“Unfiltered and Unapologetic: Discover the Provocative Journey of a Queer Black Voice in Brathwaite’s ‘Rage’!”
“As an adult, you have some agency, albeit very limited, in defining what life is and how you fit into it. By the time I got to that point, I had already been questioning everything, all the lies—so then I had to figure out what the truth was. I’m still figuring that out, but in the figuring out I’ve learned to love being Black, to love being gay, and to love the densely layered and beautifully textured nexus of both identities.”
The second essay, “I Worship at the Altar of His Body,” was the only one of the ten where the author leads the reader into an aspect of gay male culture that is truly divisive: the bodybuilding cult. Some gay men, and Mr. Brathwaite admits he is one, are susceptible to muscle dysmorphia, that feeling that your body lacks in a self-defined surfeit of muscles. The author spells out several potential causes for this dysmorphia: “…internalized heterosexism; internalized beauty standards; homophobic bullying; long-term effects of the AIDS epidemic, both physical and psychological; and just the constant pressure (and competition) to be seen, to be wanted, to be fucked.”
