Black Queer Girls’ Letter Writing: Placemaking for Possibility, Intimacy, and Freedom Dreaming in School

Attention to Black girls’ school experiences is gradually expanding, but little has been said about Black queer girls (BQGs) despite scholars’ ongoing calls. We have a limited understanding of BQGs’ past and present school lives, and more, how BQGs prioritize their subjectivities and make room for their desires. Our study contemplates the first author's teenage letter writing alongside her three BQG friends as school-based Blackgirl geographies that facilitated intimacy, queer kinship, and fulfilled freedom dreams. In these letters, we find ways these BQGs disrupted heteronormative expectations and embodied models for bearing witness to and supporting BQGs’ loving endeavors.