Books On Race And Polyamory

Cathy: Are there any books good books out there on race and polyamory?
I’m here with Kevin A. Patterson from http://polyrolemodels.tumblr.com/ I don’t want to mess that up http://polyrolemodels.tumblr.com/ and I’m Cathy Vartuli from https://theintimacydojo.com/ and I hear that you were writing a book on race and poly and I’m really excited. Can you tell us about it?

Kevin: Yeah, yeah. Definitely. So, last…..a couple of years ago I started working on I….I communicate all the time with Rebecca Hiles of https://twitter.com/thefriskyfairy and at some point after Poly Role Models started she said, “hey, you should….you should write a workshop for

Cathy: She’s a

Kevin: Catalyst

Cathy: Oh yeah.

Kevin: Then I said “no, like that sort of that sort of big name.” [Inaudible 00:00:51]

Cathy: She’s pretty smart. You should follow her advice

Kevin: You know

Cathy: Yeah.

Kevin: So she convinced me to write

Cathy: Yeah.

Kevin: and I thought of writing basically just about my personal experiences. I live in the Philadelphia area and there are so many times where I would go to meet ups and events, happy hours, mixers and I’d be the only person of color there.

Cathy: Yeah

Kevin: The only black person there, the only black man there or there’ll be like three or four and they’ll be all people that I knew or who came with me in my car and I started writing about then in my personal experiences about how….how many barriers for entry people of color can find when trying to enter their polyamorous communities and

Cathy: Oh

Kevin: I…..I….I made this workshop, it’s mostly me of the cuff just talking about my own experiences and….and inviting people to tell….tell me about their experiences.

Cathy: Yeah

Kevin: So as I was writing it, as I was work shopping it….it was suggesting to me to turn it into a book.

Cathy: Yeah

Kevin: And so I started writing it out as a book and I…..I tried to keep the same format where I tell a lot of my own personal stories not just about like the….these barriers for entry in terms of polyyamory like for my perspective, I bring in a lot of people to tell me about their perspective as well. So there’s a lot of people’s stories just telling and then I explain like I explain how fetishization works. I’ve….I explain how othering works, I understand how class can be then I…..I explain how class can be a barrier, how….how being tokenized can be….can be a barrier.

Cathy: Yeah.

Kevin: I explain like why feminism and how that becomes an issue because not hate, not hating all or any of these books but when you look at a lot of the books that people claim more like these Bibles of polyamory and they’re quality books. I’ve read almost all of them. They’re almost all written by white folks or almost all written by white women.

Cathy: Yeah.

Kevin: You know and that….that sort of limits the perspective that people.

Cathy: Absolutely, yeah. Well

Kevin: People take the time to notice that like if everything is coming from a singular perspective, there’s a lot of people who were being boxed out even if you don’t mean for that to be the case.

Cathy: Yeah. Yeah

Kevin: So I started writing about all of that and so then I have a book. It’s coming out, it’s called Love’s Not Color Blind. It releases in April on Thorntree Press.

Cathy: Oh, that’s amazing. Congratulations!

Kevin: Thank you!

Cathy: I…..that’s so needed. Wow, thank you for putting that together you know creating that for….for people.

Kevin: Yeah.

Cathy: I want….send me out for a copy.

Kevin: What’s…..what’s kind of….what….I didn’t realize was when I started doing my workshop, I expected to be running into a lot of people who were speaking about race and polyamory

Cathy: Yeah.

Kevin: [Inaudible 00:03:44] you know and…..and that’s just was it like

Cathy: Yeah.

Kevin: when I went to http://catalystcon.com/ the first time, I was the only person speaking I was the only person speaking about polyamory specifically at my first http://catalystcon.com/.

Cathy: Wow.

Kevin: I’ve been to con….conferences where no one was speaking about race. It wasn’t until I went to https://www.polydallasmillennium.com/ that I run into multiple people speaking about polyamory and races at the same time.

Cathy: Wow.

Kevin: And that’s not the same no one is doing the same work as I’m doing but there’s it’s so [Inaudible 00:04:14] between like when I started writing the book Love’s Not Color Blind, I thought I better finish this thing fast because there are five more books coming down and they’ll going to be the same thing, I’m going to beat them on the press. I talked to a lot of people and everyone’s was like “oh, wow! I haven’t thought of this idea.”

Cathy: Oh, wow.

Kevin: [Inaudible 00:04:30] I am the guy writing the book and that to me and while I’m okay with that from a and then I’m putting this out it’s standpoint I….I wanted to be more than just me.

Cathy: Yeah.

Kevin: I wanted to more you know my…. part of my Poly Role Model’s platform is putting people up of my shoulders and giving everyone a boost like I want to I want to extend the voices of marginalized people all over the place.

Cathy: Yeah.

Kevin: You know so to find out that I’m one of very few people doing this thing, talking this talk that is kind of stunning for me.

Cathy: Yeah, well I so appreciate your generosity and….and then putting and then it’s a lot of I know it’s writing books is for me at least really challenging and it’s a lot of effort.

Kevin: Yeah.

Cathy: Yeah.

Kevin: like if a party has a subject matter that are role [Inaudible 00:05:19] and like a publisher that all ready to go, I wouldn’t have read a book. I’d be playing video games

Cathy: Yeah. Can we come back? I’d like to talk a little bit about the barriers to entry if you’re willing to share a little bit without giving away too….too much of your book.

Kevin: Yeah, definitely.

Cathy: Okay. If you have thoughts, questions, comments please leave them below and Kevin, where can they find out, where can they sign up to find out when your book comes out and be….any announcements?

Kevin: You can keep up at https://thorntreepress.com/. There’s….my book is out in April of 2018, there’s a few books ahead of it so it was like I don’t think the advertising campaign is really starting today

Cathy: Not yet.

Kevin: Yeah but https://thorntreepress.com/ and keep up with http://polyrolemodels.tumblr.com/ on Facebook, on Tumblr, on Twitter, on Instagram because I’m definitely going to be broadcasting the hell out to you.

Cathy: Absolutely. Thank you so much Kevin. We’ll be back in a few minutes.

Kevin: Thank you!