Dear New Followers, Do You Know Who I Am?

This Is For The Newbies Who Don’t Know Anything About Me

Photo Credit: Devon J Hall

I am Devon J Hall. *The Loud Mouth Brown Girl*. I am a sexual assault and gang rape, as well as a cult rape survivor. I am a survivor. Period.

It’s important you know that if you’re going to follow me because everything I say comes from a place of having survived some of the worst people on this planet.

I write about mental health, living life with trauma, healing, and feminism. I am not a feminist. I do not believe that white feminism protects women of color, and I never really have. That being said I have tons of white friends who I also see as genuine allies, doing the work to make changes in this world that will have lasting consequences.

I am not blind to the ways that fundamentalist Christianity has harmed the world and continues to do so on a regular basis. I was raised Roman Catholic, and later Anglican and then Lutheran and the one thing I’ve learned is that all church-based organizations are the same.

I write because it helps me to understand the world. I support my fellow and sister writers because they are genuinely good people who deserve to have good things happen to them because of the work they are doing.

I am a proud member of Writers and Editors of Color, led by so many amazing people that I don’t have time to name them all. I am strong, powerful, and unafraid of being called a troublemaker.

I am unafraid of making Good Trouble, but I am probably one of the calmest people you will ever meet unless I’m scared, anxious, or angry.

I am a writer. At my core, in my heart, I am an artist, but everywhere else I am a writer. I am a writer because it’s the 1 word that describes the work I put into the world, and it absolutely defines me as a human. A hundred years from now people will stumble upon my work and ask questions, they will desecrate it with their theories and their feelings, but it will still exist.

That is what it means to be a writer. To examine the world and share your thoughts with all who are willing to listen and hear, and it’s a powerful gift.

I am unafraid of white people, or the fact that they don’t like being called white, or people, or referred to in any way. I am annoyed at how easy it is to trigger a white person, simply by having an opinion on whiteness.

I am frustrated that white people, in particular, get to play the victim while the rest of us suffer at the same hands of the same society that will let migrants drown while billionaires are mourned.

The world is not fair. It’s filled with darkness, it’s a place that is filled with cruelty, and it’s our job as writers to navigate this world so that we can build the maps that other people live by. It’s our job to show folks how it's done, so they can have a better quality of life too.

This is who I am. I hope you’ll stick by me on this journey, but if you choose not to I understand. I’m a lot to take, and some people are conditioned to hate people like me.

I do write about racism, and how racist stereotypes and tropes affect my life, but I don’t focus on racism as hard as I should because so many of my WEOC brothers and sisters do a beautifully well-crafted job of doing it for me. Read anyone from WEOC and you’ll find a variety of points of theory that I agree with.

Racism and I are old friends. I’ve spent my life being targeted because of the color of my skin, and for the first time in my life I am starting to see how the color of my skin, light as it is, can be used as a weapon against a system that swears up and down I shouldn’t exist.

My people come from the enslaved of Barbados, and beyond. We served in the homes of Kings and Queens, my name means Gate Keeper and my mission is to open the gates for as many warriors, survivors, heroes, and guardians of innocence as possible.

I am a person who will fight for everything I believe in, and I love being non-binary and bisexual. It gives me options and allows me every day to decide who I am going to be and what I am going to put into the world.

If any of this interests you then you’ve made a good choice by following me. If in any way I have offended you with my “wokeness”, then I suggest you unfollow me. I am not going to apologize for believing the best way forward for this world, is for every human on this planet, to live in an equal and just environment where they have their needs, desires, and wants met.

Sending all my love,

Devon J Hall, *The Loud Mouth Brown Girl*