Jezebel Delilah X on Writing & Performing Your Beauty When The World Calls You Ugly

Growing up as a quirky, queer, weirdo Black girl in South Central L.A., I was teased mercilessly, jumped frequently, and grew to become intensely terrified of, and angry with, my own community - my own people.

I didn't yet understand the intense legacy of anti-Black violence, and how the trauma of that violence (exacerbated by media oppression, economic disparity, and the prison industrial complex) had seeped deep into so many elements of our culture, values, aesthetics, and the way we treat each other. All I knew was that I needed someone, something, to blame and somewhere to escape - so I blamed myself half the time, other Black people the rest of the time, and found my escape in literature, theatre, and academia. While those pursuits, alongside my queerness, sometimes further distanced me from the community that reared me, they also helped me better understand why we were so hurt. They helped me grow compassion for myself and for the pervasive, multi-faceted violence Black people in America experience.

This is the story of how performance and literature saved my life and why I strive to create the sort of medicinal and redemptive art that is rooted in Black Love and Liberation.


Jezebel Delilah X is a queer, lush-bodied, Black, femme performance artist, writer, actress, filmmaker, educator, facilitator, orator and Faerie Queen Mermaid Gangsta for The Revolution. She loves to flirt, laugh, perform, crack corny jokes, and insert Octavia Butler references into every conversation. She is a Co-Managing Editor for Everyday Feminism; co-host of the queer/feminist Open Mic, Culture Fuck; Artistic Director of queer, Black, multi-disciplinary performance troupe, Congregation of Liberation (recently produced play Black Don't Crack); and one of the founding members of Deviant Type Press. She has performed in a wide variety of Queer and Queer People Of Color theatre projects and cabarets, and has been a featured reader at literary events all over the Bay Area. She uses a combination of memoir, poetry, theatre, and feminist storytelling to advance her politix of radical love, socioeconomic justice, anti-racism, community accountability, critical reflection, love, healing, and liberation. She has an MFA in Creative Writing.

*No one turned away for lack of funds.