In their debut book Black. Fat. Femme: Revealing the Power of Visibly Queer Voices in Media and Learning to Love Yourself, Dr. Jon Paul Higgins recounts the experiences that shaped who they are. Having experienced their fair share of pain and rejection, Higgins knows firsthand that it gets better. But with Black. Fat. Femme., they provide their own personal anecdotes on how they carved out a path toward joy.
The book is over seven years in the making. Higgins first conceived the idea for Black. Fat. Femme. during their time in the Lambda Literary program in 2017.
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“I am comfortable and happy with who I am and how I show up in the world, the world be damned.”
“The entire week that you’re there, you’re writing bits and pieces of a narrative,” Higgins tells INTO. “There are different tracks you can take, and I was in the nonfiction track. When I was there, I was…writing different pieces and different things. Initially, this book was supposed to be a narrative around all of the different ways that the men in my life impacted me and how I saw myself as a queer person. And it just became me writing a lot about trauma.”
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But soon enough, Higgins found that writing about trauma wasn’t as healing as they thought it would be. In one of the stories they had written about being rejected by a dating prospect — specifically being told “No Black, no fat, no femme,” — the idea for their book as we know it today began to form.
In 2021, Higgins launched the podcast BFF: Black, Fat, Femme podcast with co-host Jordan Daniels as part of a partnership with iHeartMedia. Each week, the hosts exchange stories of pain, love, and joy, while unapologetically taking up space in a world that has tried to silence them.
“I didn’t want the deficit [I’ve experienced] to overshadow the message that I have,” says Higgins. “I wanted folks to be able to see the black fat femme and see the joy and the interworkings of those three identities.”
To date, the BFF podcast has pulled in over 75,000 downloads and earned the Best Lifestyle and Entertainment Podcast award at the 16th annual Shorty Awards.
“I’m forever inspired by Jon’s resilience,” says television writer and comedian Franchesca Ramsey. “Every artist deals with rejection, but Jon has mastered the ability to turn a no into a lesson that propels them forward and encourages others.”
Higgins’ passion for writing began at a young age. As a child, they spent time with a group of friends, often reading books and writing stories together. When they grew older, they often talked about writing books of their own. “I always thought it was so easy.”
Their storytelling later flourished into songwriting, but Higgins learned soon enough that they didn’t want to work in a cutthroat music industry.
Higgins does, however, touch on their musical inspirations early on in the book—from seeing themselves within a vibrant Luther Vandross to jamming out to Whitney Houston, which resulted in threats from their family members.
“I wanted folks to be able to see the black fat femme and see the joy and the interworkings of those three identities.”
Jonathan P. Higgins, Ed.D
Though neither Vandross or Houston opened up about their rumored queer identities in their lifetimes, friends and alleged past lovers have detailed their struggles. And while Higgins doesn’t touch on these musicians’ sexualities in Black. Fat. Femme., they posit that, had those icons experienced an entertainment landscape that allowed them queer in their lifetime, they might still be with us today.
“If Whitney really did have the space to be her authentic self, she probably wouldn’t have relied so heavily on substances to be able to cope,” says Higgins. “I don’t know if you watched the Luther doc, but folks had said that food became his drug of choice, in terms of helping him cope with a lot of the stuff that he was going through. I think there’s just a certain element of sadness that both of them kind of carry.”
Having been raised in the Jehovah’s Witness faith, Higgins says they don’t rely on religion any more. They consider themselves more spiritual, connecting with the souls of those who are no longer with us. The book itself is dedicated to three of their late friends, whom they consider to be their guardian angels.
While writing Black. Fat. Femme., Higgins also felt connected to writers like Audre Lorde and activists like James Baldwin. “Working through their legacy and uplifting their names, I’m sure someone up there has tapped [Baldwin] on the shoulder and said, ‘Hey, look at this person down there and what they’re doing.’”
In a thought-provoking chapter titled “The Masc You Live In,” Higgins details the dangers of toxic masculinity and society’s disdain for femininity. They note that the aversion to femininity comes from disdain for women and womanhood.
Today, Higgins still finds that this type of internalized misogyny is ever-present in men—both cishet and queer—as well as women.
“I was watching The Traitors the other night, and there was a contestant who was like, ‘I don’t cry because I’m not a pussy,’” Higgins says. “And it was a woman who said this. So I’m thinking to myself, there’s so much misogyny that lives in us, in so many different ways and so many different facets, that folks don’t even recognize the things that they say or do, and how much that’s connected to it.”
This type of intersectionality is something Higgins has taken into consideration when seeking mental health resources. In a chapter called “Becoming That Bitch,” Higgins details the struggle of finding a good therapist, and going through multiple therapists before landing on one who worked for them.
One thing Higgins suggests LGBTQ+ patients do is to ask a prospective therapist their framework and thought process around intersectionality.
“Having a therapist understand where my mind was coming from as a Black person, where my mind was coming from as a queer person, where my mind was coming from as a Black queer person who also is nonbinary made it easy for me to have conversations with her, and for her to understand where some of my trauma lived,” Higgins says.
Seeing Black and queer joy play out onscreen has long been a saving grace for Higgins. Throughout the book, they frequently reference Noah’s Arc—a short-lived but pivotal television show about a group of Black queer men in Los Angeles—as well as Steve Canals’ Pose, and the ballroom documentary Paris Is Burning. Even the book’s foreword was penned by none other than drag icon Latrice Royale.
They have carried on the legacy of these programs in their own women’s studies courses, in which they’ve included these works in their curriculum. Oftentimes, these works go overlooked or get left out of the conversation of great queer media, but Higgins maintains that they should continue to live on.
“There’s this ideology that our talent, in terms of representation in shows that it’s not considered popular if white people don’t buy into it,” says Higgins. “And I think that’s something that I was really trying to make note of in this book…Part of me writing this book is to make sure that the legacies of folks like Derek J, Miss Lawrence, and Miss J don’t get lost.”
Higgins was facing similar problems as they were pitching their book, constantly being told “there’s no market for this.” But even as others tried to close the door on them, Higgins pushed through the windows.
“Jon knows their dreams are coming true, a dream they brought to life themselves,” says actress Jessica Marie Garcia. “Jon knows how worthy they are of being happy and will not allow anyone else to rob them of that joy, regardless of the circumstance.”
With Black. Fat. Femme. on shelves now, Higgins can breathe a little bit easier. They have no idea how the book will perform, or where it will be positioned at their local Barnes & Noble.
The current world climate is enough to give anyone pause, especially as voices like Higgins are facing suppression. But Higgins has more faith in Black. Fat. Femme. than ever before.
“Even if folks try to ban the book,” says Higgins, “I know it will get into the hands of those who truly need it.”♦
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