Queer Eye: Stories Behind the Stories, Ep. 4
There is so much to unpack in this episode, aptly titled “The North Philadelphia Story.” If you want to know why I’m unpacking, click here.
Just an aside, the clip at the end about freezing one’s jeans? That’s really just an excuse to see Antoni in his drawers.
In this episode, the beginning grounding shots are of a Black and Brown Philly. This is the Philly I know with small Black children playing in water during the summer, and the Septa. We meet Tyreek who is a writer and mentor with the Mighty Writers program. He champions the art of the pen for Black and Brown youth who need an outlet. In Tyreek’s childhood, he lived with a family friend, Ruth, for a while until he was sent to live with his mother. He credits Ruth with a great deal, drawing a line between his (now incarcerated) brother’s journey and his own. I hasten to add that Tyreek individualizes his brother’s story and there may be other structural factors that would come to bear on that situation. Tyreek has also been homeless and had help from his friends to stay clothed and fed. The Fab5 find him living in his own space, after having created some stability for himself. In an uncharacteristically mild way, the usually straight-forward Bobby says, “Not having that sense of security can really be hard on you.”
These are in no particular order. First, there is Tyreek and Bobby’s connection. Bobby was also homeless at one point and is candid about his struggles. In sifting through their connection, they highlight the millions who are “unbanked,” who in Bobby’s words, have lost the freedom of a certain kind. Tyreek and Bobby sit down with Tiffany Aliche aka The Budgetnista to help Tyreek access a bank account and understand the advantages of having one. Tyreek says that he dislikes money, the concept of it. Who can blame him? It has been used as a tool to compound his disenfranchisement. Coming out of homelessness isn’t just about finding a place to stay: it requires that you recreate or revise whole aspects of your life, significantly your fiscal life.
Second, self-care is communal here. When Tyreek gets his locs retwisted, his loctitian Shahada explains his hair to him (and to Jonathan). When she cares for Tyreek’s hair, it is a communal activity that brings him back to himself. Too often self-care is thought of as time away from others or time doing something luxurious. Self-care in communities of color does include individual care (i.e., cooking a solo meal, taking a walk, having that necessary doctor’s appointment). However, it also means engaging with a community where you are allowed to just be, just be free. Self-care for Black folk includes hair practices that are communally witnessed and participating in a barber shop/hair salon culture where people casually and freely express themselves. This is why so many of us have been missing hair salons and barber shops during quarantine or having our beauticians/barbers on our quaran-team. When Tyreek has the reveal of himself in the mirror, he looks stunned. Shahada looks proud of her work as well. And she should be! Shout out to the beautician from episode 2, Kadiesha “Kadie” Johnson, who braids Rahanna’s hair as well.
I could write about how Bobby creates a stasis oasis in Tyreek’s home: a room of his own (Thanks, Virginia Woolf). I think of all the pictures of Black writers near their pen, pencil, paper, typewriter or simply in their spaces of creation. I think of Audre Lorde in front of a chalkboard. I also think of Ralph Ellison smiling next to his typewriter. There’s a photo series of Lorraine Hansberry leaning on her typewriter (taken by David Attie in 1959) which I love for its capture of her slyness, clarity, and boldness. There’s a still of James Baldwin from the film I Am Not Your Negro (directed by Raoul Peck) in front of his typewriter with a cigarette. My favorite photo of Toni Morrison (aside from one of her dancing) is one taken by Jack Mitchell in 1979: she is holding a yellow legal pad in her left hand and a pencil in her right. She looks like she means business. Creating a writing space for Tyreek speaks to a long tradition of writers in general needing their own spaces, but also the fact that for Black writers in particular those spaces have been hard to come by.
Then, there’s the state and Nikki Giovanni. When Tyreek tells the story of his childhood, he wrestles with feelings of abandonment. He believes that Ruth kicked him out of the house. What he finds out is that Ruth had the opportunity to get custody of another child, her grandchild, who had been hospitalized. The state would not have allowed her to raise both children in the same household, so she had to perform triage and take the child who had no other place to go. Tyreek’s memory about that aspect of his departure remains murky. He remembers that detail but prioritizes another: that he wrote something unseemly in his journal and it was discovered. For writers, the child’s memory is the adult writer’s playground, but that does not mean those memories are facts of a certain kind. What Tyreek finds out is that he did not cause Ruth to not love him, nor did he cause her to abandon him. The state mandated that she choose. Interestingly enough, Karamo is the only one of the Fivers to utter on camera (I assume a great deal gets cut) that the state interfered. It is so important that he spoke that.
Given the earlier conversations about money, I think Nikki Giovanni’s poem “Nikki-Rosa” resonates here, particularly the last few lines:
and I really hope no white person ever has cause
to write about me
because they never understand
Black love is Black wealth and they’ll
probably talk about my hard childhood
and never understand that
all the while I was quite happy
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