RAGE

Debut memoir critiquing race and sexuality in contemporary America.

Brathwaite, Entertainment Weekly writer and former editor of Out magazine, invites readers into his love life and shares his experiences growing up in America as a Black queer person. Having moved from Guyana in 1990 at age four, he started bingeing American cable television, which significantly influenced his life. Because his mother enjoyed watching daytime soap operas, he was exposed to many shirtless men on screen, and they attracted his curiosity. “My first loves were Saved by the Bell’s Zack Morris and Blossom’s Joey Russo,” he confesses, but he began developing crushes on white boys in his real life too. One of them was Jake Capella, “my main antagonist throughout middle and high school, but, what can I say, I love a challenge.” The media he consumed and Hollywood’s depiction of straight white males affected the way Brathwaite viewed himself, and his desire for white men made him question his own identity: “I always thought Black masculinity was violent. Never tender. Never fatherly. Never loving.” Yet, he sprinkles wit and humor in his critique and begs us to laugh with him: “If I don’t believe that I’m, with all due respect to Trina, da baddest bitch, it’s only a matter of time before I backslide into questioning if I’m even a worthwhile human being.” More seriously, he engages in a thought-provoking critical discourse about how perceptions of masculinity are, in part, a product of the media. Despite the fact that America has a long way to go to overcome its race and gender biases, he ends on a positive note, stating that now is the best time to be a Black queer man, because he is allowed to be who he wants to be and not be punished for it.

An honest exploration into Black queer identity.