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KB Brookins’s debut memoir, Pretty, is not what I’d call an easily classifiable reading experience; the book mixes poetry into the tenderly and skillfully narrated story of Brookins’s life. There are joyful anecdotes, musings on pop culture, and reckonings with familial and sexual trauma in the book, but at its heart is a carefully sketched-out—and often devastating—portrait of what it means to be Black and transmasculine in Texas, a state that continues to criminalize both of those identities.
Vogue recently spoke to Brookins about the galvanizing potential of Pretty, drawing inspiration from writers including Kiese Laymon and Ire ne Laura Silva, queering the Southern literary canon, and helping to create Austin’s first poet laureate program.
Vogue: How does it feel to be less than a week away from pub day?
KB Brookins: Oh, man. It’s a smorgasbord of emotions. This is my first foray into nonfiction; I have two other books, a chapbook and a poetry collection, but this is my debut memoir. I’ve gotten a couple of essays published here and there, but it’s my first collection of nonfiction—and, as you know, since you read the book, it’s also poetry. I’m kind of feeling like I’m at the edge of a cliff and I’m about to jump, and I’m in, like, a little outfit that’s supposed to keep me afloat, but who knows if it’s going to work. That’s a muddy metaphor, but…
I was going to ask you about making the transition from poetry to memoir, but in fact, Pretty mixes the two to incredible effect. How did you go about situating your poetry within your narrative?
I think the poems came before the prose, if that makes sense. I was a person who believed, you know, Poetry is my thing, and I’m probably never going to write anything else for a long time, and then I started trying to write a poetry book that had the same themes and subject matter as this book. But then I realized, I don’t know…some of these poems are mid, and I’m not liking it. So then I started moving over to prose, because I couldn’t say the thing that I wanted to say in the way I wanted to in poetry. One of the pieces that is in the book is based on a piece that got posted onto HuffPost. Then I put the thing together, sent it to an agent, and the agent sent it to a publisher, and then actually my editor, Erroll McDonald, was like, “What if you put poetry in here?” and I was like, “Bro, why would you say that to me?” When I thought about it, though, and kind of revisited poems that I had written that I felt were failures, I realized, Oh, I think some of these poems are portraying something that’s not necessarily already there in the prose.
Were there other memoirs that served as reference points for you while writing Pretty?
I definitely am a person who writes when I’m reading, and the book Heavy by Kiese Laymon is one that people often compare to Pretty. That makes sense, because Kiese Laymon’s was one of the first memoirs I read where I was like, Oh, this is doing something that I didn’t think you could do in memoirs, because I didn’t see much of people talking about Black masculinity and the experience of being Black and Southern and trying to exist as a Black person in the South. He’s also talking about things that are, by all accounts, shameful, like the ways that you’ve kind of fallen for and even perpetuated toxic masculinity, so I think that influence is there—and of course, Kiese was one of the people who blurbed the book. Other people that I look to…let’s see, definitely Hanif Abdurraqib, because he also does a thing where he oscillates between different genres. I’m thinking of A Little Devil in America; when you read that book, you’re like, are these pieces prose poems, or is it cultural criticism, or is it essays? I think a 21st-century reader naturally wants to categorize something, but Abdurraqib has really made his work ongoing, which I really gravitate towards. I’m also thinking about Brian Booms’s book Punch Me Up to the Gods, which is a memoir that’s largely about the Black gay experience, addiction, et cetera. I wouldn’t necessarily even consider my memoir as linear as some of the ones that I’ve brought up, but they definitely provided a kind of scaffolding.
What do you think is missing from the mainstream cultural conversation (to the extent that there is one) around transmasculinity?
I mean, people of color right? Because I think this book was really born out of me being like, I can’t find anything out there about the experience that I’m having. Even when I look on YouTube or when I go to a bookstore or to arts events and things like that, it’s like, sure, Black transmasculine people exist, but you have to actively search, because our narratives are not propped up in the same way that the trans narratives of our white counterparts are. The writing of this book was really me trying to write down something that I’m experiencing, and that other Black transmasculine people are experiencing when I talk to them, but that none of us were able to prepare for because we didn’t have those kinds of cultural touchpoints that our white trans friends do. The dominant transmasc narrative had me thinking, Oh, man, so I grow a beard and my voice drops and then I get all this privilege, when it’s more complicated than that, because my transness comes with Blackness.
You write about the current state of political life in Texas with disappointment, yes, but also so much care. Is there writing or art about Texas, or Southern identity more broadly, that you feel drawn to right now?
Well, right now, I can say that we’re living through a renaissance of Texas literature. The influence of Texas is so strong in so much of the literature that I read, and even outside of the literary space, like in journalism; I’m thinking about journalists like Taylor Crumpton, who’s from Dallas, 30 miles away from where I grew up. I grew up in Fort Worth, she grew up in Dallas, so I read her stuff pretty regularly. I’m thinking of poets like Ire ne Lara Silva, a really amazing Texas-based poet, who was a 2023 Texas poet laureate. I’m thinking about Amanda Johnston, too, whose poetry blows me away, as well as her advocacy for Black women writers. She’s the executive director of an organization called Torch Literary Arts that’s based in Austin, but helps Black women writers across the globe. There’s also this poe from Houston, Aris Kian, and I love that she be on there using her poet-laureate Instagram to say “free Palestine.” I just love that she’s really for the people. There are so many amazing writers that I’m excited to be writing next to.
Can you tell me a little bit about your campaign to install Austin’s first poet laureate?
I think it was in 2022 that Dallas started their poet laureate program, and that was right next to my hometown, so I was like, how does Dallas beat Austin in getting a poet laureate program? Y’all, it’s getting embarrassing. I started doing research about what a poet laureate position does, and it promotes literacy, right? It also celebrates and amplifies an area’s literary community and creates touchpoints for the city or country or state about its history and culture. If there’s a ribbon-cutting for, you know, a new historical landmark, they’ll ask the poet laureate to come and deliver a custom poem, things like that, which I think would be really awesome, especially in the very gentrified city of Austin, where we’re losing culture every day. I wanted this program to give new and old Austinites a way to remember what is happening around us, even if it becomes a Whole Foods in three years. [Laughs.] Also, the literacy rate in Austin isn’t the best—over 120,000 adults in Central Texas can’t read or struggle to read—and a big part of poet laureateship is going into schools and community areas like libraries to do free workshops, which I think is a really big asset and necessity here in the city. I was lovingly annoying people, trying to get them invigorated about getting an Austin poet laureate, and also conferencing with writers and organizations and bookstores to make sure that my ask was reflective of the community, and that just passed.
Congratulations! Last question: What do you most hope people take away from Pretty?
I hope people take away what they need to. Yes, someone can walk away from the book and be like, This is an adoption story, or, This is a story about being Black and trans right now, or, This is a story about masculinity, and I think all of those readings are correct. My hope is that the book will galvanize you into action, because we’re going into an election year, unfortunately, and I think a lot of the things I talk about in this book will be big topics for the future of us: the trans experience, the Black experience, the question of whether we leave this state behind or keep fighting for its youth and marginalize populations. I want to make it so someone is not writing a memoir like this 10 or 20 years from now; whatever will make people act is what I want them to get out of Pretty.
This conversation has been edited and condensed.
