All One Body: A Memoir (Appalachian Futures Black Native & Queer Voices)

Over their lifetime, Bex Fine-Firesheets has been at least four people. First, Bex was Becky, a young, people-pleasing perfectionist raised in a white-purist United Baptist church in Kentucky. Yet the summer they turned thirteen, their family was abruptly kicked out of their congregation, sending Bex into a dark spiral of disordered eating, self-harm, and housing instability. To survive, Bex buried Becky and their Kentuckian identity, fled to college in Boston, engaged in an unlearning and reeducation process, and became an activist, musician, teacher, and parent in Brooklyn. But their scars, body shame, and obsessive thought loops haunted them. With themes of queer identity, birth, death, rebirth, decolonization, and radical self-love, All One Body imbues the chronological retelling of Bex's life with their broad-minded perspectives, opinions, and voice. By unrelentingly showing how Bex transformed the rage and struggle of their childhood into advocacy, this memoir encourages other trauma-riddled readers to do the same.