A review by wetdirtreads
Colouring The Rainbow: Blak Queer and Trans Perspectives - Life Stories and Essays By First Nations People of Australia by Dino Hodge
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
5.0
Colouring the Rainbow is both deeply healing and deeply triggering. It is raw and it is real. And with this, it brings raw, real, queer Blak pain. But it also brings raw, real, queer Blak sovereignty, love, care, and power.
This book is shamelessly messy, contradictory, and imperfect. It doesn’t try to sacrifice people’s self-presentations for the sake of representing community as neat or cohesive. It refuses to succumb to the colonial myth that communities must be definable, unified, and palatable to be deserving of visibility, and to be taken seriously. In fact, it argues that the messiness of queer Blak identities is a central and essential part of understanding and knowing queer Blak experiences.
Colouring the Rainbow also refuses to construct Blak queerness using a tidy, clear, linear timeline – another expectation often forced upon Blackfullas by the colony to receive any recognition or validation. The result is a deeply sovereign queer Blak “fuck you” to the colony. A refusal to cling to hope that the colony’s ever-shifting goalposts may ever be in reach. And a commitment instead just to be.
I am so grateful that this book exists. I needed it so bad. There were so many wars being waged on and within my body that this book brought aid to. It didn’t necessarily end all of them, but the ones that it didn’t, it made make sense. It did this by mapping countless rich queer Blak relations – frameworks, points of reference, ways of knowing and being – from which I could navigate my place in the world. And in doing so, it took power away from pain and returned it to me.
I will always, actively and wholly, feel (and know, and be) the gifts this book gave me.
(Review originally posted on Instagram)
This book is shamelessly messy, contradictory, and imperfect. It doesn’t try to sacrifice people’s self-presentations for the sake of representing community as neat or cohesive. It refuses to succumb to the colonial myth that communities must be definable, unified, and palatable to be deserving of visibility, and to be taken seriously. In fact, it argues that the messiness of queer Blak identities is a central and essential part of understanding and knowing queer Blak experiences.
Colouring the Rainbow also refuses to construct Blak queerness using a tidy, clear, linear timeline – another expectation often forced upon Blackfullas by the colony to receive any recognition or validation. The result is a deeply sovereign queer Blak “fuck you” to the colony. A refusal to cling to hope that the colony’s ever-shifting goalposts may ever be in reach. And a commitment instead just to be.
I am so grateful that this book exists. I needed it so bad. There were so many wars being waged on and within my body that this book brought aid to. It didn’t necessarily end all of them, but the ones that it didn’t, it made make sense. It did this by mapping countless rich queer Blak relations – frameworks, points of reference, ways of knowing and being – from which I could navigate my place in the world. And in doing so, it took power away from pain and returned it to me.
I will always, actively and wholly, feel (and know, and be) the gifts this book gave me.
(Review originally posted on Instagram)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Deadnaming, Death, Hate crime, Racism, Suicide, Colonisation, Homophobia, Mental illness, Outing, Transphobia, and Religious bigotry
Moderate: Cancer, Addiction, Alcoholism, Classism, Chronic illness, Cultural appropriation, Drug use, and Terminal illness