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IV. Feminist Five
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Titled after her able-bodied, identical twin’s nickname The Pretty One: On Life,Writer Karla Cornejo Villavicencio was on DACA when she decided to write aboutAkwaeke Emezi’s fourth book, “Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir, ”All About Love: New Visions is perhaps one of bell hooks’ most famous works. It Pop Culture, Disability, and Otherbeing undocumented for the firstprovides this perennial questionis a collection of essays that Reasons to Fall in Love with Me is an honest,time using her own name. It was right after thewith a definitive answer. Yes, the author seemscumulates into an argument that challenges challenging, and hilariouselection of 2016, the dayto say, we are monsters.society’s image of whatcollection of essays that detail Keah Brown’s life, love,she realized the story she’d tried to steer clear of wasBut only if monstrosity is defined as the explicit refusallove is. hooks writes, “The word ‘love’ is most often and pop-culture obsessions. As her quote below confirms, Keah Brown uses Thethe only one she wanted to tell. So she wrote her immigration lawyer’s phoneto abide by the binaries that surround us. In a world predisposed to queerdefined as a noun, yet…we would all love better if we used it as a verb,” an Pretty One to push past the need for her cerebral-palsy to be a source ofnumber on her hand in Sharpie and embarked on a trip across the country to tellvillainy, “Dear Senthuran” claims monstrosity as a space of intentional rejection.idea that, on its own, has left a legacy. inspiration and instead encourages her readersthe stories of her to seefellow her disability as just one of her many otherundocumented immigrants—and to find the interestinghidden key and powerfulto her own. traits and accomplishmentsThe book is (including her love for cheesecake!)a metaphysical journey told throughThe Pretty One has receivedIgbo cosmology. Emezi, who praise from well-known artists and writers like Roxane Gay, Lena Dunam, and Deepak Chopra.grew up in Aba, Nigeria, invites the reader to “imagine being ogbanje, like me.” Divine spirits born to human All About Love contains 13 chapters that expand society’s limited understanding of “love” as a merely romantic Looking mothers,beyond the flashpoints of theogbanje are liminal deities inborder orconstant the activism of thetransit. In order to DREAMers, Cornejo Villavicenciorejoin the spirit world, they die exploresover and concept to contain concepts of clarity, justice, honesty, commitment, spirituality, values, greed, community, The Pretty One also unpacks Keah Brown’s viral social mediathe lives of the undocumented—and the mysteries of herover again, deliberately leaving their human families bereft. campaign own life.#DisabledandCute. Initially a personalShe finds the singular, effervescent mutuality, romance, loss, healing, and destiny (as hooks names the chapters). In these chapters, she makes hashtag posted by Brown tocharacters across the nation celebrate her personal journeyoften reduced in the media to with self-love, #DisabledandCute has transformedpolitical pawns or nameless laborers. The stories connections between lessons we learn as children and how they impact our perspective of love as adults and into an online community ofshe tells are not deferentialIn context and content, “Dear disabled people celebrating themselves andor naively inspirational but show the love,Senthuran” is molded by departure and what proving that “being disabled andmagic, heartbreak, insanity, andit requires. The book is structured unpacks the fraught idea that we are expected to know how to love despite the absence of instructions in being cute aren’t mutually exclusive.” Like most onlinevulgarity that infuse the day-to-day lives of her subjects.as a series of letters from the author to their friends, lovers, content created byother writers, divine Black creators, however,and human family. In them society. All About Love is just one example of how bell hooks’ writing beautifully heals its readers. #DisabledandCute is occasionallyEmezi recounts episodes in their referenced without crediting Keah Brown. Solife, from their gender confirmation surgeries totoall of our lovely BALIpurchasing a home readers(a place that might want to contribute to the hashtag, make sure to tag her @Keah_Mariathey call their “godhouse”), to betrayal at the hands of literary mentors. Each !letter chronicles a tension — between Western constructions of gender and “people like me: embodied but not human, terrified that
In New York, we meet the undocumented workers who were recruited into the federally funded Ground Zero cleanup after 9/11. In Miami, we enter the ubiquitous botanicas, which offer medicinal herbs and potions to those whose status blocks them from any other healthcare options. In Flint, Michigan, we learn of demands for state ID in order to receive life-saving clean water. In Connecticut, Cornejo Villavicencio, childless by choice, finds family in two teenage girls whose father is in sanctuary. And through it all we see the author grappling with the biggest questions of love, duty, family, and survival. In her incandescent, relentlessly probing voice, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio combines sensitive reporting and powerful personal narratives to bring to light remarkable stories of resilience, madness, and death. Through these stories we come to understand what it truly means to be a stray. An expendable. A hero. An American.
they’re going mad, unable to talk about it, and estranged from the Indigenous Black realities that might make some sense of it all.” But also between the euphoria and heartbreak of love, professional triumph and personal failure, the finality of life and death. Emezi proves these oppositions artificial, while establishing the very real solitude and weight of being uninterested in them. Incrementally, the chapters inch closer and closer to a frightening reality. “There is something bright and brilliant in me,” they write. “It doesn’t make me feel special. It makes me terribly alone.”
“Idon’tmindbeinganinspirationifitisforavalidreason, suchasadmiringhowmany slicesofpizzaIate, anessayoranarticleIwrote, myclothingchoices, orhowquicklyIcan learn the lyrics to songs . As long as the inspiration doesn’t come with pity or self-congratulatorypatsontheback, Iamallforit . Letmyloveforcheesecakeinspireyouthe wayitwillonedayinspireanation . Atleastyoucansayyouweretherefirst . - KeahBrown
“People can do spectacular things if you forget to tell themit’simpossible .
In addition to being an author, Keah Brown is a notable journalist, actress, and screenwriter. Brown has written for and been featured in established publications including Essence, Cosmopolitan, and Teen Vogue. Keah Brown is also featured in Tarana Burke and Brené Brown’s transformative anthology You Are Your Best Thing.
“The twisted inversion that many children ofimmigrantsknowisthat, atsomepoint, yourparents becomeyourchildren, andyourownpersonalAmericandreambecomesmakingsure theyageanddiewithdignityinacountrythathasneverwantedthem .
Akwaeke Emezi is a Nigerian lgbo and Tamil writer and video artist, best known for their 2018 debut novel Freshwater. Featured on the cover of TIME Magazine as a Next Generation Leader (June 2021) for their debut memoir DEAR SENTHURAN, Akwaeke Emezi (b. 1987) is an artist and writer based in liminal spaces. A National Book Foundation '5 Under 35' honoree, Emezi was born in Umuahia and raised in Aba, Nigeria. They were named one of The New Hollywood Guard: Writers by Vanity Fair and their romance debut YOU MADE A FOOL OF DEATH WITH YOUR BEAUTY is forthcoming from Atria Books in 2022, with the screen rights selling to Amazon Studios in a seven-figure deal with Emezi as executive producer. Their debut poetry collection CONTENT WARNING: EVERYTHING is also forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in 2022 and their sophomore YA novel BITTER is will be published in February 2022 by Knopf Books.
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio (born 1989) is an Ecuadorian-American writer and the This, however, is just the beginning for Keah Brown. In 2022, she will publish her first children’s book, titled author of The Undocumented Americans (2020). She has written about her experiences as an undocumented Sam’s Super Seats. Illustrated by Sharee Miller, this upcoming book will follow a young girl with cerebral palsy immigrant from Ecuador to the United States. In October 2020 it was shortlisted for the National Book Award as she goes back to school shopping with her best friends. Though more information has yet to be released, for Nonfiction. Keah Brown is also set to publish a book geared towards young adults in the next few years. Brown has big dreams when it comes to television, many of which have already been accomplished, but for now, we should all take the time to read her extensive works and wait to see what she does next!Cornejo Villavicencio was born in 1989 in Ecuador. When she was four or five, her parents brought her to the United States. She has a brother. The family lived in the New York borough of Queens. She graduated from Harvard in 2011 and believes she is one of the first undocumented immigrants to do so. As of September 2020 she is a PhD candidate in the American studies program at Yale. She was an Emerson Collective fellow.
