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  • Territories of the Soul: Queered Belonging in the Black Diaspora by Nadia Ellis
Territories of the Soul: Queered Belonging in the Black Diaspora, by Nadia Ellis (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015), 243 pp.

Territories of the Soul provides a compelling and interrogative look into black life and black culture and the idea of transcendence through the concept of the imagination and land spatiality in a queered diaspora. Nadia Ellis approaches queer utopic diaspora using Jose Esteban Munoz’s concept of queerness–“that thing that lets us feel that the world is not enough,” (3). Ellis extends this concept of queerness into a literary and subjective diasporic cathexis to espouse black subjects who occupy global spaces but are often relationally elsewhere. Looking closely at writers, scholars, and artists CLR James, James Baldwin, George Lamming, Andrew Salky, Nathaniel Mackey, and reggae musician Burning Man, Ellis takes a critical look into the writings of these black subjects of the diaspora to uncover a shifting gaze their works portray onto other locales and spatial places, particularly America. She illustrates their yearning for and desiring of other places, spaces, and lands. Ellis argues that black subjects are never fully here, nor there. They are always elsewhere. Being black Caribbean, American, or European, yet engaged in American culture, identity, and space, the varied black identities produce nostalgia, hopefulness, and desiring of the elsewhere–“territories of the soul.” This is a great book for those interested in spiritual fluidity, transcendence, and a queered diaspora. [End Page 203]

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