GEORGE M. JOHNSON

I AM A RAINBOW!

By Kevin E. Taylor

The power and intimacy of George M. Johnson is that they are both ferocious and delicate, all at once.  Even the title of their “memoir-manifesto,” a young adult non-fiction opus that took the literary world by storm when the world was in the midst of madness, shows that they are fiercely ferocious in their intentionally. 

All Boys Aren’t Blue was the stunning, award-winning debut of the journalist, who had already established a solid and sound career penning pieces for Essence, The Root, Teen Vogue and even serving as guest editor for BET.COM’s Pride Month.  But what is so tenderly tough about George M. Johnson and the deliberate title of their first masterpiece is that the title also speaks to the fact that as much as many would believe that the Journey of George would have left the author sullen or sad or reserved with being the peacock they were clearly meant to be. George offers that indeed all boys aren’t blue, all boys aren’t left with a shell of themselves but flourish in the bright light of being true to themselves and allowing their fullness, the feminine fire and the masculine mantra, encircled by the aura of their otherness, to be declaration of Divine.   Now, with the release of We Are Not Broken, his second installation from his life’s chronicles and his visual dramatic reading of the first, all of which have been lauded with awards, George M. Johnson is the move and the moment and the very epitome of what it means to be a Creative.  Let’s get to know them.

KET:      Where did you grow up and how did you grow up? What was your first conscious understanding of yourself and the way people saw you?

GMJ:    I grew up in a small city called Plainfield, NJ, about 25 minutes from Newark (30 or so minutes away from NYC).  I grew up what people I guess would consider Black middle class, with a lot of cousins and family and my grandmother named Louise, who we called Nana.  She was the main caregiver [for me and my little brother] because both of my parents worked (father was a narcotics detective; mother owned a hair salon and was the head secretary at the police department).  She also took in 2 of my cousins. 

I grew up in a very loving, understanding…. I always say it was a #BlackBoyJoy environment, where I got to have my cousins be my best friends and play video games and all the kinds of things that I wish all little Black boys had the opportunity to do.  When it came to who I was, I always knew I was different because my mannerisms were different, my emotions felt different than the other boys.  I can remember at the age of 5 [it’s funny how social conditioning works] on Valentine’s Day, you have to give your valentine to someone and I remember giving mine to a girl who was a tomboy.  I remember that there was something that connected me to this girl who was dressed very much like a boy, a tomboy. That’s when I really, really knew.  There was something about her being a tomboy that made sense to me but I made this connection and I didn’t understand why.  That was my earliest indication that something was different in the way I saw people.  I wasn’t fully aware of how people saw me, but I knew I was aware of how I saw people and how my world view was starting to look.

KET:      When did you know that your different was a different different?

GMJ:    By the time I was 7 or 8, when I got my first cowboy boots.  We went to Disneyland for a family vacation and Cross Colors clothes were the thing.  We came all the way out to California and my cousins got the newest sneakers and my brother got the newest sneakers.  My grandmother asked which ones do you want and I said I didn’t want sneakers.  And she asked “well what do you want?” and I said I want cowboy boots. And my cousins were like “No, Matt (my middle name), come on get these sneakers! Please, force him to get these sneakers!” She was always one of those people who let us be independent.  She looked at my Aunt Audrey (who still lives in Cali) and she was like “Audrey, we are gonna have to get this boy some cowboy boots.”  We went into this little Western store with this tall white man with a cowboy hat, and he looked like a cowboy and this group of a Black grandmother and these little Black boys walking in, with my aunt.  He asked “How can I help y’all?” and she said “my grandson wants some cowboy boots.” And he said “REALLY!? OK!” I got these black boots with white threading and a silver tip (which I think my mom still has).  We went to Disneyland and we all had the same outfits but they had on sneakers and I had on cowboy boots, walking around Disneyland, embarrassing everyone.  That’s when I really knew.  I am a different kind of individual. And that was also when I knew I was being given space by my grandmother, by my family, to be an individual and to be able to have agency, even as a little boy, to make my own decisions, even if it was the chagrin or embarrassment of some, it wasn’t an embarrassment to me.  My cousins may have been embarrassed but they also wouldn’t have let anyone say anything to me.

KET:      I am having a visual in my brain in my own mind, so I am going to ask it:  What did those cowboy boots do for you?

GMJ:    The cowboy boots affirmed my femininity.  They affirmed my femininity because the thing that I really wanted was the heel.  I wanted to hear that clacking of the heels like I heard when my mother wore high heels or when my grandmother wore high heels. I knew that I couldn’t wear high heels but I knew there had to be some medium that would give me a “heel feeling!”

KET:      A HEEL FEEL!

GMJ:    I wanted the clicking and the clacking and those boots were the thing that gave me that!

KET:      And where did less than 10-year old George get that because that didn’t happen in the movies?  Where did little George get that from, that perception?

GMJ:    It was the elevation.  I could see the curve of it.  I could see it go up in the back and so I knew it would give me something.  Even if these boots don’t look like the heels my mother wears, in my imagination they are.  I was already creating my own identity and safe space.

KET:      When did you find your voice was different, not your speaking voice, but the ways you showed up in writing in the world?

GMJ:    I didn’t catch it until I was 7 or 8 and I created the word “HoneyChild” and got in trouble in the class and other students started using it and they called my mother and made me stop using it. They said you can’t use that word.  But I didn’t connect it until I was around 10 and the first time I got called the “F” word. I knew I was being called the “F” word because I was double-dutching with the girls and I didn’t play traditional sports. But I also knew that there were times that I would speak and I would hear people walk away and they would whisper about me.  That’s when I knew that my voice doesn’t even give a masculine presence.  My voice was sassy and Southern and a lot like my grandmother.  They all spoke like Jersey and I sounded like South Carolina.  Now, we have words for it.  I had “gay voice” my whole life and the way I talk now is the way I’ve always talked. People always picked that up.

            My main friends were girls and me being able to be a part of the girl groups and have girl talk, I knew that something about me was different.  And I also was growing up with a transgender cousin, so that gave me a frame of reference around that age.  I feel effeminate.  I do effeminate things. I am into what society would say were girl things, and so I thought that maybe I am supposed to be like my cousin at some point.  Maybe at some point I am supposed to go through this transition process because I feel so feminine and I feel so connected to it.  But then you start to go through puberty and then with all of that, I knew something was going on with my identity.  This 10 year old trying to figure it all out, with no language.  Going into middle school, the idea of all that started to ramp up.

KET:      What happened to you, for you, when you first got that sense of a boy liking you?

GMJ:    I was a junior when Zamese was a freshman, and I remember the first time seeing him on the bus, and I knew.  We both knew.  We are still friends to this day, but we both knew.  We became really good friends.  We never talked about it, he was just the first boy that I saw with the exact same mannerisms, like sassiness and being able to read and throw shade. We both cliqued and both of our friends were girls.  We knew we were attracted to each other, but we didn’t know how to talk about it.  He was someone who I looked at and thought WOW THERE IS SOMEONE ELSE IN THIS WORLD JUST LIKE ME. That helped me process the whole notion that maybe I’m not trans and I don’t have to transition because I know an image of someone who is just like me.  There are people who exist in the version that I am who can still be all of the things that I am.  That was around 15.

KET:      You saw somebody like you and saw attraction as well.  We often go opposite. You were drawn to yourself.

GMJ:    I think that’s interesting.  And it wasn’t like I didn’t see the athletes as attractive or more masculine people as attractive.  I just wasn’t chasing that thing.  I wasn’t looking at some societal contrast of husband and wife.  I already at that age was just attracted to this person and I think it was beautiful because I was breaking a norm I didn’t know I was breaking.  I wasn’t in queer community yet to know that that was some norm.  I am fortunate that that was my first real attraction to someone because I was able to operate not chasing one ideology of what someone has to look like to match my femininity.  I didn’t have to be attracted to a construct because I didn’t know that the construct existed.  I was able to tap into life and going with what felt right. 

KET:      So in this mindset that has you non-binary before non-binary existed, was there any conflict when you found yourself in culture at an HBCU and in a Black fraternity (George is a proud member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity) because that feels very triggering, like the places where many say they often hide? Did you find adversity or the opposite and find more camaraderie than you expected?

GMJ:    Going to an HBCU was an easy decision because I had to go to Catholic schools for 4 years and I couldn’t see myself in a sea of white people or people I didn’t look like any longer.  I wanted to go back into a majority where I felt seen and where I felt heard. Joining a fraternity was one of those things.  Growing up being so different, I didn’t have a circle of friends like my brother or my cousins.  I fit in with a lot of groups, but I wasn’t the first person on the list to be called when they went to the movies or went skating.  I was very much a loner, an outsider to a lot of the groups.  I saw the fraternity as one way to chase masculinity because I felt society-wise, the ideals and values were still very (Black) conservative, which still meant respectability politics, which still meant I needed to show up and present in a certain way, that stunned my queerness, that stunned my femininity.  I came to realize that as I am chasing this masculinity and I get into this fraternity and find a bunch of queer people, including 4 of them on my line. I was chasing a community I thought I needed and I actually got the community that I needed. I got to finally be in a space that felt like I belonged and like I had ownership and agency to be in.

KET:      How were you able to bring this all together, to be so unapologetically Black and so unapologetically queer?  How were you able to shape all that into your work?

GMJ:    A lot of that gets shaped by rejection.  You have to be this way and then you try to be that way and you’re still denied.  They say you have to talk this way and you try to talk that way and show up that way and you’re still denied.  I’m not meant to be in them and it pushed me further away from them and pushed me closer to going into self.  Be your own identity! You’re always going to be an outsider, looking into them and maybe it’s time to build your house and let them look into you.  I started to do the storytelling myself. It was built out of constant rejection.  I am fortunate enough that rejection has always been a catalyst for my creativity.  I was able to use that rejection to go into a storytelling vehicle that I continue to drive.

KET:      And you’ve driven the vehicle to places unseen before.  How did you get this spectacular staged reading done (which included the iconic Jennifer Lewis and Dyllon Burnside, singer and star of POSE)?

GMJ:    As someone who is community centered, I have to find out ways to give people access to a thing they may not be able to get to, they may not be able to afford right now.  I’m also very much of the understanding that we all don’t learn the same way.  There are people who need what is in this book who are not book readers.  My job isn’t to force them to be book readers.  My job as a creative is to put it into a format that they understand.  People learn differently.  Some people are visual learners and others are auditory. The idea behind the dramatic reading was how do we make these words come to life and shake up the world of storytelling?  In a world where books still shape culture, authors aren’t necessarily given the same authoritative voice ON CULTURE!  In the same way in which we allowed Nikki Giovanni, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde and Angela Davis to critique culture. They were given so many spaces, so many interviews during big cultural, critical moments.  Nowadays, although books are selling and popping, you still do not see authors being given space to affect culture.  We know that my book is going to shape someone’s life 60 years from now.  If they’re not going to give us space, we have to create it.  That’s the reason I’m trying to turn it into a TV show. (Actress, author and producer Gabrielle Union and her production company have just announced they are attached to the project; she celebrated that when she presented George their 2022 Native Son Award).

KET:      What else do you have on the platter for George M. Johnson in the season to come, forward? You bring Black and cultural and Queer and non-binary and so much to the table of You, with such deconstructed!  So, what are you dismantling as we speak?

GMJ:    The notion of how as Black queer youth, our heroes were stolen from us.  I learned about people who were Black and queer but never learned that they were queer.  I only knew that they were Black and knew what their contributions were to our community through a Black lens.  Now that means that my job is to go back and tell the totality of Langston Hughes’ story, telling the totality of Josephine Baker’s story and talking about them from a queer lens.  We only get to talk about them from a Black lens most often, we only talk about their contributions but we never talk about their heart work, and we don’t ever get to talk about the silencing of their parts of their identity they also had to face just to succeed in community. That now becomes the work of Me. It becomes my work to not just tell the factual parts, but to have to go into the imaginative space of what you may have been feeling, what were you thinking?  This is what I think you might have been thinking.  Whether I am right or wrong, I have to go into that type of spiritual space with these ancestors, whose stories are being told but not in its totality. That becomes my work to ensure that something is out there in the world that tells everyone that there was a piece of (them) that was erased and putting it in the world, that piece is (them) no longer erased. 

That is the work I am doing now:  RESTORING OUR HEROES! (currently slated for October 2023 in time for LGBTQ History Month)

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@IAMGMJOHNSON.COM

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