This page explores readings and online resources about Black queer and trans people with a focus on the importance of archiving, memory work, and history. These readings and resources are useful in learning how the Invisible Histories Project can improve its relationships with Black queer and trans Southerners.
Readings
Ajamu, McFarlane, C., & Cummings, R. (2020). Promiscuous Archiving: Notes on the Joys of Curating Black Queer Legacies. Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d’études Canadiennes, 54(2), 585–615.
This is a transcribed conversation between Ajamu, London-based fine art photographer and queer visual activist; Courtnay McFarlane, organizer, artist and writer; and Ronald Cummings, professor of queer and postcolonial literatures at Brock University’s Department of English (613-4). The discussion follows up to a public conversation in June 2018 at the ArQuives in Toronto (formerly the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives) titled “Promiscuous Archiving: The Joys of Curating Queer Black Legacies” (585). The speakers share their thoughts on archival practice by and for Black queer people creating their own histories (585). They discuss non-linear Black queer memory and time (592, 601), reclaiming pleasure (587) and collective embodied memory (606), embracing the impossibility of Black queerness within oppression (588), art as documentation (590-1), refusal, fugitivity, and agency (610), and the place of technology in archiving (611-12).
Richardson, M., Brown, E., Cotten, T., Gossett, C., Ridley, L., & Snorton, C. R. (2022). Between Inconceivable and Criminal: Black Trans Feminism and the History of the Present. Feminist Studies, 48(3), 807–823.
This is a transcribed conversation between six self-identified Black trans academics that took place in March 2022, making it one of the largest recorded gatherings of this specific group in the U.S. (807). These scholars discuss the consequences of anti-Black, anti-trans, and anti-choice politics (807); Snorton’s writing on being “between the inconceivable and the criminal” that brings history together with the future (807); and how Blackness, transness, and feminism can work collectively in coalition (808). The speakers show how current anti-Black, -trans, and -choice politics lead to laws historically used for genocide or racial cleansing, starting with the erasure of Black history, while also recognizing the ways Black trans feminists have always taken care of each other “without state oversight” (813-22).
Smith, A. (2021). Being in the Black Queer Diaspora: Embodied Archives in A Map to the Door of No Return. Journal of Feminist Scholarship, 19(19), 92–106.
Smith uses Dionne Brand’s A Map to the Door of No Return to show how sensual worldmaking, as a Black feminist narrative writing practice, uses sensual and erotic experiences as forms of knowledge production (92). Sensual worldmaking is a method for Black queer authors to document their embodied lives (93) and is a necessary shift in attention to how Black people, and specifically Black women, create their own narratives (94). Smith turns to Saidiya Hartman’s critical fabulation and close narration as examples of how reading Black queer women’s writing can honor their sensual experiences as archives (95). Smith concludes by noting how the disorientation and inexplicability of the Black queer experience make it critical to recognize alternative methods of knowledge creation and creating new worlds (103).
Resources
The Black Trans Archive is an interactive pro-Black and pro-Trans site that guides Black and trans, trans, or cis users through a choose-your-own-path style experience exploring Black trans memory using collage style animations/landscapes, ambient music with occasional singing, and moving colored text. Each path for the three categories of users has choices for how to move forward in each virtual space. Black and trans users are affirmed and led through spaces focusing on Black trans memory, ancestry, and archives. Trans and cis users are asked to agree to terms and conditions focused on supporting Black trans people as a condition of being given access to these virtual spaces. Cis users are asked to prove that they can be trusted to go further into the experience by choosing how to use, or not use, their privileges to protect or help others. This archive, though considered non-traditional when compared to institutional collections, serves the Black trans feminist values discussed in the above bibliography. These virtual spaces that prioritize Black trans folks for all people to hold their memories excels uniquely in the Black trans feminist project of honoring Black trans people’s experiences and representations of them as sources of knowledge production and insight for collective action against oppression.
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture’s Black LGBTQ LibGuide highlights collections focused on Black LGBTQIA+ Studies within the Schomburg as well as resources for starting searches in NYPL materials or other repositories by and for queer communities. Each section (Conducting Research; Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division Materials; Archival Media; More Schomburg/NYPL Resources; and Other Resources) features links to books, digital collections, and databases with useful information for how to search for Black LGBTQIA+ materials. Each page also featured a digitized archival image of Black queer people in NYPL collections. This resource is useful for researchers who are looking for materials created by Black queer people, especially within New York City, that go beyond representations of them from institutional perspectives. The LibGuide is also significant in that it provides information about how to research these collections that may not be easily found without the specific guidance that experienced scholars in the field may know from having worked with materials. These aspects show a recognition of the Black queer feminist memory praxis that prioritize materials created by Black queer people about their lived experiences, given that the majority of collections highlighted have Black queer creators, making it a unique resource amongst public libraries in the U.S.
The Daily Mississippian is the editorially independent print and digital campus newspaper of the University of Mississippi in Oxford, making it of particular interest to the University’s alumni, campus communities, and prospective students and their families. The newspaper covers news, opinions, arts and culture, sports, and multimedia. Their “Special Report on Racism: Beyond” series features this article telling the stories of three Black queer women who were or are students or alumni of the University using excerpts from their oral histories about their experiences in and out of school as well as their ways of affirming their agency. A portrait is also included of each woman who was interviewed. This article’s focus and approach aligns with the ways Black queer feminism prioritizes story-telling and documentations of memory created by Black queer people as methods of connecting the past to current imaginations of liberated futures. It is also unique in that it focuses on experiences of Black queer women specifically from the South, which often go unrecognized even within projects that prioritize Black queer people.