Making Black Queer Worlds: Black LGBTQ+ Parties in Brazil and the United States

• In Event: Black Sexual Ecologies of the Americas

Description for Program

What does it look like to center Black LGBTQ+ people in a party space, and how does this goal become complicated as these parties grow to attract larger fan bases? This presentation delves into this question by highlighting two different party spaces: 1) Batekoo, a Black queer and feminist focused party that travels to cities throughout Brazil, and 2) Ascendance, a Black and Brown queer focused party in New Orleans, Louisiana in the USA. The presentation is based upon ethnographic data from interviews with founders, organizers, and attendees of both spaces, as well as participant observation within both party spaces. I argue that the organizers of these two parties see them as not simply another social space, but an attempt at creating alternative worlds where Black LGBTQ+ folks can experience corporeal freedom and experiment with different forms of being, temporarily freed from the capture and control of white supremacy and heteropatriarchy. While the growing popularity of these parties amongst non-Black LGBTQ+ or QTPOC communities threaten to destabilize the facilitation of these alternative worlds, I argue that the organizers of these spaces continually adapt, finding ways to attempt to maintain these Black trans-queer-feminist worlds they created as the demographics of the parties shift.

Author

• Watufani Poe, Tulane University