#marginalized communities

Our inaugural author is available for pre-orders!

The Sky was Black with Crows is Rachel C Mahaffey’s debut novel, a dystopian thriller/romance that touches on things that are surrounding us every day:

The government told her she had to become a mother. She had something else in mind.

Obstetrician Ann Sacco lives a quiet life in near-future Seattle, serving the community by helping repopulate the country after a devastating pandemic takes out 95% of the global population. Twenty years following a reproduction mandate that requires all able-bodied adults to contribute to the growth of the population, it’s Ann’s turn to fulfill her civic duty. Having never wanted to be a mother herself, she seeks out an illegal abortion and is thrown into a world of underground insurgency, revolutionary politics, and radical terrorism. Alongside Patrick, the dark, brooding leader of the Seattle insurgency, Ann will uncover devastating truths about the state of reproductive health in the United States and world-altering plots she’s unwittingly taken part in.

For fans of The Handmaid’s Tale, The X-Files, and Mockingjay, this is the first book in a dystopian romance trilogy.

I’m sorry but just because slavery and Jim Crow laws have mostly (yes, mostly, not completely) been abolished in the U.S. doesn’t mean “racism is over”

Just because gay marriage is legal in the U.S. doesn’t mean “homophobia doesn’t exist” and “pride month is unnecessary”

I need non-marginalized people who barge into my life to really, REALLY, realize how deeply important sociopolitical consciousness is to me and how Imean everything I'm referencing with regards to my leftism and other sociopolitical stances; I need y'all to realize how out-of-touch ideologies—when not only do I explicitly say my political stances in my profile/bio/etc. (and in-conversation); but when the fact that I'm so obviously a non-white person ON TOP of the fact that I am an alternative person in goth and punk community is so in-your face already—will just make me flip before I try to reason and decipher your sentiments.

... You're talking to a person of color from SEA. You're talking to a literal WOMAN; to a queer woman: to a woman in an academic field that had history of marginalizing women beyond words; to a woman with religious trauma; to a woman living in an overtly Christian nation; to an ex-Muslim womar who was raised Muslim and is residing in a MUSLIM community, with an all-Muslim family; you're talking to a person in the alternative community; to a person with a religious background that indoctrinate people to not believe in women bodily autonomy. I outwardly parade I am a leftist.

My experiences as a person who's a part of various marginalized communities will always have a different type of nuance compared to your perceptions as a non-minority. The least you can do is make an effort to have a little bit of nuance if you're deliberately gonna attempt to have a conversation with me.

You're able to really see and read my activeness in sociopolitical conversations, able to compliment how aesthetically pleasing my gothness is, able to see my Asian-ness... But you downplay how nihilistic the world is—*my* reality is as a minority—like they're merely a matter of plain philosophical banter.?

There was this post going around a couple days ago about how certain billionaire fascists are gay, and people being shocked at this. But... like. Frankly, some of the worst people I know are white, cis, abled, well-off gay men, or white, cis, straight, abled, well-off women.

Two years ago, when I nearly died, I was sharing a hospital room with an old white gay dude, who thought it was totally acceptable to sexually harass the male nurses - at times while his own husband was present.

And when it comes to my publishing in Germany. My novels were published with a publishing label owned by an old white cis gay dude, who did not only not pay me in the end, but also had later on regular meltdowns on social media about how people kindly told him to please not just use the n-word everywhere, and not misgender trans people.

And one of my short stories was published with another white cis gay dude, who was very, very comfortable to talk for every other marginalized group, including trans people and non-white people, because he clearly understood so much more what those people felt than the people themselves.

And then there is the white, rich, cis gay dude at our local organizing committee who thinks that racism is actually not a real thing.

Thinking about because of the David Gaider stuff and quite a few people assuming that Dragon Age must originally have been written by a straight guy. But like... Dragon Age Origins and DA2 generally has the "gay man writing XY" all over it. And mind you, from all I can say, Gaider is not even actually an asshole. He was just very unreflected about those topics back in the day. It seems to me - looking at his interviews over time - that he actually did reflect a lot since then. But... like. Dragon Age centrally has this specific kind of flavor of writing that actually is not straight, but gay, but also very... you know. Privileged.

I am writing this article from the point of view of a trans woman, but if you are queer, neurodivergent, disabled, or just someone who has diverged from the paint by numbers societal norm in any way, I am sure you will see your own story in here somewhere.

When you exist outside the rigid boundaries of what society deems standard, you develop a sort of reflex. You become a human sponge for other people’s discomfort. It is like being the person who automatically apologises when someone else bumps into them in the supermarket. Over time, this reflex becomes the norm. You mop up the disrespect, the tense family dinners, and the dating app conversations that make you want to throw your phone straight into the nearest canal. You get so used to smoothing over the friction our existence supposedly causes that you completely forget how to hold anyone else accountable. We just accept the insidious belief that our divergence is the root cause of every bad thing that happens to us.

Whenever something went wrong in my life, I had the answer ready. If a friend stopped inviting me to the pub, I knew why. If someone shouted something vile out of a car window while I was walking down the high street, I immediately took the blame. If a conversation on a dating app turned sour and deeply intrusive, I told myself it was because I’m trans, and not in a “poor me” way. It was just the rational answer.

And then you wonder if it might actually come from the margins of the text, and you start to research and find you are right.