It wasn’t my mother's prejudice regarding her potential adopted offspring that struck me; it was this racism infecting my adoption origin story. She hadn’t waited years and years for me because there was some baby shortage in our small Midwestern town. She had waited to adopt because she wanted an "all white" infant girl.
I’ve been trying to think of the right metaphor to describe this experience -- the way I can and can’t see real, tangible changes in my body, my mood, my place in the world; the way I have faith in the process and am exasperated by it, because from where I’m standing it will never end. The word transition implies that I started out as one thing and am becoming another, and that at the…
I owned a white doll when I was two years old. Like any self-respecting tiny caretaker, I had a miniature stroller to tote the doll around in. I made crop circles on the rug of my living room as I wheeled back and forth busily. My parents later bought the doll a companion, but this one looked like me. They propped the new black doll up in the stroller beside her white equivalent.
I’m taking a break from performing stand-up comedy. When I'm asked why, I tell my friends that I’m just not feeling it right now, or that I’m not sure if stand-up is my medium. It’s easier to say these things than to admit that the material I was writing and performing was making me uneasy. On stage, I worked through my inability to reconcile my cultural identity with how I perceived myself. I’ve been discriminated…
Stephen Kearse's previous work for The Toast can be found here. I sat quietly as my shorn hair fell, sprinkling my bare shoulders. I’d received haircuts in barbershops, shopping malls, salons, basements, garages and college dorms, but this was the first time I’d had my hair cut in a bedroom. I was thankful there were no mirrors in sight that would allow…
When you grow up believing both God and your mom think you are awesome, you become woefully unprepared for the banalities of life. This is a side-effect of growing up self-assured and evangelical, a case-study in what happens to a teenage girl’s psyche when she believes that she truly can do anything she sets her heart on. My mom is important here; it was from her I learned that intense, interesting women were the backbone…
Abdul and I, we’ve known each other since he came running toward me one night with open arms and a wide smile, declaring: “It’s so good to see you!” I had never seen Abdul before in my life, but how could I turn down this beautiful, smiling face? I met him midway, for the first of many embraces to follow. Later, we would find many more things connecting us: two young brown queer people from…
Picture this: a world in which you must declare your preferred gender pronoun, or PGP, in every single sentence you utter. If you are someone who cares about the notion of gender, this may sound rather wonderful. No one would ever get confused. You’d always know how to address your fellow persons, and they would know how to address you.
When you meet me for the first time, you read me as if I were a book. Every idea you have about me and every word I say is part of that book. When you look at me, you will think I am white. I already know this. When you shake my hand and meet me for the first time, you always already read me as white. You will hear me speak English without an…
Rohin Guha's previous work for The Toast can be found here. "[E]ven though I knew nothing about Peach in terms of stats or character besides her princess status, the mere fact that she offered me the chance to play through the game as a girl felt like such a novel idea that I picked her immediately." --Kate McCallister, "Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Peach" When was I eight years old,…
A baby pug that can’t wake up even after three cups of coffee because it’s raining outside. A bunny eating a too-large carrot that can’t figure out why “available balance” and “current balance” are different on her online bank statement. An orphaned otter who spends her mornings cleaning out her Roomba. A Vine of a little girl in a car seat crying because taxes for freelancers are really fucking confusing. Mariah Carey in the “Heartbreaker”…
Everything about the ’80s said damn nature, damn everything about what's natural. This is how we ended up with jheri curls and synth pop. Perhaps this made the ’80s the perfect time for music videos to find their own outlet on television. I now know they've been around since the 1930s or ’40s, but, like the rest of my generation, I discovered the music video in its modern form with MTV. That also means MTV…
During a fundraiser, a congressman catches my eye and waves me over. He’s in the middle of a conversation but reaches out for a two armed hug as he says my name: “HEATHER!” He holds me by my shoulders and asks me how I am. “And how is mom?” Mom is good. Mom is away at Columbia University earning her Master’s in Journalism.
This post was brought to you by @annamarch. “My sister read your blog,” my mother remarked to me a couple years ago, referring to a series of guest posts that I had been writing for Bitch magazine. She was teasing me, but she relayed something that my aunt had apparently told her in earnest: “She showed [her husband] and he said he's afraid of you now, since you're such a 'militant butch lesbian.'”…
I sat on a plaid flannel picnic blanket in the park, my legs long in front of me, watching the sunlight dance through newly budding trees. There was still a bite in the air, and we were the only picnickers on the grass that afternoon, but I felt I could sit there for hours, resting my cheek on the little blonde head leaning against my chest, smelling her baby shampoo.
