Taking T for Jesus

My new Baffler essay; and books, events, and links of note.

Hi friends,

I have so many things to tell you, so many that there are too many. I’ve spent the summer channeling my energy into writing, and also settling in my mom’s elderly Pomeranian (sweet, funny, loving; seeks forever home!), doing native plant restoration in the park, and doing more of the same on one of the hills in front of my house that was covered in English ivy. And of course day-jobbing, so much of that.

Meanwhile, my essay "Taking T for Jesus," on the transphobic evangelicals hawking hormones, and also developments closer to home, is up from The Baffler today. Here's how the essay starts:

A few years ago, my then-eighty-year-old mom started taking testosterone to improve her health and sex life. As with most of her major life decisions, she got the idea from a guest on a televangelist’s talk show. The guest, Don Colbert, bills himself as “America’s #1 Doctor for Faith and Preventative Medicine” and with his wife and podcast sidekick, Mary Colbert, contends that hormone therapy can keep elderly women (and men) in “divine health,” so that “the peace of God comes upon you and you sleep like a baby.” According to the Colberts, testosterone therapy for women clears brain fog, removes belly fat, prevents wrinkles, cures migraine, restores sex drive and the ability to climax, and generally returns women’s zeal for life. After seeing the Colberts’ segments on Kenneth Copeland’s Victory Channel and The Jim Bakker Show, and reading Colbert’s book about bioidentical hormones, my mom tracked down a doctor willing to prescribe her testosterone—and a little progesterone for good measure. She opted for an implant injected into her butt every three months, joining the approximately 2 to 7 percent of women over sixty-five who take hormone therapy.

Having survived multiple strokes, my mom was at high risk for complications, so she didn’t want me to know about the hormone therapy at first. I only found out in 2022, when she’d been on it for about two years. It probably goes without saying, but in almost any other context, my mom and her favorite preachers condemn people who undergo sex-hormone treatment. Trans people are possessed by demons; they are destroying families, threatening children, and ushering in the end of the world, according to Copeland and his ilk. “We were created male and female in the image of God,” the Copeland Network tweeted in October 2020. “In causing people to question their gender, what Satan is really doing is causing people to doubt the image of God.”

In other news, Sarah Smarsh’s upcoming essay collection—Bone of the Bone: Essays By a Daughter of the Working Class—will be out on September 10. The book launch is the night before at The Strand. See you there? Until then, here’s her essay on Tim Walz’s prairie populism.

I miss the days when I could meet up with my friend Rosie Schaap in Brooklyn, but the good news is that her time in Ireland has led to her new memoir The Slow Road North, which was published yesterday. Here’s my blurb for it: “Rosie Schaap's gorgeous The Slow Road North is filled with the warmth, compassion, and inviting spirit that always infuse her writing, even as she reveals how little of that same care and generosity she extended to herself following the death of her husband, her mom, and her cat. In Glenarm, at last, she grieves. With its craic and woodlands, its robins and fairies, its approach to death and its history of trouble, the village offers her a safe place to sit with her losses—and prepares her for the love and wonder to follow.”

Today is Alexander Chee’s birthday! I was largely offline and out of touch for so many months that I literally only a couple days ago realized that Other People’s Husbands (one of several amazing novels he’s been working on) will be out late next year. Sometimes my social reclusiveness makes me a bad friend, but I adore Alexander and his writing and while we await his new book let’s all re-read his essay “The Afterlives of E.M. Forster.”

I’ll be appearing virtually for one segment of Narrative Healing's Listen to Your Ancestors weekend retreat at the beloved Omega Institute, with Lisa Weinert, Jamia Wilson, Lewis Mehl-Madrona, and Kim Thai. The retreat is in Rhinebeck, New York. Details of the segment to be determined. Looking forward to this.

Robin Wall Kimmerer’s The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World (on a native plant I’ve come to love) is coming in November! From the publisher: “Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love. Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, ‘Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.’” While we wait, we can read her October 2022 essay on the serviceberry in Emergence Magazine. (I accidentally typed “Emergency” at first, a slip that feels true to me.)

Ailton Krenak’s slender, thoughtful Ancestral Future was published in June. From the publisher: “indigenous thinker and activist Ailton Krenak shows us that if there is a future to imagine, it is ancestral, since it is already present in that which exists around us  –  in the rivers and mountains and trees that are our kin.” (Thank you for alerting me, Kerri Arsenault!)

This event was in April and sounds fascinating: “Who is a queer ancestor,” the Twelfth Annual Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Lecture in Gender & Sexuality Studies with Professor Tavia Nyong’o. .. This lecture explores the idea of queer ancestry and the prospects of being a ‘good ancestor.’ It reflects upon the process of memorializing the dead and the risks of secular sainthood. The lecture discusses re-staging a famous encounter between Audre Lorde and James Baldwin, and suggests that ancestor reverence might obscure the productive aspects of conflict in shaping queer history Drawing on the irreverent stance of the late Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina, the lecture proposes a model for decolonizing the ancestral, particularly relevant in the digital era.”

On becoming Lucy Sante.

“What I have been taught by elders is that our remains carry memory”—Joy Harjo Sapulpa, advocating for the return and reinterment of Mvskoke remains.

“Then I typed in ‘Little Poplar,’ the name of my other Cree great-great-grandfather –– and instantly got a hit. I flinched in the dark as though from a jump scare. Ka-mîtosis, or Little Poplar, was the grandfather of my grandfather, Alphonse Little Poplar. Ka-mîtosis was a member of the Warrior Society in Chief Sweetgrass’s band of Plains Cree around the time of the Riel Rebellion.” On Christmas Eve, an indigenous woman finds her ancestor’s remains are held by the Smithsonian.

“Saving the Apple’s Ancient Ancestor in the Forests of Kazakhstan: Found in the Tian Shan mountains, Malus sieversii could hold the secret to making other species of the fruit more stress-resistant.”

Some archaeologists suggest that some human beings may have practiced cannibalism to honor the dead.

Africatown, AL: Ancestor Sounds: “From blues to industrial and rap—these extraordinary recordings showcase [the music of descendants of people enslaved on] the last slavers’ ship to the US.

LeVar Burton discovers his Confederate soldier ancestor on Finding Your Roots.

“A coffee plantation in Brazil enslaved Africans. Centuries later, their descendants have taken over.”

On Kamala Harris’ family roots in Brown’s Town, Jamaica and the village of Thulasendrapuram, in southern India.

I’m hoping and planning to be back in September with another installment of Art & Kinship, this time featuring Marie Mutsuki Mockett. Prior installments: Garrard Conley and Emily Raboteau.