Hari Ziyad

Ziyad is a black, queer male writer from Cleveland, who now lives in New York City and uses the pronouns they/them (which shall be used in this review). They write about his struggles forming an identity in a world that seems violent and hostile to his health. While such an environment exists in some part for most children, Ziyad seems to have a particularly difficult time given a multi-religious home, public schooling that seemed to place different expectations on whites and blacks, ever-circling homophobia, and explicit and implicit sexual violence against them.

Zayid’s memoir – and this book is more memoir than autobiography – illustrates the genuine difficulties and benefits of honestly facing one’s self. While writing this book, they engage in psychotherapy and accordingly provides a psychological tilt to their writing. They deeply examine the relationships in his life – whether that be his unusual family, lovers, or friends. They are clearly learning how to have and treasure healthy, mutually beneficial adult relationships at this phase in their life.

Zayid sees racial disparities particularly clearly. In the prologue, they coin the neologism “misafropedia,” defined as the world being particularly “violent” to the healthy formation of African-American children. Throughout the rest of the book, they illustrate this principle through their own experiences in their own upbringing. At times, this outlook can border on paranoia, but the central point was well-made by the end of the work. I would like to see Zayid extrapolate on this point further: They have offered a new diagnosis (misafropedia), but what’s the new treatment? How can Americans make society less hostile to black children? How do they plan to avoid such a fate in the next generation?

Every other chapter contains a letter written from their contemporary adult-self to his child-self. They explain what they wish they would have known as a youth. While almost every adult could coach their child-self to take a better path, the acute struggles (homosexual and black) of Zayid’s formation come out in these letters. This brings clear psychological overtones and marks a step towards wholeness. At times, I had trouble following these letters because the letters seemed caught in emotion rather than grounded in real-world events. I would have liked to have seen these explicated in more detail. Involving a third party in the writings might have been constructive.

Overall, Ziyad’s memoir seems especially well-suited to those in the black community and in the LGBTQ+ community – and to those in both. (In fact, this book explicitly echoes the theory of black feminist authors.) Identity formation, however, is not limited to these groups, and adults responsible for other humans of any ilk could benefit from a perusal of this work. Indeed, any individual can benefit from witnessing the struggles of another human to reckon a worthwhile existence in this world. Those struggles end up determining much of the nature of our existence and suggest what we have most to offer our fellows. I’d like to see Ziyad build upon this foundation in the years to come. They are now newly married and starting off many new “firsts” in their life along with more self-examination. Perhaps the next book could see them reach out to help others in some worthy way.… (mais)