Who's it for?: Queer Eye fans, black and gay or nonbinary folks,
Karamo Brown’s memoir shares his cultural identity and healing journey on his life’s path to becoming a social worker and mentor appearing on the TV show Queer Eye to help people make positive and permanent lifestyle changes starting from within.
Before stating, “I am culture,” in his audition for the reboot of Queer Eye, Karamo Brown had a very strong sense of self and pride in his personal cultural background. After immigrating to Texas from Jamaica, his parents named him Karamo with a middle name of “rebel” to give him inner courage. His father taught him to never let anyone else define him but to warmly tell others who he is and why he is OK so they can correct their understanding and see him as warmly as he deserves to be seen. He eventually found for himself that some other family messages about race, sexual orientation, and addiction were less helpful. Not everyone around him was receptive to his dreams of hosting a talk show, dancing like Tisha Campbell Martin in School Daze, or marrying a husband. However, Karamo was a good student and pursued the opportunities he saw as they became reachable. He fought for the right to put up the flag and show community spirit to his elementary school principal, was a peer mentor in high school, then pursued business leadership in his mostly white high school and homecoming court at his historically black college where he trained to be a social worker and briefly ran for public office. He had a crisis of faith, but reconciled Christian beliefs with homosexual orientation without cancelling out any part of himself for good. He was damaged by patterns of addiction and abuse in his family that were difficult to look at because he was running away from his own feelings on his post-college rise to reality TV stardom on MTV’s The Real World. From a particularly bad crash into addiction while making public speaking appearances after his season of The Real World ended, he healed when he realised he had a son from his teenage dating life for whom he had to be responsible. Truly healing was learning to have difficult conversations with himself and improving his parental example for his son and then his second son as his family continued to grow while he continued as a social worker and honed his presenting skills on other shows for OWN and MTV. He had met his husband and was stabilising a supportive home environment before the big opportunity to be the new culture expert on Queer Eye presented itself. Having made huge changes in himself and still supported by family and friends, Karamo Brown was ready to broadcast his beliefs about building inner strength for personal healing. On Queer Eye, he helps the Heroes find the reason they hadn’t changed before and the language to embrace a healthier outlook with which they may love themselves.
A high-spirited manifesto to boost self confidence and promote commitment to a better world.
