1002: Kay, Be Pretty with KB Brookins
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Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that knows figuring out who you are is rarely a straight line.
This week, Leigh (@lshfoster) is joined by award-winning author, KB Brookins (@earthtokb), for a discussion about their 2025 Lambda Award Winning debut memoir, Pretty, now available in paperback!
In Pretty, KB explores the complicated gap between how we see ourselves and how the world sees us. Part memoir, part cultural critique, it’s a love letter to Black trans masculinity and a powerful call for all humans to question the assumptions and expectations we inherit from being raised within a structurally racist, cisheteronormative society. Using a mix of poetry and prose, KB reflects on growing up in the ’90s and 2000s, when “no homo” was a punchline, “that’s so gay” was a common insult, same-sex marriage was still illegal, and the language available for understanding queer and trans identities was often limited, stigmatizing, or outright harmful.
Honestly, Emma Specter of Vogue said it perfectly already–Pretty, “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”.
While today’s greater visibility of trans and nonbinary identities gives people more opportunities to question, explore, and understand themselves, KB’s journey was also shaped by the specific cultural expectations and assumptions attached to being perceived as a Black girl in Texas. Pretty traces that winding process of unlearning those expectations, questioning who they were told they should be, and ultimately finding the freedom to recognize themselves as the Black transmasculine person they have always been inside.
Don’t forget to support your local bookstores by snagging your own copy of Pretty at Bookshop.org.
Lez Hang Out is an independently produced show. Find us on Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Tiktok and Bluesky (@lezhangoutpod) or email us at lezhangoutpod@gmail.com.
