Kai Cheng Thom on the Inherent Worth of Cis Men and Trans Femmes

Kai Cheng Thom’s most recent book, Falling Back in Love With Being Human, is a series of letters to people or groups of people who are hard to love. Which is everyone.  She addresses trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) and trans women. She writes to sex workers and their clients. She has letters to mass shooters and their victims. She writes to J.K. Rowling. She writes to herself.

The current state of the world can make it awfully hard to ground ourselves in love. It can be hard to love ourselves when we represent something that society is raging against. And it’s just as hard to look at those doing the raging with compassion and curiosity.

In this newest episode of the podcast, I spoke to Kai Cheng about her book, what she learned from doing sex work in her twenties, and how she’s cultivating a spiritual practice grounded in love and recognizing the inherent worth of everyone. Basically: who is this wonderful person capable of writing love letters to those who hate her? And how did she become who she is?

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Kai Cheng Thom is an award-winning writer, performance artist, and community healer in Toronto. She was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and won the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers for her surrealist novel, Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir. She is also the author of several other books, including a poetry collection, an essay collection, and two children’s picture books. Kai Cheng writes the advice column Ask Kai: Advice for the Apocalypse for Xtra. Find her on Twitter: @razorfemme or Instagram: @kaichengthom.

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