the feminist librarian reads

The fate of my black, queer and trans body is inexplicably intertwined with those Liberian, Sierra Leonean, and Nigerian bodies. I’m reminded of this every time a white man passes me on the street and whispers “nigger” under his breath or a store clerk trails me in a store, reading malevolent meanings into my black masculine appearance. Every time white women take one look at me and decide to sit elsewhere in the train or a white person who’s spent time in Nigeria wants to school me on political instability and just what my people are doing wrong, I’m faced with the full weight of black-phobia. It’s a debilitating weight; a destructive force that’s painting my African people as diseased and untouchable. While sick white care workers are immediately given life-saving experimental serum and flown to first-rate hospitals in North America or Europe, my people are scurried away to severely under-resourced clinics or quarantine locations where they are left to die, their children orphaned and unwanted.