SC: As a young 24-year-old, I came out in Jamaica. I was attacked, and then I decided, “I’m going to leave Jamaica and go towards a place that seems to be freer.” And so I followed the desire to be safe and be able to live an open queer life.

When I came to the U.S. initially, I don’t think I thought to myself, ‘I’m going to become an advocate for immigrants or an advocate for Black people or an advocate for women.’ So distressed was I about being away from my home and being in this terrible isolation in this big city in New York and missing Jamaica. And when I got to the U.S., I understood immediately that my queer identity wasn’t the only one in question. And so my being an immigrant was an issue, my being Black was an issue. My being a woman was an issue. And that said to me, I can’t keep shifting every time pieces of me aren’t accepted. So I had to become a part of the fight for a better space. I rushed headlong into activism, speaking out and being visible around my queer identity. I became that voice unwittingly under the tutelage and the inspiration of people. 

I read a lot. Ruby Sales is one of my mentors; Rev. Sekou has been a wonderful colleague and big brother. I’ve read the likes of Audre Lorde and June Jordan. Howard Zinn was integral. Working on a project with him was instrumental in turning me away from what could have been a Hollywood career or a career in largely academia. I began to see that my own life was of no value unless it was steeped in a struggle that had, at its core, struggle for other people’s freedom. I quickly understood that if I could fight and get free, I would be very lonely without the other people who I needed to be free, who were colleagues and friends, comrades, sisters, brothers, siblings, aunts, uncles, other writers and thinkers. 

I’m always in struggle with hitting the right mark of how I become a person who shoulders my way through the opening first, created by those who came before me, and then do my part in pressing out the opening further so that more people can come in. You have to pull those behind you. When you get where you’re going, you have to turn right back around and reach for the hands that are needing help being pulled up. 

I came from a reality where I had so few resources. My mother left. My father didn’t come forward. My grandmother had very little. I was moved from home to home, and I very easily would have died — completely left to the mercy of far more realistic monsters than the theoretical ones we’re talking about — if it hadn’t been for people who reached back and helped me, strangers who said, “Oh, let me help this kid. Let me inspire this kid.” Without the readings and the writings of other activists who believed heavily in a communal effort to pull each person up, I would be lost, so I can’t do anything but to be in community and pull forward in terms of community.