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(Re)Presenting Shug Avery and Afrekete: The Search for a Black, Queer, and Feminist Pleasure Praxis

As a radical black queer feminist, my socialization process began with the politicizing of my identity as a child. I was taught from an early age that the US, and its “invisible” policies of white supremacy, corporate capitalism, patriarchy and homophobia were still in vogue well into the early 1980s. I was informed from an early age that when it came to my black girl self, I needed to be suspicious of the state, white folks, and white supremacy. Learning how the state’s policies (most of which had been based upon the racialized terrorism of people of color), engendered me, as a black women, from girlhood to engage with my own identity as black and female, in a way that politicized my embodiment and persona, all the while, still reflecting my parents and community’s sentiments about race, class, gender. I would often come home and tell my parents the many things I was learning at school and with my friends. My parents had to clarify many things for me about the world I lived in. In the 1980s and 1990s, there was an emergence of women-centered films, television shows, and books that highlighted the unique experinces of black girls and women. My parents, using these mediated tools as their backdrop on life lessons for their little girl, now, in a covert way, let me know what they thought about raicsm, sexism, homophobia, and ultimately justice. I didn’t realize it then, but after years of critically analyzing visual media, coupled with the introduction to black feminist and queer feminist of color criticisms, my parents, media, and critical theory all illuminated the importance and liberatory potential of autoethnographic research. In Robin M Boylorn’s and Mark P. Orbe’s, Critical Autoethnography: Intersecting Cultural Identities in Everyday Life, Boylorn and Orbe contend that “autoethnography has multiple meanings but largely refers to both the method and product of researching and writing about personal lived experiences and their relationship to the culture.” Further, both editors contend that not only do “autoethnogrpahers research themselves in relation to others,” but this theoretical and subjective method actually turns the enthographic gaze inward towards the self (auto) while contextualizing that self within a larger cultural matrix of meaning (ethnography). Therefore, autoethnography allows for one’s personal narrative and experiences, to analyze culture and phenonmenon critically through the praxis of connecting self-reflection to wider cultural, political, and social prisms. Although most qualitative researchers contend that the disciplines of Performance Studies and/or Communication, birthed this radical theory and praxis of