Every day during the month of June, we will be spotlighting our 2022 Logo30. This powerful series profiles ordinary and extraordinary people who show pride in unique and provocative ways. Visit the Logo30 homepage to view current and past honorees.

By Athena Serrano

Author Jasmine Mans expresses her identity through moving, heartfelt poetry. Publishing her debut collection, Black Girl, Call Home, in 2021 was her proudest achievement, and the world reacted in kind. The book received high praise from publications like Vogue, Time, Marie Claire, and more.

“To gather your secrets and the most important stories to you… I think is the proudest thing,” she says. “I gathered all of my poems and I made a list of all of the things that I found valuable. And a big staple in the book was coming to terms with sexuality, not just being a Black girl who called home, but a Black queer woman.”

Her writings deal with personal, intimate moments like coming out to her mother and her first heartbreak. “I’m grown. I have permission to tell these stories and to see how other women are moved and changed because there is no ever-present narrative for queer Black women. And so to even say, like, ‘I got my heart broken by a Black girl,’ or ‘I had sex for the first time’ is a big deal.”

Mans, who recently collaborated with the Brooklyn Ballet in narrating her poems for the company’s take on The New York Times’ 1619 Project, hopes for more emphasis on intersectionality when it comes to justice for the queer community. “It’s not just a conversation about queer white men, [but] that it's a conversation about all of the different people that exist in the community, and how can we protect them and how can we respect their narratives in both a space of safety and health care.”

Get to know Mans and the rest of our incredible 2022 Logo30 honorees in the video below.