“Isn’t It Cute?”: An Intimate Conversation on Black Trans and Queer Futurities by Shamari Reid, Gia Love, and Jonovia Chase

Dear reader,

In what follows, we share an unedited transcript from an intimate conversation in which we speak about Black trans and queer futurities from our positionalities as two Black trans women and one Black cisgender gay man. We made the intentional decision not to edit our transcript nor frame or analyze it for you and other readers. We are inviting and encouraging you, as Toni Morrison so often did, to read (Greenfield-Sanders, 2019). We accept and expect that all who engage with our words below will do so from within their positionalities accompanied by their own lived materialities, values, and beliefs (Morrison, 2019). Unlike what might be expected from academic publications in which we guide the reader through our conversation, making connections and drawing conclusions, we share our conversation with you in hopes that you will join us to make meaning (Lyiscott et al., 2021). We said what we said. And now we release our words…to you.

Although we are not offering any kind of limitations or rules with regard to how you take up our conversation, we would like to share that we came together to converse with deep and thoughtful intention. We intended to take up space in the academic discourse around queer and trans futures, especially given how often Black trans and queer voices are left out of these conversations (Brockenbrough, 2015; Cohen, 2005). Furthermore, in recognizing how little value is often placed on voices and opinions that emerge from outside the academy, we were intentional about making sure our trio included folks who did not identify as traditional academics or scholars. Nonetheless, we are all scholars, and this, indeed, is scholarship.

by Shamari Reid, Gia Love, and Jonovia Chase Collect “Isn’t It Cute?”: An Intimate Conversation on Black Trans and Queer Futurities by Shamari Reid, Gia Love, and Jonovia Chase