Where The Color Purple Grows: The Intersection of Loving and Fearing Black (Queer) Bodies (Collection) (Volume 2)

Where The Color Purple Grows: Collection II is a coming of age poetry and prose chapbook. In the style of an adolescent and young adult diary, the narratives’ various speakers use fantasy and childhood iconography to recall and cope with the dangers of living in a body which identifies as both Black and Queer. The whimsy, the humor, and the candidness help to unpack dangers that plague Black Queer bodies such as: HIV stigma/responsibility, the constant threat (imagined or realized) of racially motivated police brutality, equally related to the uncomfortable notion of a post-racial America, as well as intra-community abuse and brutality which courts self hate. Beyond the angst and peril, the cathartic collection encourages the reader to sojourn a vision of self-acceptance, forgiveness and reconciliation to hone the separate and coupled realities of Black and Queer.