Black Feminism Embodiment: A Theoretical Geography of Home, Healing, and Activism

This paper aims to uplift a story by a queer Black woman activist residing in Port of Spain, Trinidad. Using various narrative analysis techniques, this paper also explores the tales told to understand how queer people in the Caribbean create a home of recognition and belonging, as well as analyzing the effects of how queer, Black, transnational sharing of stories promotes survival and activism. Utilizing a Black feminist framework, this paper seeks to interrogate homeplace for queer people of color, as well as the spaces where activism lives, how it is enacted, and what that means for positive identity formation and healing from a toxic, homophobic environment. The piece is grounded in Black feminist works such as Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle by Katherine McKittrick (2006) and bell hooks’s (1990) “Homeplace: A Site of Resistance,” as well as other feminist texts such as Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldúa (1987). By highlighting Ann’s story, the goal is to analyze the impermeability of borders within spaces, identities, and activism, as well as examine the ways that geographies can be mapped onto the bodies of Black queer women and their health.