“We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.” ~ Gwendolyn Brooks
Yellow Arrow Publishing would like to announce the next guest editor for Yellow Arrow Journal, Matilda Young. Matilda will oversee the creation of our Vol. VIII, No. 1 issue. Mark your calendars! Submissions open February 1 and the issue will be released in May.
This next issue of Yellow Arrow Journal will explore the overarching topic of advocacy and community care. To learn more about this idea, read Matilda’s words below. The theme will be released next week.
Matilda Young (she/they) is a poet with an MFA in poetry from the University of Maryland. She has been published in several journals, including Anatolios Magazine, Angel City Review, and Entropy Magazine’s Blackcackle. She enjoys Edgar Allan Poe jokes, not being in their apartment, and being obnoxious about the benefits of stovetop popcorn. Matilda’s poem “This Yes, This” was part of Yellow Arrow Journal FREEDOM, and Matilda was our .W.o.W. #7. She was also part of the fantastic Yellow Arrow Writers-in-Residence 2022 cohort.
Please follow Yellow Arrow on Facebook and Instagram for the theme announcement. Below, you can read more about Matilda’s perspectives on advocacy and community care. We look forward to working with Matilda over the next few months.
By Matilda Young
When I graduated college, I knew two things: I wanted to make my career as both a writer and a changemaker.
It didn’t turn out that way, until it did.
I spent many years as a government employee, fact checking legal briefs and researching case law, then writing commemorative emails and copyediting 100-page technical reports (the one about shark finning still haunts me).
Only over the last few years did I find my way into advocacy and writing full time. Even then, even when I found my path to my dream job, I’ve had high highs and low lows. Alongside some of the best, and brightest, and kindest, and funniest, and most passionate people I’ve ever known, I’ve navigated joy, victory, inefficiency, callousness, compassion, and unthinkable tragedy.
I am not the same person as when I started.
Being in LGBTQ+ advocacy has helped me find my way to the truth of my own gender queerness. It has also helped me understand the importance of being open and authentic, not just about my gender and sexuality, but also my struggles with depression and anxiety, about needing help some days to just make it to the next day.
I’ve also got to meet extraordinary people who, in so many different ways, are dedicated to healing the world around them: the Black trans community leader who has fought her entire life for justice and safety; the older lesbian who sat with the dying during the worst of the AIDS crisis and brought them comfort; the ally mom who gives out free hugs to LGBTQ+ people who need them; the D.C. drag queen who organized a fundraiser for abortion access; the young trans man who testified before his state legislature to ask them to stop attacking his identity and community.
Working in advocacy has also helped me begin to recognize my own limitations as an advocate and as an ally. I have made a lot of mistakes. I have learned the lesson of humility over and over again. But there is no shame in that lesson. As the great advocate Cecilia Chung said, “There is always more that I can learn.”
I don’t know if I will always have advocacy as my day job. But I do know that it will always be part of my life. Because it has brought me joy, and friendship, and fellowship, and healing, and hope, and laughter, and discovery. And because I have seen firsthand how our struggles—our survival—are interconnected. Or as the great Fannie Lou Hamer said, till all of us are free, none of us are free.
Another thing I have learned, what so many folks have taught me, is that there are so many ways to change the world. Sometimes it is voting, and marching, and donating. Sometimes it is telling our truth plainly and unapologetically; sometimes it is passing the mic. Sometimes it is checking in on a neighbor, or being part of a mutual aid group, or having the tough conversation with a loved one. Sometimes it is listening deeply and being willing to change.
There is no one way to heal the world; the only requirement is that we try.
There is so much darkness in the world, but even the smallest spark can start a fire.
*****
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