Awa-Moon Barnett is a Newburgh-based organizer and community health outreach navigator at Planned Parenthood and works to support gender affirming care. She has fundraised over $23,000 so far to open the Hudson Valley’s first Black trans-owned bookstore and community education center in the Hudson Valley. It will be called home home Bookshop.
In 2022, Awa-Moon Barnett began a motorcycle trip that changed her life. She spoke with WAMC about her journey of self-discovery and what inspired her to want to open a bookstore on International Transgender Day of Visibility.
Barnett: I love the Hudson Valley so much. I think it is one of the greatest places in the world.
[I grew up in] Accord, [in] Ulster County. It's in between Kerhonkson and Stone Ridge. It's a little 500-person town, and mostly poor, mostly white when I was growing up. Now I think the economic standing has changed, but at that time it was largely rural and largely white, and my family was one of two or three black families I knew of.
But oddly, I grew up in this really weird section of the street where my family was, which was black, working-middle class. Next to us were working-class plumbers, across the street from us was this lesbian couple who had corgis who spent most of their time in Chelsea in Manhattan. And then next to me was a gay man with a horse farm and then behind us were like one of the local sheriff's mothers. So it was probably the most diverse corner of Accord, where you have someone at every intersection of gender, sexuality and class that you can imagine.
I wasn't thinking about organizing when I was a kid, right? Like my family was very proud of our heritage. We come from formerly enslaved people in Jamaica and across the United States and Africa. And I grew up with representation of black cowboys and Negro League baseball players. And like had an understanding that we weren't thought to be lesser than. And the love and care that I received from my parents and grandmother growing up also re-instilled that.
When I was organizing myself either within school settings or when I got older and started becoming more politicized, a lot of the time, it was based on human rights.
Guerra: Yeah, can you tell me about the motorcycle trip you took and how it inspired you to start a book store?
Barnett: I had anticipated that I was going to go around the country in 90 days, around Turtle Island, specifically like the United States and Canada. I was like, it's going to be real quick. I'll be back in 90 days. Nothing to worry about. And I started in New York, and then went to Montreal, and then camped outside Montreal.
Literally, my sixth day into this trip, I had a vision, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I'm trans.’ And I was like, OK. That rocked me. And I was like, OK, well, what does this mean? What do I do? Blah, blah, blah.
I anticipated that this trip I was gonna learn about revolutionary movements, I was gonna build with people, I was gonna seek out the world. And immediately I started learning things about myself that I hadn't anticipated.
And throughout learning these things about yourself, it really changes your politics, right? Going from like a cis-gender fluid Black man into the body of a Black trans woman. Some people in the science world may be like ‘uhhh’ or some people who do not understand the depths of these things may say ‘This is just ideas’. But like these are actually really textured moments in which I was changing
Between Oklahoma and New Jersey, I was just going to so many Black-owned bookshops. And one of my friends in Seattle, she had opened Loving Room, which was a Black-owned bookshop inspired by bell hooks. So from Oklahoma to New Jersey, I'm going to Black-owned bookshops in every location I possibly can. In New Orleans, there are an incredible amount. And one in particular, Community Book Center is community-based and you have elders there.
I was looking at books, and I would pick up a book and then the person who worked there would be like ‘I bought this book’ and verbatim, could tell you the first sentence of this book. It was a political education that I hadn't experienced. And I think Black-owned bookshops in particular do this really well. They give you insight into liberatory materials from the perspective of the people who are buying and selling them, but also have used them for decades as forms of liberation, right?
So it's not necessarily a book recommendation as a form of prescription into the ways that you can liberate yourself. And that prescription style really inspired me.
And this elder there, she was like, ‘hey what are you doing here?’ And I was like, because I'm in my motorcycle gear, ‘you know, I'm just like, looking for it.’ I was like ‘I kind of think I want to open up a bookshop.’ And she's like, ‘well, what's your home home’ And I was like, ‘What's my home home?’ She's like, ‘Yeah, where are you from from?’
It's such a southern thing, such a Black-American thing, to repeat a word twice in order to put its emphasis on it. And I was like, ‘home, home,’ right? Like, that's it. That's like what I've been searching for on this moto trip since I was a kid.
Guerra: Can you describe what you feel are some of the dangers or challenges facing queer and trans people in the Hudson Valley?
Barnett: I think as a Black-trans woman, things are really dangerous. There are some pockets of the Hudson Valley that may be perceived as safe or comfortable, but even in these towns like Kingston and Hudson, people are facing violence.
I know a black trans woman who was assaulted in Poughkeepsie by a group of people, ended up in police custody, and was the one who was put on trial for inciting violence when she was defending herself. This is a thing that regularly occurs, that trans people are criminalized.
I know of people in Greene and Columbia County who have been assaulted at some of their favorite establishments that they've been going to for decades, that they thought of as safe. So I think there's a facade that being visibly trans here is safe, when, in fact, it's very much a case by case basis. I don't even mean considering what you look like. I just mean the luck you have on any given day to move through the world with confidence and beauty.
One thing that we strongly lack is gender affirming care resources. I know practitioners in Newburgh, Kingston, Poughkeepsie maybe, and in most cases, people have to drive anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour to get an appointment, if they don't live in those cities. To get an appointment, it's usually like once every two to three months. So it's very complex. We don't have enough practitioners.
There's [also] a lack of structural resources. I think this is one thing I learned in Seattle of just the basic name, pronouns, [and] gender in the medical system is normalized out there, whereas here it is not. And there's a lot of what you call dead or previous naming, misgendering, just not a lot of information.
There's not a lot of trans collective community. And if it is, it's often white centered. So those are the kind of things that are happening. But I think it's also growing. I think every day, more and queer and trans people are coming here, and also there are a lot of queer and trans people from here.
Guerra: What would you say to any queer or trans people who are listening right now?
Barnett: It's to all of the two-spirit, queer, trans, gender non-conforming folks out there, keep fighting, keep building community, keep loving one another. Keep transitioning, keep changing your IDs, keep getting your surgeries, keep going.
Yes, we live in incredibly restrictive times. But that doesn't mean we stop fighting. It doesn't mean we stop blooming. It doesn't mean we stop the process. If anything, it means that our ability to show up in our fullest selves is truly what's going to change the world. And the more we do that, the better off we are.
