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Review: Pretty: A Memoir by KB Brookins

Review of Pretty: A Memoir, by KB Brookins; Knopf; $28.00; 240 pages; May 28, 2024

Review by Dani Sarta

KB Brookins’s third published book and first memoir, Pretty, is an artfully queer ode to growing up in a society that doesn’t “get” you and to the ongoing journey of crafting your own space amid recent, globally traumatic years. By way of Black cultural references, queer theory and literature, and a homegrown love of the Texan South, Brookins leads readers through their life growing up as a masculine Black girl learning to show the world who they really are.

Composed of essays and poems, and divided into four sections, this memoir begins with Brookins’s early days. After laying the foundation of their birth and adoption at two years old, they offer a brief disclaimer, reminding the reader that “the mind has a way of shielding the body from what it can’t contain… so know that this story isn’t the full one… but is composed of the moments too interestingly gendered to pass up.” The moments they choose to share are incredibly raw and relatable to anyone who grew up under similar constraints of gender, sexuality, and/or religion. From being told at five years of age to “close [their] legs” because of the men around them to starting the deconstruction of their relationship with Christianity at twelve, Brookins recounts hallmark memories shared by many queer people, as well as most girls raised in “the church.” Still, each experience is seasoned by the Texan conservatism they suffered, as well as their family’s deep connection to the Christian church, making these experiences uniquely their own.

 Later, the memoir focuses on Brookins’s struggles with sexuality as a teenager in a budding Internet space. They explore websites like MySpace and engage in relationships beyond what they are told is “normal.” And in the third section, Brookins turns the mirror to the darker, painful parts of self-exploration; frustration expressed in unhealthy ways; the concept of toxic masculinity in Black, queer spaces; and a misunderstanding of Black “man/boyhood” due to being socialized as a Black woman/girl.

This section begins with a poem titled “Toxic Masculinity,” which discusses the cycle of abuse, generational trauma, and racism against Black men, and how all of these pains manifest in other areas of Black men’s lives. The poem is followed by the titular essay in which Brookins admits to embracing toxic masculinity while in a queer relationship, feeling compelled to fall back on the examples of masculinity they knew when faced with a situation that forced them to see their gender in an unexpected way. The last two essays of this section, “I Get Least of You” and “23andMe,” address Brookins’s relationship with their adoptive father and his relationship to masculinity. Brookins also details their brief but unsuccessful dive into 23andMe to find their biological father.

In Brookins’s letter to their adoptive father, they write, “What does it mean to parent yourself in a world that sees you as a man while you are a boy? What does it mean to be told that you’re a boy—like I was told that I was a girl—and have Blackness cloak that boy in some predetermined fate? I was never a Black boy, but now I’m expected to be a Black man. I’d love to get the MO on all I missed from boyhood with you and dad #2.” Having no experience being raised as a Black boy, Brookins struggles to embody the image of a Black man. By the end of the section, Brookins has not been able to connect with their biological father, but there is a beautiful moment of reconnection with their adoptive father after Brookins begins social and medical transition. The two share “a conversation that wasn’t possible when [they] came out in high school” with “more understanding, more patience, less grief and loss in the air.”

A majority of the essays, like “23andMe,” conclude with a few paragraphs or pages of hope for the future. Some readers may find this tedious or unjustly optimistic, but such moments are best read as acts of resistance or self-love (which is resistance in its own right), in which Brookins reaffirms their author’s note. This is a memoir they wish had existed when they were transitioning, the memoir they needed as a teenager, as a child, and even now. To further this resistance, halfway through the memoir, Brookins writes, “We must believe people when they tell us who they are. We must create a culture where people’s reality always overpowers other people’s bigotry.” This centers the memoir around the act of forming an ideal reality, regardless of others’ discomfort.

This resistance comes into full view in the final section of the memoir. As Brookins writes, “Each adverse experience and day of literary discourse on Twitter should be radicalizing us to create a new literary America…Writing is an extension of living, so we have to study and practice love in the same ways that we study and practice craft.” Throughout this section, Brookins criticizes the ways that liberalism and “diversity” within companies and institutions (especially the publishing industry) often suffer from a normalized, hyper-white focus, and how, despite Brookins’s complex and layered background, they are often forced into the box of the “token” Black person in a room. They show from their experiences that very rarely does an organization that prides itself on its diversity or “wokeness” understand the nuance of multiple identities, such as those that Brookins encompasses. Such institutions, Brookins argues, generally alienate those they claim to care about.

Still, the memoir celebrates intersectional identities and Brookins’s journey to identify as a member of multiple communities, emphasizing the importance of existing for yourself while doing the systemic work to help others exist alongside you. As Brookins writes in the title essay, “We can shed ourselves, be limitless, and embody everything pretty. I am mine, you are yours, this world is ours, everyone’s, to be safe in.” While this call to action arrives long before the memoir’s end, the call is clear: live a life of love and care, and insist that the world change for the better.