The risk it takes to bloom : on life and liberation / Raquel Willis.

Author

Willis, Raquel

Publication

New York : St. Martin's Press, 2023.
©2023

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Item details
Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request Scan Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schomburg Center to submit a request in person.	Text	Use in library	Sc D 24-21	Schomburg Center - Research & Reference - Desk

Details

Description

xvii, 363 pages : illustrations, portraits; 22 cm

Summary

"A passionate, powerful memoir by a trailblazing Black transgender activist, tracing her life of transformation and her work towards collective liberation. In 2017, Raquel Willis took to the National Women's March podium just after the presidential election of Donald Trump, primed to tell her story as a young Black transgender woman from the South. Despite having her speaking time cut short, the appearance only deepened her commitment to speaking up for communities on the margins. Born in Augusta, Georgia, to Black Catholic parents, Raquel spent years feeling isolated, even within a loving, close-knit family. There was little access to understanding what it meant to be queer and transgender. It wasn't until she went to the University of Georgia that she found the LGBTQ+ community, fell in love, and explored her gender for the first time. But the unexpected death of her father forced her to examine her relationship with herself and those she loved. These years of grief, misunderstanding, and hard-won epiphanies seeped into the soil of her life, serving as fertilizer for growth and allowing her to bloom within. Upon graduation, Raquel entered a career in journalism against the backdrop of the burgeoning Movement for Black Lives, intersectional feminism going mainstream, and unprecedented visibility of the trans community. After hiding her identity as a newspaper reporter, her increasing awareness of the epidemic of violence plaguing trans women of color and the heightened suicide of trans teens inspired her to come out publicly. Within just a few short years of community organizing in Atlanta, Oakland, and New York, Raquel emerged as one of the most formidable Black trans activists in history. In The Risk It Takes to Bloom, Raquel Willis recounts with passion and candor her experiences straddling the Obama and Trump eras, the possibility of transformation after tragedy, and how complex moments can push us all to take necessary risks and bloom toward collective liberation"--

Subject

Genre/Form

Biographies
Autobiographies.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references.

Contents

Introduction -- Part I: Rooting -- Four blue walls -- My interior world -- Revelations -- The playground of gender -- An ill-fitting frame -- Letter to my father -- Death to expectations -- Seen, differently -- Chrysalis -- For women who had a boyhood -- Part II: Budding -- Destiny's detour -- Plausible deniability -- The labyrinth of desire -- Letter to Leelah Alcorn -- Awakening to Black liberation -- Between visibility and vitality -- Slouching toward liberation -- Nobody's savior -- Part III: Pruning -- An era of reckoning -- Testing my faith -- Letter to Chyna Gibson -- Womanhood, expanded -- Girls' night outing -- I have a right to show my color -- Part IV: Blooming -- A peach in the Big Apple -- This ain't no chick flick -- Our ancestor's wildest nightmare -- Letter to Layleen Polanco -- Falling pillars -- Revolution's knockin' -- Epilogue: Welcome to the garden.

Call Number

Sc D 24-21

ISBN

9781250275684
1250275687
9781250275691 (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

2023025379

OCLC

1384445409

Author

Willis, Raquel, author.

Title

The risk it takes to bloom : on life and liberation / Raquel Willis.

Publisher

New York : St. Martin's Press, 2023.

Copyright Date

Edition

First edition.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references.

Local Note

Schomburg copy with dust jacket.

Local Subject

Black author.

Research Call Number

Sc D 24-21

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