5/5 stars
"from the depths of my rage and despair, i needed to find a way back to love. this book is my act of prayer in a collapsing world. my devotion to the belief that we are all intrinsically sacred. my bridge back to hope."
And so it is for me as well. Kai Cheng Thom is an Asian-Canadian trans femme author who grew up in a strict religious household. Her letters are written to various people and groups, most often addressing the hate and violence that she and her trans and LGBTQ+ community suffer. That is a good number of things that she and I do not have in common. And yet, her words ring true for me in so many ways, particularly in these incredibly frightening and disheartening post-2024-election days. I too am a woman. I too live in a body that white, cisgendered men want to make decisions about. I too feel like "our world keeps breaking over and over again" but also that "i have no choice but to believe that a new one is being born."
This is an intimate and compassionate collection of poems, prayers, acts of kindness, painful memories, acceptance, confession, healing, ritual, lyrical turns of phrase, forgiveness granted to hateful people, feminine power, trans-femme rage, and fierce, fierce love. It is truly a beacon of light and hope, written by someone who has every right to feel hopelessly in the dark.
The power with which Cheng Thom rekindles hope - when hope is at death's door - is miraculous.
She writes to herself, to other trans women, to sex workers and johns, to those considering suicide, to activists, to J.K. Rowling, and more. Each letter is followed by a brief action or ritual that she charges the reader with. "Write a letter of forgiveness to someone. That someone can be yourself." "Make a list of five good things that you frequently do for other people. Within a two-week period, do them all, at least once, for yourself." "Read a children's book you used to love."
Falling Back in Love with Being Human is a generous little tome that helped me cast off cynicism, even if only for a day.
Here are a few more glorious quotes.
in a letter to J.K. Rowling - "you wrote so many monsters, so many magical creatures, and yet you still don't seem to now what a monster is, Joanne. a monster is a part of ourselves that we don't want to find in the mirror. a part of ourselves we try to cut out and split off and put inside other people so that they can carry it for us: our fear. our shame."
"no body deserves to be disposed of in the name of someone else's shame. a body is skin wrapped around stories, is tissue filled with veins that the truth runs through, is a box of bones with a voice inside. i don't want to be a volcano. i want to be a garden full of flowers bursting open toward life, all of them singing, i'm here. i mean something. i want to live."
"do you know the difference between propaganda and poetry? one is a lie that takes you further away from the truth, and the other is a lie that takes you closer to it."
"i have questions about heaven. i have questions about the Revolution. those questions are the same: upon whose bones do you intend to build your paradise?"
UP NEXT: Absolutely Truly, by Heather Vogel Frederick
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