Alejandro Heredia

Tenderness teaches us that if we consider softness with enough rigor, if we consider ourselves with enough softness, a wound is a portal, not an end.

I faked all of my book reports as a kid – I hated reading. I got good grades in my ESL classes only because of some natural ability with words. At least that’s what teachers said. Gifted. My ease with diction and syntax had less to do with natural ability and more to do with my growing ability to adapt. I was surviving.

Alejandro Herredia debuts his new Tasteful Rude column with a meditation on the word opacity.

I hesitate to read works that portray Black queer trauma. Many of our collective narratives focus on pain and spiritual isolation, with very little room for much else. But there is a difference between a book that reduces us to our pain and a book that opens up the world by exploring the repercussions of being made to feel unclean, undesired, unkept, unhoused, unloved.