In this special double issue of GLQ, queer theory meets critical race theory, transnationalism, and Third World feminisms in analyses of the Black queer diaspora. Contributors apply social science methodologies to theories born out of the humanities to produce innovative, humane, and expansive readings of on-the-ground social conditions around the world.
The contributors to this issue draw on radical Black and women-of-color feminisms to examine the embodied experience of the Black queer diaspora. One contributor elaborates on the work of Black Atlantic scholarship to imagine a story of the Black Pacific experience and how shipboard life shapes the relationships formed during travel and migration. Ethnographic fieldwork among black queer citizens in postapartheid South Africa, read through the lens of a popular local radio show, illustrates the distinction between citizenship and belonging. In Trinidad, where men who have sex with men have faced particular hostility, the bonds of friendship and affection emerge as crucial tools of activism and survival in a community threatened by HIV/AIDS.


Jafari S. Allen is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and African American Studies at Yale University. He is the author of !Venceremos?: Sexuality, Gender and Black Self-Making in Cuba, published by Duke University Press.

Contributors: Vanessa Agard-Jones, Jafari S. Allen, Lydon K. Gill, Ana-Maurine Lara,

Xavier Livermon, Matt Richardson, Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley