Overview
An insightful memoir that highlights the intersection of black womanhood, polyamory, mental illness, and one person's relationship to the stigmatized world around her
Alicia Bunyan-Sampson is terrible at telling lies, even the “white lies” that help smooth over awkward situations and avoid painful conversations. This inability makes some things, like living with mental illness as a black woman, a challenge. It makes other things, like having a monogamous relationship, impossible. For Alicia, a polyamorous life is an honest one. It speaks true to her history growing up in a nontraditional blended family. And it allows her to speak truth to her experiences as a person with conflicting identities, struggling to reconcile her life as a polyamorous black woman with the intersecting stigmas and stereotypes that afflict those identities. But sometimes being yourself means being by yourself: the road to Alicia’s realization of a relationship free of dishonesty is paved with isolation, social awkwardness, and alienation. No Filter is a personal genealogy, tracing the origins of what is often thought of as a purely modern model for relationships back to the earliest impressions of a woman’s history.
Author Biography
Alicia Bunyan-Sampson is a writer, director, advocate, and academic. Her work primarily focuses on her identity as a black woman, an exploration of her own experiences of trauma and love, and a deliberate experimentation with the intersection of white supremacy and black identity. Her films have been shown in Toronto, New York, and San Diego, and have aired on CBC, Bell Fibe TV and Aspire. She is currently developing a series of workshops for black women living with trauma and mental illness, and a lecture series that focuses on polyamory and the black community.