Claiming our Truth

Abstract

As Black queer graduate students who started our masters and doctoral programs in higher education at the same predominately white midwestern institution, our queer kinship formed the bounds of our existence. Queer for us describes our non-heteronormative identities1 and how we make meaning of our lives. We utilize an autoethnographic dialogue2 (AD) to share and analyze our respective accounts of navigating the academy as Black queer graduate students. This AD reveals how we build and define community through our experiences in traditionally heterogendered institutions (THIs),3 which are hegemonic institutional structures that other queer and trans students. As THIs historically illuminate institutional experiences of queer and trans students, we must shed light on how we as Black queer graduate students respond to the oppressive forces of the institutional spaces we navigate and how we reconceptualize our theoretical voice.As co-researchers, we relied on personal memory accounts as the foundation of our data.4 In self-analyzing, self-reflecting, and interviewing each other, we used AD5 to capture our lived experiences as Black queer graduate students.6 Prior to forming our discussion questions, we individually reflected and journaled on our educational backgrounds. Our synthesized dialogue derives from weekly meetings and is categorized into themes that recognize how we forged queer kinship. We use Queer of Color Critique7 to dismantle how we experience THIs. In the shared vulnerability process required to engage in AD,8 our narratives are a form of resistance against oppressive institutional systems to cultivate healing environments and spaces for us as Black queer graduate students.Through sharing our embodied knowledge, we have grown to understand how our relationship with each other, and other Black queer folks has been a key factor in our persistence in graduate education. Therefore, we implore graduate programs to bolster Black queer student representation. However, relying on institutions to eradicate systems of oppression in which they exist, is naive. Thus, the “tools to which we commit ourselves as educators furthering emancipatory critical questioning…must be envisioned as one piece in a broader ecosystem of strategies for resistance.”14 The strategy we highlight in this paper is the strength of our friendship. The trust and vulnerability that it took to engage in this research process is a meaningful implication of this project. It symbolizes the way that connectivity can have a powerful impact on how we navigate through THIs. Ultimately, in order to actualize liberation, there must be an “affect of collectivity”15 in which Black queer personal and scholarly friendships represent a prism of love, solidarity, intellectual discourse, and prosperity.