Black, Southern, and Queer

By: Alana Brown-Davis

I’ve been a daughter of the South all of my life. I was born in Alabama and raised in southwest Mississippi. Being Black and Southern meant that I grew up as Christian. Our family typically attended Methodist gatherings but in an effort to get into heaven, we went wherever. The COGIC church down the road welcomed us with open arms, as did the Baptist one in town. All of them were kind, and determined to lead someone in their congregation to salvation one organ backed sermon at a time. Despite the variations in practice and methodology, they all shared the same perspective on being queer: refrain from it. 

The moments in my youth where I felt the full dynamics of my queerness were when I couldn’t stop staring at pretty girls and when I sat in the wooden pews  knowing the pastor was talking about me.  Not every sermon started off proclaiming the damnation waiting for queer people, but we inevitably became a part of it. If I asked ten Black queer people who grew up in the church about “Adam and Steve”, at least eight would respond with a nod of their head and an exasperated sigh. Of course, when I sat in those pews I was thinking of “Eve and Genevieve” and all other queer variations of female characters in the Bible. I’d zone out envisioning a religious text where we weren’t considered tainted and where the people who read and absorbed it wouldn’t forsake us. I learned to  do this to quell the storm in my chest, to maintain my posture although the space wanted me to crumple. 

In high school, there were the girls who didn’t care if people found them strange for holding hands, for finding comfort in one another and not some cute boy. I envied them. My eyes locked on their brown hands tightly clasped and wished they would survive for the queer child in me who couldn’t.

I never told a soul about my sexuality as a teenager; it was the secret that I protected with all of my might.

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One of the most complicated factors that comes with being from the South is having to explain the matters of this region and the progressive majority of us who want long lasting change. It gets even worse when you’re from Mississippi, a place that was once described to a mentor of mine as “a big land mass that should just be shoved into the ocean.” There are also those who tend to treat this state as if it’s disposable and sadly some of that treatment might come from fellow Black or queer people who misunderstand the climate of this place. 

At a point in my life where I was hiding, I suffered from the belief that things would be better for me if I lived in cities like Houston, New Orleans, or Atlanta where the queer scenes were vibrant and omnipresent. Dreaming of an escape was my refuge, but the true refuge rested in the arms of the stories this place holds. This land mass has carried me, has viewed me in my fullness before I could fully view it. 

There’s a lesbian couple that lives a few country roads down from me. On impromptu rides through the neighborhood, we’d pass  by their house sitting on a small hill. My family would point them out- the “funny” ones. The ones who found promise in each other’s arms. I always dropped my phone to watch their house though, as many times as I’ve passed by their house, I’ve never seen them out. I followed their house through the car window until they fell out of view. I sighed and turned around hoping the woods could conceal my secret even more. To me they were the lucky ones.

The perspectives on queer people that I witnessed against the backdrop of pine woods and quiet fields weren’t a Southern concept but an American one festered by matters of politics, religion, and patriarchy. Queer people are abundant in the American South, a whopping 35% of us live, breathe, and commune in these forests, rivers, and dirt roads. All of us daring to love and be as truthful as we know how. We reside in a bedrock of civil rights activism, where queer folk communed with others in hopes that their fight for freedom would expand. Some stories have been overlooked, others unnamed. I see these brilliant people down every Main Street, down every road. In every church. 

Right before I headed to college, actress Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor came out as bisexual. My mom was the person who introduced me to her, one of Mississippi’s greatest talents who also graduated from the same high school as me. Ever since that introduction, I felt some sort of kinship to her that I couldn’t fully explain, a reverence similar to that which a little kid has for their big cousin. When she came out, I cried. I cried for her and I cried for us. At fifty three years old she was reintroducing herself to the world as if saying “This is who I am, it is up to you what you do with it.” 

Going to college granted me every wish that I had as a queer Black girl growing up. I kept works by Danez Smith and Junauda Petrus tucked under my arm on the way to my 8 am class. The concept  I had of myself grew and I realized that my abundance had always been there. I cut my hair, wrote poetry likening women to the moon and water. 

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The first drag show I went to  was in Oxford, Mississippi. I had just transferred to the University of Mississippi from a community college on the coast and was still maladjusted to the culture of going out on a weekday. I’m not certain of the origins of Code Pink which is the name of the drag show. What I am sure of is that it gave the unsung members of the student body : the queers, the allies, the outcasts, and the ones looking for a reprieve from the bar hopping culture of the town. That rainy Halloween evening, my friends and I stripped ourselves of our band practice clothes and stepped out into the night adorned in costumes and makeup , expressing a side  of ourselves  that our peers didn’t get to know. We  danced like our bodies were inventing a new language. I saw kids who were  shy during the day blossom that night.  I danced with them and when we walk past each other at school, we share a smile, both in greeting and remembering  the dance floor that we occupied together. 

Stepping into the boundlessness of my identity was and continues to be a practice of Black joy. I found us in places where I didn’t think we’d be found: a statistics class, a campus church, the Student Union. In my sophomore year of college I met a breathtaking woman who I’m fortunate  to call my girlfriend. We shared our first kiss against a coastal Mississippi sky. I’ve been kissing her against other skies ever since. That is my resistance, a gateway to black future and in this one, we’re gray haired with arthritis ridden knees, enjoying slow Saturday mornings, family reunions and Pride parades right here in the South.

A long time ago I pictured  a world where I  interacted with queer people freely in a rural setting. Where we danced, shouted, and released ourselves knowing that the planet was a little better with us in it. When I taught myself how to yearn for things I couldn’t imagine, I felt the most powerful. In this chapter, all the things I’ve desired have come to pass. Now my homeboy and I drive down highways greeting the crickets and frogs with House music blasting from his speakers. Now my homegirl and I send each other reels about how gorgeous Kehlani is like we’re picking up a conversation and starting another. Now I can marry the woman I love with a room full of queer friends as family. 

This is now. This is for Aunjanue. This is for my lover. This is my testimony. This is us.

 This is the Black queer South.

Bio: Alana Brown-Davis is a writer, scholar, and artist from Mississippi. Her work seeks to understand the nuances of digital media, nature, and artistic expression. She is approaching her senior year as a multi-disciplinary studies major with minors in creative writing, environmental studies, and marketing at the University of Mississippi.