DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

 

John Fleurimond

My name is John “Jo” Fleurimond. I'm Queer, Black, and Afro-Caribbean. I'm especially interested in reading works by people of color and queer folk because of our shared experience and relatively small space in the academy. I'm here to queer it up. I want to educate communities/identities that have long been underrepresented and marginalized both in society and in academia. I want to tell their stories and say their namesThat's how I battle injustice.

 

Finding my voice was a struggle because I grew up thinking all you needed to do in life was make money. I grew up believing in what Ta-Nehisi Coates describes as "the dream" - that I would have all I wanted as long as I followed the rules of this white supremacist imperialist heternormative state.

 

NAH - I'm going to be doing me and continue to grow in my own way. 

 

I’m a big brother of two and I love my younger siblings and do what I do because I want them to have someone to look up to. I had to be resourceful growing up; knowledge was a hustle and I learned from whoever and whatever I could. I want to make sure I'm in a position to help them figure out whatever life throws at them. 

 

I have found myself completely infatuated with queer theory, intersectional feminism, and critical race theory. Through these schools of thought that challenge the violence that normative scholarly tradition can produce, I hope to create work that empowers both myself and other young people of color who wrestle with life from the margins.

Queer black magic.  What does this mean?

 

It means that queer black people don’t have to choose who they are for your comfort. That we don't have to strip and rip off parts of ourselves to make you comfortable because we matter too.

 

It means that black lives are not always cisgendered and are not always heterosexual/heteropatriarchal.

 

It means that we are allowed to be more and will be more without the trepidation you impose when you try to cast on us with your anti-black and heteronormative gaze.

 

It means I don’t have to be afraid to read “Black Gay Genius” on the A train in Bed-Stuy while numbing out the monotony of a morning commute with Cakes Da Killa because queer black rappers and scholars matter too.

 

It means I don't have to be anxious.

 

Presentation is representation so why can’t I be honest and put my black fist up with glitter on my face and a rainbow tied around my head.

 

It means that I won’t be your Bayard Rustin, working behind the scenes for hyper-masculine homophobic black men’s liberation if I can’t eat a slice from the cake of human rights without worrying if I'll be killed.

 

It means that this cycle of oppression could end with us, if you could only take our honesty.

 

Queer Black Magic is a supernatural phenomenon. It’s when queer black people continue to live and thrive and refuse to be the strange fruit hanging from the proverbial trees of your hegemonic masculine reality you call “life.”

 

Queer Black Magic is our "Still I Rise," our affirmative mantra of life and living. 

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.