Latest news with #EmergingQueerVoices
CBC
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
How the Toronto ballroom scene taught me what it means to be real
Emerging Queer Voices is a monthly LGBTQ arts and culture column that features different up-and-coming LGBTQ writers. You can read more about the series and find all published editions here. My life changed when I first learned what the ballroom scene was. I was an effeminate gay 17-year-old living in Cartagena, Colombia. I thought I had already come to terms with my gender identity and sexuality, but I soon discovered I had been in denial of my trans identity. The catalyst for me to embrace myself as a trans woman was the television series Pose, which depicts the 2SLGBTQ+ Black and Latinx ballroom scene of the '80s and '90s in New York City. For reasons that now seem very apparent, I saw myself deeply reflected in the show's character of Angel Evangelista, played on the series by Indya Moore. Angel is a beautiful Black, Latinx trans woman. Despite her physical attributes enabling her to pass as a cis woman, Angel experiences the same struggles as many other trans women, such as survival sex work and being kept a secret by her lover. It would be another two years until I was out as a trans woman and living in Toronto, and another 3 years until I came face-to-face with ballroom culture. In October of last year, I caught my first glimpse of the ballroom scene in real life. I was looking online for staple figures within the Toronto ballroom scene, and I found Nofil Nadeem's name on the AGO website. I reached out to him through Instagram, and he agreed to meet over coffee. After having coffee with Nadeem, who's the overseer of the Kiki house of Juicy Couture, he invited me to attend open practices. It took several weeks of encouragement, but when I finally made it, I practiced walking the femme queen realness category, which exists specifically for trans women. The Toronto Kiki Ballroom Alliance(TKBA) is made of 12 houses. Ballroom houses emulate the structure of how a conventional family is structured, with a designated father and mother. Some houses have an overseer, godfather, godmother, prince, and princess. These more experienced performers train and mentor ballroom walkers with a lower seniority in the scene. After I attended weekly rehearsals for over a month, the house leaders asked me to join the house. I debuted as Victoria Juicy Couture on Dec.6, 2024, walking the femme queen realness category at the Toronto Kiki Ballroom Alliance's eighth annual awards ball. Femme queen realness is a category that assesses how much a trans woman can pass as a cisgender woman, while abiding to a ball's theme – which at that competition was "cosmic circus." Other iterations of the Realness category include: transman realness, and butch queen realness, the latter being for gay men. However, in recent years the realness categories have become a subject of debate, with some questioning if they have passed the test of time in terms of value. Given that trans people still live under intense scrutiny and face attacks to their basic human rights – such as U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order falsely declaring that there are only two genders – passing as a cisgender person remains a survival tactic. And the realness category speaks to that reality. Yet, realness also reinforces stereotypes of what a woman or a man is supposed to look like. While walking femme queen realness I have been told to smile and exude my womanhood. I am rewarded for showcasing my recently done nails (only done for the occasion), the absence of an Adam's apple, my long brown hair, my small back, and apparent breasts. In my day-to-day life, I embody my womanhood less elaborately without all the glitz and glamour of ballroom. I don't tend to smile unless it comes naturally, and I don't feel the need to flaunt my femininity. But even controversial traditions are sometimes worth honouring due to their historical value. When walking realness at a ball, I consciously put myself in a box of stereotypical attributes and mannerism attached to womanhood for about 5-10 minutes, because I value the shared experience of participating in ballroom competitions with my new chosen family. After joining the house, I got a chance to talk with Mother Diséiye Juicy Couture about her ballroom journey and what being part of this community means to her. Outside of the ballroom scene, she is a fashion designer who runs her self-titled brand, 'DISÈIYE'. Diséiye, known in the scene today for walking the best dressed and European runway categories, came to Toronto in 2010 at the age of 15, as a refugee from Nigeria. Soon after arriving, she got her first glimpse of the Toronto ballroom scene through the Supporting our Youth (SOY) Black Queer Youth program at Sherbourne Health. An environment like the ballroom scene was something she had been craving. "Being a young queer kid coming from Nigeria, I was looking for a space that felt safe, a space that I felt seen, a community of like-minded folks," she said. "[I was] definitely trying to distance myself from the Nigerian scene and trying to find more queer elders that I could look up to or just experience queerness for the first time openly." Last September, Diséiye walked tag team realness for the first time. The realness sub-category sees a femme queen accompanied by another realness walker and the judges evaluate their performance as a team. Diséiye walked alongside Noble Constantine at the QueerTopia Kiki Ball in Ottawa. Diséiye says realness is not for everyone, but is for those who desire to live as close to a stealth life as possible when it comes to their identity. "I walked realness, because someone asked me to be their partner, and I was like 'Sure let's do it,'" she said. "But I don't see myself walking realness, because I tell myself that I didn't transition to put myself in a box, I transitioned to be my truest, realest self," she said. Not all ballroom walkers who walk the realness category feel restricted by it, and Godfather Jax Juicy Couture is one example. Jax says finding the ballroom scene has made him proud of his trans identity. "I feel like I lived very stealthily before, and almost in a very shameful way. Ballroom really changed that for me. It made me proud, and realize that I don't care about being a cis man, I'm very proud of being a trans man," he says. Some people in the scene tend to forget the importance of the realness category, Jax said. "This is such a core part of ballroom, and it's not necessarily there to instill stereotypes, but to celebrate people's identity, and to also instill a part of safety in it, too," he says. But it's not just the realness category that some ballroom community members are in conflict with. The face category also has its challenges, and Nadeem knows those difficulties first hand. Nadeem was born in Pakistan, and immigrated to Toronto with his family when he was two years old. As a gay, Pakistani, Muslim man, his cultural and sexual identity were often in conflict with each other, and this juxtaposition drew him to the ballroom scene. Nadeem has competed in the face category, and has broken barriers in a category that mainly celebrates a racialized person's ability to demonstrate European facial features. Although his features aren't the standard of what is celebrated in the face category, he has been able to succeed in this category. "The attributes that are prioritized are Eurocentric features. Having a strong jawline and a thin nose. The core of Face is unattainable beauty," he says. Outside of the ballroom scene, Nadeem is a lawyer and workplace investigator. Ballroom is his artistic outlet. "I don't get to be creative as a lawyer. I don't get to express myself. When I walk face I feel like a movie star, so the ballroom helps me address those gaps," he says. The ballroom scene has gone mainstream in recent years with reality TV shows, like Legendary. As it has grown, so too has the number of participants who are neither Black nor Latinx. Nadeem says the ballroom scene is open to anyone as long as they acknowledge whom the scene was initially intended for. "There are people in our scene who are white, and who are not of trans experience. I think that as long as you carry the essence and the heart, and carry the torch forward, and ultimately understand that ballroom is meant to be a safe space for black and brown bodies. And to put those first, then I think you are doing it justice," he says. Although walking Realness has brought back insecurities I thought were buried in the first two years of my transition, I will continue walking without seeking validation but instead to make a name for myself in the community that has allowed me to meet talented and caring femme queens, butch queens, and trans men like Mother Disèiye, Overseer Nofil , and Godfather Jax Juicy Couture. Their stories have resonated with me on deeper levels, in ways I unknowingly needed to feel less isolated in my own personal struggles surrounding being trans. Regardless of what the future of the Canadian ballroom scene looks like, the scene will continue growing in spite of conservative policies, religion, and discrimination. One thing femme queens, butch queens, and trans men have continuously proven, is their capacity of thriving amidst chaos, something all iterations of ballroom scenes serve as testament of.
CBC
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
When all felt lost, I found myself again at chess club
Emerging Queer Voices is a monthly LGBTQ arts and culture column that features different up-and-coming LGBTQ writers. You can read more about the series and find all published editions here. When I was a kid, my mom was addicted to enrolling me in extracurricular activities. I played baseball and soccer, and I took lessons for tap dancing, piano, vocals and acting. My after-school undertakings served a dual purpose — yes, they were edifying, but they also gave my single mother precious alone time to do whatever it was she needed to do between working and cooking and entertaining her only child. I mostly endured it all until I made it to Sunday afternoon, when my mom took me to the local recreation centre for my favourite activity of all: chess club. I was never great at sports and felt ostracized by the other boys, who seemed to have coalesced on some masculine wavelength I'd never been privy to. And the performing arts stuff I did just made me seem like more of a gay freak than I already was. But at chess club, everybody shared in loserdom. I recently read Sally Rooney's Intermezzo, her latest novel. One of its two protagonists is the socially stunted Ivan, a 22-year-old chess prodigy who plays exhibition games in rural Irish community halls. His resentful brother, Peter, sums up Ivan's awkwardness by joking that he speaks his own language, International Chess English — a catch-all term for the off-kilter, uber-analytical manner of speaking that people who spend their days studying old Bobby Fischer games share in. At my childhood chess club, everybody spoke a dialect of ICE. We'd spend an hour taking lessons and solving puzzles with our chess master, Aris, and then we'd get two hours to play as much chess as our hearts desired. I revelled in those two hours, when I'd get to hang out with kids in the same social stratum as me. We'd babble over checks, pins and forks, and we'd gloat when we won and pick fights with each other when we lost. Then we'd collapse our pieces and start over. You can study to become a great chess player, but there are many kids who possess a baseline of talent for the game. I was one of those kids, and while I was no prodigy, I also wasn't a slouch. In my circle of chess dorks, I was well-liked and admired for my talents — something I couldn't say about myself outside the walls of the recreation centre. We had seasonal tournaments at the club. I was always paired against the best players and generally placed in the top 10, which was nothing to sneeze at, but I had always hoped to steal a win. When I was 12 and about to age out of the club, I played my last tournament. I made it to the finals, where I was pitted against Malcolm, a bona fide prodigy. He was pompous and mean-spirited and had become arrogant after winning all the tournaments he'd competed in. I'd played Malcolm many times in non-competitive matches and had lost every time. Chess is a magnificent game. The chessboard — eight squares by eight, cleanly divided between black and white — is perfectly rendered for battle. The pieces, each possessing their own powers, are calibrated for maximum potential. The game on its face is simple: force your opponent's king into a spot where it is both under attack and unable to move, before they do the same to yours. But in chess there are infinite possibilities, unlimited ways to make your foe acquiesce. No two games are exactly the same. You have to be studied yet agile, precise yet bold. You must command the board while reading your opponent's mind. It is not just a board game — it is a sport and an art. When I'm playing good chess, my brain feels illuminated, fluorescent with stimulation. Each stroke of a piece is an unrivalled thrill, inching you toward a satisfying and pleasurable checkmate. Malcolm and I were in the throes of a game like this. A game of chess is as much about strategy as it is about avoiding blunders, and we were evenly matched in that regard. We were in the thick of the middlegame when I realized Malcolm had made a fatal error — he had left his rook hanging, vulnerable to attack. I captured it, and the game tumbled in my favour. I cornered him into a checkmate and won the tournament. I got a trophy and everything. My mother, who had first taught me the game, snapped a picture on her digital camera. I felt I was leaving chess behind on the highest possible note. Over a decade passed, and chess had fallen away from me. I'd play the occasional game when people were willing, mumbling something about being rusty, then annihilating them in 20 moves. But last year, looking to do something other than scroll on Instagram, I downloaded the app. I started competing against strangers and felt pleased as my rating rose. Eventually, I hit a plateau and kept losing, so I turned to chess YouTube. I became obsessed with videos of peppy Swedish master Anna Cramling and her subdued grandmaster mom, Pia. I started to fray at my plateau, and my game got better; and then I learned more openings and I got better; and I began doing daily chess puzzles and I got better. It was a pastime, but it kept me confined to my screen and it was a solitary activity — one I dabbled in to keep the loneliness at bay. In the fall, at the height of my online-chess obsession, my loneliness quotient also happened to be at a high. My relationship of four years with someone I loved deeply — which had done a great deal to heal the sad little gay boy who used to get kicks from playing chess and which I thought was hurtling toward marriage — imploded in a dramatic fashion (needless to say, the details are beyond the scope of this essay). Two months later, I was let go from my dream job — terminated without cause. My career and my relationship were the pillars of my adult life, and they had simultaneously crumbled, leaving me directionless and feeble. I would spend long days at the library playing chess on my laptop, because it was the only place I could go for free and my one-bedroom apartment was beginning to feel smaller than ever. One day, I saw a poster on the library walls: Chess Fridays 3 p.m.-5 p.m. Say less, I thought. The following Friday, I wandered into the library's rec room, where eight tables were laid with green and white checkered mats — the same rollable plastic chessboards I'd played on in my childhood club. A lanky, pimpled man about my age was playing against a tween boy at one table, and at another sat a man who looked about 40 with long gray curls tumbling over his shoulders. The seat across from him was empty, so I took it and we began to play. He introduced himself as Omar. I hadn't played a real over-the-board game in five years and had no idea what to expect. On you're paired against people of a similar ranking, but no such number hung over Omar, and I assumed he'd beat me. Omar's phone, a bulky Android, sat illuminated beside the board. He explained that he had to keep an eye on it because he had placed bets on a basketball game and he wanted to follow the score. I thought he must be a great player to be able to divide his attention like that. I was mistaken — I trounced him. Then we replaced the pieces, and I trounced him again. I swapped spots with the child and played the pimply guy, and I beat him handily too. Two hours flew by, and the supervising librarian kicked us out of the room. I walked home feeling confident, assured that although I was single and unemployed, I was at least good at something, and being good at something lent me some worth. Friday chess became my new pillar. My days were long and dreary and still, lacking in shape and structure, and so I hinged my weeks on those precious two hours when I got to play chess with strangers. I went every Friday, and while some folks did the same, new faces would rotate in and out. I found that International Chess English remains the common tongue in chess clubs, and it turned out that despite the social skills I'd developed, I was still fluent in the language. One chilly Friday, I walked into the rec room and found that no tables had been set up. I went to the front desk and was told that chess had been cancelled that week. I was crestfallen — I'd suffered through dreary days so I could be rewarded with chess at the week's end, and my reward had been unjustly taken from me. I hung my head and turned to leave, when I heard a voice call out "KC?" It was Nick, with whom I'd shared many lovely conversations at house parties, but whom I hadn't seen in several months. "Nick!" I said. "I came here for chess, but they said it's cancelled, so I have nothing to live for." Half-joking. "I came for chess too," he said. "We could probably take out a board if you wanted to play." We borrowed a chessboard from the front desk, went to the empty rec room and began to play. Nick and I caught up a bit, then fell to silence when we realized we were equal players. He was an excellent opponent. As the game intensified, others shuffled into the room and laid down their own chessboards. Unwittingly, Nick and I had founded a guerilla chess club. After a masterful move from Nick, a subtle but calculated push of the pawn, I asked him how he'd got so good. He explained he'd also played chess as a child and placed in provincials and competed in nationals at a very young age. I've always known Nick to be measured and kind, quick-witted and caring. He has an admirable relationship with a lovely man, and he has bold highlights in his black hair and rocks skirts and dresses. It never occurred to me that such a socially successful and evidently self-actualized person could have grown up with the same loserish passion as me. Two kids began a match beside us. They looked about 12. One was clean-cut and boyish; the other, androgynous with orange streaks running like currents through their sandy hair. They were taunting each other and giggling, boasting ferociously after each of their moves. They reminded me a lot of myself at their age, and Nick and I exchanged a look and it occurred to me he might have been thinking the same thing: that we were two reformed gay losers, playing chess beside two kids who seemed like younger versions of us — children enviably and unabashedly attached to their dorkiness. As I meditated on this, I realized I had sorely neglected my king's side and Nick's pawns had needled dangerously close to the eighth rank. My position had collapsed before me, and my beloved king could not evade an untimely death. Nick pushed his pawns and toppled my king. We laughed and shook hands, and I placed my fallen pieces back into place. And I put my pawn on E4, renewing the game once again.
CBC
05-02-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
How I learned to embrace the intersections of my identity by finally enrolling in Hogwarts
Emerging Queer Voices is a monthly LGBTQ arts and culture column that features different up-and-coming LGBTQ writers. You can read more about the series and find all published editions here. Looking at me, you would hardly guess I used to have a deeply committed relationship with itchy below-the-knee skirts from the Children's Place, ripping toilet paper before sundown on Fridays after school and asking "neighbour Paul" to come over and adjust the thermostat on Saturdays. But I did. My weekdays searching for the meaning of "sexy" and "cool" on were bookended with weekends leading children's programming during Torah services and banging the Shabbos table to various Yiddish-y gibberish at my rabbi's home — the old faithful "ai ai — ai ai ai ai" a go-to. I'm an only child in a mixed-race family: my mother is white and of Jewish heritage, from Pointe-Claire, Que., while my father is African American from the South Shore neighbourhood of Chicago and whose childhood proximity to Judaism brought him to the religion as an adult. Together, they decided to upgrade their faith to Modern Orthodox when I was in elementary school, gifting me a ridiculous lifelong game of identity Mad Libs. Recently, I found myself back in a synagogue for the first time in I don't know how long, greeted at the door by a comically tiny woman with snow for hair and who couldn't help her ignorance. "Shabbat shalom," she says to my more obviously Jewish friend. "Welcome!" she says to me. "Jambo!" I think to myself. I am Cady Heron, a recent white U.S. immigrant from Hollywood's "country of Africa," trying to show solidarity with the Black students who look like home. I see family, and this woman sees "not from around these parts." An all too familiar consequence of this misunderstanding is my renewed subscription to the dissonance between my fractured sense of home in Blackness — shaped in part by estranged relationships with what's left of my Black American family, where, visually, it's assumed I belong — and the skepticism I face in the spaces I was nurtured to occupy. The succession of a synagogue service feels as natural to me as the blood in my veins and the curls on my head. But I am perpetually trapped on the subway, kitty-corner to a Hassid, locked into his tiny siddur — me, in a miniskirt and a going-out top on my way to Sweat Tour, with our shared language on the tip of my tongue. I choose to sit behind the glass where he can't see me even if he could. He would rather be at yeshiva, and I would rather be at Sweat Tour, but knowing this doesn't help the grief that once upon a time, we sat at the same Shabbos table. Much of this dissonance stems from attending Hebrew day school with 60 largely upper-middle-class white students — well, 59. I was the only [fill in the blank] in so many respects. Naturally, I was a bit of a pill, largely because each day brought an entirely new and creative test of my inclusion from students and teachers alike; the farewell tour of retired Roald Dahl-ian Catholic school teachers; a part-time real estate agent, part-time Hebrew teacher with children for enemies; a gang of eldest daughters losing faith in my prospects of being cool; a gang of eldest sons oscillating between wanting to destroy me and wanting to kiss me. I didn't look like a duck or swim like a duck and, although I could quack like one, I certainly was not a duck. Maybe a swan? "Yer a wizard, Harry." One of the nicer girls in my class always had her face buried in a book in the schoolyard at recess, probably for her own protection. Her tiny hands were engulfed by the biggest, chunkiest books I'd ever seen. I remember shaking off any of her good-natured attempts to deal me into what was obviously such a rich experience for her. But I couldn't afford to dip my toes into the dorky wonderland of Hogwarts or, eventually, Baby's First Erotica — Twilight. Knowing what was cool, whether or not I knew how to successfully participate in it, was my only chance at survival. Harry Potter was not cool and therefore not for me. I excluded myself so as not to give power to my own potential exclusion. Besides, I could always chalk it up to Judaism's general displeasure with sorcery and witchcraft. I can still hear my dad scolding, "Avodah Zarah." I later accepted her invitation to watch Doctor Who on her iPod Touch on the painful 12-hour van ride to Washington, D.C., for our Grade 8 grad trip. I never did watch the show again, but she was right to try to recruit me. It would take me another 14 years before I made my way to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters of my own accord. First, stumbling through a clumsy tug of war for my identity as I straddled The Secular and The Sacred at a time when Dov Charney's vision of spandex reigned supreme; prioritizing indie-electronic 8tracks playlists blasting Passion Pit or XXYYXX, or something worse, on my iPod Touch; practising how to correctly pronounce Bon Iver in case of a pop quiz from a boy with a banjo; and asking God why He didn't make me in the image of Effy Stonem from Skins (the Eve of Tumblr, if you ask me). This past November, in planning our upcoming lonely-children (read: nowhere else to go) Christmas Eve slumber party, a friend suggested we all watch Harry Potter while we make the yuletide gay. "I've actually never seen any of the Harry Potter movies," I said. (Or flipped through a single page.) And so it was decided. The group would slowly chip away at the wizarding world of Harry Potter,one Sunday at a time until Christmas. Eight weeks for eight movies. Perfect. Cracking open the door to a party I'm 20 years late to, where the host of the party has since taken the stage to reveal an exceptionally disappointing left (or, in this case, hard right) turn in her politics. I missed out on a lot of formative experiences as I constantly weighed the risks of what I could and couldn't afford to rebel against in my coming of age. The exclusion I felt staying home for Friday night Shabbat dinners instead of experiencing the "epic highs and lows of high school [parties]" was remedied by my secret self-guided study of Pussycat Dolls Present: Girlicious and America's Next Top Model. But what was lost in white-knuckling the little control I felt over my identity was worsened by sitting out on monoculture experiences that gave other people the spoons to feel seen and accepted in similar circumstances. Week after week, camped out on a loyal Ikea couch, the four of us unfurled the cozy and charming world of Hogwarts. I let the magic of Harry Potter wash over my virgin eyes, embracing my status as Slytherin, wondering what my Patronus would be, questioning the chemistry between Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley, searching Etsy for Dolores Umbridge's cat plates (she's an evil w*tch, but we, unfortunately, share a passion for the colour pink), noting the ridiculous frequency with which the Malfoy family must be booking bleach and tones, missing my girl Moaning Myrtle in the later films, hating Bellatrix Lestrange, and mourning Dobby. I realized, like me, Harry stood out like a sore thumb. He was handed a different mission in life than his peers, and the sooner he accepted it, the better. Embracing all the fractures and fissures on my peculiar path helped me access the precious arsenal of powers it had quietly provided. Harry, too, could have been crushed under the weight of the death of his parents and the enduring neglect of the Dursleys. But many North Stars were placed along his path, offering him a life preserver and a chance at coming into his own despite the challenging hand he was dealt. His power existed both in the acceptance of his destiny and the support of his best friends, Hermione and Ron; the mentorship of his teachers — Professor McGonagall, Dumbledore, Hagrid and even Snape; and the protection he received from Dobby, Fawkes and Mad-Eye. So many magical people (and creatures) stood firmly by him on his long and treacherous quest to destroy Voldemort. As I worked to untangle my labyrinth of tradition and rebellion, inclusion and exclusion, strength and vulnerability, so many people helped illuminate my path to blossoming into the person I wasn't sure I'd have the bravery to become. Much like Harry, the validation I was desperately seeking was closer than it seemed — just beyond the castle gates at Hogwarts. If only I'd known to enroll sooner.
CBC
29-01-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Emerging Queer Voices is a new CBC Arts essay series that gives space to up-and-coming LGBTQ writers
This past fall, I wrote the last edition of the column Queeries, which for seven years allowed me the great privilege of getting my own perspective on LGBTQ arts and culture out into the world. In that final essay, I promised I would find a way to continue the spirit of Queeries here at CBC Arts. And with a brand new series, premiering today, I plan to keep that promise. Emerging Queer Voices is a new monthly column that will feature a different up-and-coming LGBTQ writer in each edition. Like Queeries, the column will focus on LGBTQ arts and culture "through a personal lens," this time, featuring a multitude of voices. It also includes promo art created by one of our favourite queer voices in art, Tim Singleton (thank you, Tim!). To kick things off, we have two such writers: Shuli Grosman-Gray, who has offered a beautiful piece on the intersection of her identities and how it's affected her consumption of popular culture (particularly Harry Potter); and Lily Kazimiera, who considers how she saw her identity as a trans woman reflected in Sean Baker's Anora. It was important for me to launch Emerging Queer Voices for a few reasons. For one, I know what a challenging landscape it has become in this country for writers, especially if you're just starting out. And it gets even harder if you want to write pieces that offer an uncompromising queer viewpoint, which is what this series intends to do. But also, more selfishly, I want to learn from the many talented queer writers in this country whose work I haven't had enough opportunity to get to know. I want them to help me (and CBC Arts readers, of course) gain perspective during increasingly challenging times for LGBTQ folks. If you'd like to be considered as a writer for a future edition, please send an email introducing yourself that offers a clear pitch for what you'd like to write about and includes some writing samples to You can check out all of the currently published editions of Emerging Queer Voices below (we will update it as we go along). "," by Lily Kazimiera (January 2025) How Sean Baker's portrait of a sex worker in over her head reflected Kazimiera's own experience of marginalized love. "What binds me as a trans woman to [Anora]'s ordeal, however, is not this association, but the way our identities inform our access to love," writes Kazimiera. Read the whole essay here. "," by Shuli Grosman-Gray (January 2025) Grosman-Gray grew up thinking she was too cool for Harry Potter, but it turned out he was just the hero she needed. She writes about "cracking open the door to a party I'm 20 years late to, where the host of the party has since taken the stage to reveal an exceptionally disappointing left (or, in this case, hard right) turn in her politics." Read the whole essay here.
