Homebody by Theo Parish (free-writing prompt)

Over the summer I’ve been helping out in a high-school English classroom. Each morning, the teacher assigns her students to work from a writing prompt and I decided to tackle those prompts myself. We had a free-writing prompt for Friday, July 12, so I wrote about a graphic memoir that I had read recently, Homebody by Theo Parish.

Among the books I am reading is Homebody by Theo Parish. This is a graphic memoir about how Parish came to understand and to comfortably inhabit their nonbinary identity.

Throughout the book, Parish uses a visual metaphor of people comfortably inhabiting their own bodies by depicting them as if they were wearing houses: heads coming out of rooves, arms emerging below the eaves, and legs emerging from the foundation of the house.

I really enjoyed this memoir, and felt grateful for the representation and visibility it provided me.

Biologically I am “female,” that is the model of human that I am. And people often apply gendered language to me, but I have always felt myself to be androgynous, rather than a “girl” or a “boy,” a “woman” or a “man.”

One area of this memoir that I found particularly inspiring was the idea of being visible in your queer identity so that others who are not yet “able to flourish” can see a place for themselves. This is an idea that I hold onto very strongly. On a couple of occasions when I’ve publicly worn a T-shirt with the nonbinary flag on it, I’ve seen young people’s faces light up with joy when they saw me wearing that shirt.

I’ve been grateful, in adulthood, to be able to read stories like Parish’s graphic memoir. And I am grateful in adulthood to have gained assorted terms with which to describe myself: genderqueer, nonbinary, gender nonconforming, agender, gender creative, gender expansive, and more.

When reading Parish’s biography at the back of their graphic memoir, I also learned that Parish is neurodivergent, which, being as I’m autistic, gives me another area of commonality. I deeply appreciate having access to this powerful graphic memoir.