How I learned to embrace the intersections of my identity by finally enrolling in Hogwarts

Emerging Queer Voices is a monthly LGBTQ arts and culture column that features different up-and-coming LGBTQ writers. You can read more about the series and find all published editions here.

Looking at me, you would hardly guess I used to have a deeply committed relationship with itchy below-the-knee skirts from the Children's Place, ripping toilet paper before sundown on Fridays after school and asking "neighbour Paul" to come over and adjust the thermostat on Saturdays. But I did. 

My weekdays searching for the meaning of "sexy" and "cool" on Tumblr.com were bookended with weekends leading children's programming during Torah services and banging the Shabbos table to various Yiddish-y gibberish at my rabbi's home — the old faithful "ai ai — ai ai ai ai" a go-to. 

I'm an only child in a mixed-race family: my mother is white and of Jewish heritage, from Pointe-Claire, Que., while my father is African American from the South Shore neighbourhood of Chicago and whose childhood proximity to Judaism brought him to the religion as an adult. Together, they decided to upgrade their faith to Modern Orthodox when I was in elementary school, gifting me a ridiculous lifelong game of identity Mad Libs. 

Recently, I found myself back in a synagogue for the first time in I don't know how long, greeted at the door by a comically tiny woman with snow for hair and who couldn't help her ignorance. "Shabbat shalom," she says to my more obviously Jewish friend. "Welcome!" she says to me. 

"Jambo!" I think to myself. I am Cady Heron, a recent white U.S. immigrant from Hollywood's "country of Africa," trying to show solidarity with the Black students who look like home. I see family, and this woman sees "not from around these parts." 

An all too familiar consequence of this misunderstanding is my renewed subscription to the dissonance between my fractured sense of home in Blackness — shaped in part by estranged relationships with what's left of my Black American family, where, visually, it's assumed I belong — and the skepticism I face in the spaces I was nurtured to occupy. 

The succession of a synagogue service feels as natural to me as the blood in my veins and the curls on my head. But I am perpetually trapped on the subway, kitty-corner to a Hassid, locked into his tiny siddur — me, in a miniskirt and a going-out top on my way to Sweat Tour, with our shared language on the tip of my tongue. I choose to sit behind the glass where he can't see me even if he could. He would rather be at yeshiva, and I would rather be at Sweat Tour, but knowing this doesn't help the grief that once upon a time, we sat at the same Shabbos table. 

Much of this dissonance stems from attending Hebrew day school with 60 largely upper-middle-class white students — well, 59. I was the only [fill in the blank] in so many respects. 

Naturally, I was a bit of a pill, largely because each day brought an entirely new and creative test of my inclusion from students and teachers alike; the farewell tour of retired Roald Dahl-ian Catholic school teachers; a part-time real estate agent, part-time Hebrew teacher with children for enemies; a gang of eldest daughters losing faith in my prospects of being cool; a gang of eldest sons oscillating between wanting to destroy me and wanting to kiss me. 

I didn't look like a duck or swim like a duck and, although I could quack like one, I certainly was not a duck. Maybe a swan?   

"Yer a wizard, Harry." 

One of the nicer girls in my class always had her face buried in a book in the schoolyard at recess, probably for her own protection. Her tiny hands were engulfed by the biggest, chunkiest books I'd ever seen. I remember shaking off any of her good-natured attempts to deal me into what was obviously such a rich experience for her. 

But I couldn't afford to dip my toes into the dorky wonderland of Hogwarts or, eventually, Baby's First Erotica — Twilight. Knowing what was cool, whether or not I knew how to successfully participate in it, was my only chance at survival. Harry Potter was not cool and therefore not for me. I excluded myself so as not to give power to my own potential exclusion. Besides, I could always chop it up to Judaism's general displeasure with sorcery and witchcraft. I can still hear my dad scolding, "Avodah Zarah."

I later accepted her invitation to watch Doctor Who on her iPod Touch on the painful 12-hour van ride to Washington, D.C., for our Grade 8 grad trip. I never did watch the show again, but she was right to try to recruit me.

It would take me another 14 years before I made my way to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters of my own accord. First, stumbling through a clumsy tug of war for my identity as I straddled The Secular and The Sacred at a time when Dov Charney's vision of spandex reigned supreme; prioritizing indie-electronic 8tracks playlists blasting Passion Pit or XXYYXX, or something worse, on my iPod Touch; practising how to correctly pronounce Bon Iver in case of a pop quiz from a boy with a banjo; and asking God why He didn't make me in the image of Effy Stonem from Skins (the Eve of Tumblr, if you ask me). 

This past November, in planning our upcoming lonely-children (read: nowhere else to go) Christmas Eve slumber party, a friend suggested we all watch Harry Potter while we make the yuletide gay. "I've actually never seen any of the Harry Potter movies," I said. (Or flipped through a single page.) 

And so it was decided. The group would slowly chip away at the wizarding world of Harry Potter, one Sunday at a time until Christmas. Eight weeks for eight movies. Perfect. Cracking open the door to a party I'm 20 years late to, where the host of the party has since taken the stage to reveal an exceptionally disappointing left (or, in this case, hard right) turn in her politics. 

I missed out on a lot of formative experiences as I constantly weighed the risks of what I could and couldn't afford to rebel against in my coming of age. The exclusion I felt staying home for Friday night Shabbat dinners instead of experiencing the "epic highs and lows of high school [parties]" was remedied by my secret self-guided study of Pussycat Dolls Present: Girlicious and America's Next Top Model. But what was lost in white-knuckling the little control I felt over my identity was worsened by sitting out on monoculture experiences that gave other people the spoons to feel seen and accepted in similar circumstances.

Week after week, camped out on a loyal Ikea couch, the four of us unfurled the cozy and charming world of Hogwarts. I let the magic of Harry Potter wash over my virgin eyes, embracing my status as Slytherin, wondering what my Patronus would be, questioning the chemistry between Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley, searching Etsy for Dolores Umbridge's cat plates (she's an evil w*tch, but we, unfortunately, share a passion for the colour pink), noting the ridiculous frequency with which the Malfoy family must be booking bleach and tones, missing my girl Moaning Myrtle in the later films, hating Bellatrix Lestrange, and mourning Dobby. I realized, like me, Harry stood out like a sore thumb. He was handed a different mission in life than his peers, and the sooner he accepted it, the better. 

Embracing all the fractures and fissures on my peculiar path helped me access the precious arsenal of powers it had quietly provided. Harry, too, could have been crushed under the weight of the death of his parents and the enduring neglect of the Dursleys. 

But many North Stars were placed along his path, offering him a life preserver and a chance at coming into his own despite the challenging hand he was dealt. His power existed both in the acceptance of his destiny and the support of his best friends, Hermione and Ron; the mentorship of his teachers — Professor McGonagall, Dumbledore, Hagrid and even Snape; and the protection he received from Dobby, Fawkes and Mad-Eye. So many magical people (and creatures) stood firmly by him on his long and treacherous quest to destroy Voldemort. 

As I worked to untangle my labyrinth of tradition and rebellion, inclusion and exclusion, strength and vulnerability, so many people helped illuminate my path to blossoming into the person I wasn't sure I'd have the bravery to become. Much like Harry, the validation I was desperately seeking was closer than it seemed — just beyond the castle gates at Hogwarts. If only I'd known to enroll sooner.