This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (State University of New York Press, 1981), edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa.

Cherríe Moraga, co-editor of This Bridge Called My Back, took the beauty experienced at the intersections of her lesbian and Chicana identities and imagined a just future grounded in shared culture and language with her 1993 essay “Queer Aztlán: The Re-Formation of Chicano Tribe.” Drawing on the mythos of the Chicana/o movement and an imagined reborn homeland called Aztlán in the southwestern United States and Mexico, she articulated a vision of “Queer Aztlán,” a sacred, metaphysical “Chicano homeland that could embrace all its people including its jotería,” its queer population.[1] Based in the Nahuatl language and colonial histories, Moraga outlined a utopic vision, a response to the idea of “Queer Nation” grounded in shared language, ethnicity, and liberation.

Bésame Mucho: New Gay Latino Fiction (Painted Leaf Press, 1999), edited by Jaime Manrique and Jesse Dorris.

Other anthologies made similar moves, often drawing on elements of shared cultural references and languages to articulate the goals or vision of their anthologies. Jesse Dorris likened the gay Latino collection Bésame Mucho: New Gay Latino Fiction (1999) to the coordinated crime of arrastão in which a large mob of thieves overwhelm a crowd: “[The authors] are here, they are suddenly visible, filling their pockets and stories with things society has tried to deny them: love, power, identities and all the rest of life’s valuables.”[2] Dorris’s vision imagined a redistribution of the wealth of human dignity drawing on Latin American language and culture. Through their words, the authors of Bésame Mucho overpowered those who would deny them their humanity. Through the volume, they insisted on their existence as gay and Latino and their rights to love, be loved, and make art by bringing this collection into existence.

Má-Ka: Diasporic Juks: Contemporary Writing by Queers of African Descent (Sister Vision Press, 1997), edited by Debbie Douglas, Courtney McFarlane, Makeda Silvera, and Douglas Stewart.

Four editors, Douglas Stewart, Debbie Douglas, Courtnay McFarlane, and Makeda Silvera, turned to tropical prickly má-ka plants for the title of their collection, Má-Ka Diasporic Juks: Contemporary Writing by Queers of African Descent (1997). The title referenced Acrocomia sclerocarpa, a thorny plant “common in tropical countries and growing in wild proliferation” and its propensity to stab or juk those who encounter it. For these author-editors, the plant was a symbol of resilience and abundance tied to much of the geography of the African diaspora. The plant’s sharp spines also resonated with the themes of pain and danger that were expressed in the volume, with Douglas Stewart recounting his mother cautioning him about hurting himself on the plant while playing as a child.[3]  The editors suggested that their volume was a “space to prick and be pricked and grow” via the “dialogue, conflict, challenge, and creativity” it documents.[4] The diasporic Afro-Caribbean editors also related the experience of co-founding Toronto queer black artist collective Zami, whose name referenced Audre Lorde’s book. They summarized a frank conversation about the gendered dynamics of the group as the women found themselves responsible for organizing, providing consistent feedback, and feeding gathered writers while the male participants phoned in their participation. Confronted with this information, the men likened the experience to being pricked by the Má-Ka—hurt in the moment, but challenged to heal and reflect through dialogue, art, and growth. The women called out injustice and drew on a shared references to build toward the world they wanted to inhabit. The má-ka became a symbol for understanding and challenging misogyny, homophobia, and racism. By drawing on and reimagining shared culture and language, they instilled in this queer artistic space and their anthology the accountability, equity, and healing they perceived as being at the center of Black queer artistic practices and networks of community.

[1] Cherríe Moraga, “Queer Aztlan: The Re-Formation of Chicano Tribe,” in Queer Cultures, ed. Deborah Carlin and Jennifer DiGrazia (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2004), 225.

[2] Jaime Manrique and Jesse Dorris, eds., Bésame Mucho, New Gay Latino Fiction (New York: Painted Leaf, 1999), 255–56.

[3] Debbie Douglas et al., eds., Má-Ka: Diasporic Juks : Contemporary Writing by Queers of African Descent (Toronto: Sister Vision, 1997), ix–x.

[4] Douglas et al.,  Má-Ka, xvi.