Queer Studies

This book, with a stunning cover photo by Yannis Davey Guibinga, was first published in 1998 and has just been reprinted (with this gorgeous new cover) by SUNY Press. Now it is freely available online through an open licensing agreement. My hard copy arrived in the mail this week. It was never published in Africa, and even if it had been, it would not have been affordable for most African people—until now. I’m grateful that, although it may be slightly outdated, and although it does not include articles written by African scholars, it is at least available now online so that African people have access to it. At the time it was printed, Queer Studies was not a subject area in most African universities, and it is still not a field in which there are many African professors, though that is changing (slowly). 

I skimmed my article in it with both delight and sadness. Delight that I had such fluency (how the words did flow and surge back then); sadness that my word-finding halts and stutters now. It can take me as much as two hours to write a Blip text. As Margie says, “Aging is one loss after another, and yet somehow we are grateful to be here at all.”

Sue and I leave in the morning for four three days at Tahoma (as it was named by indigenous people), or Mt. Rainier, as it was named by a European in 1792. We had planned this holiday for September, 2020, but it was of course impossible to travel then. The National Park Inn, where we are staying, postponed our reservation to this coming week. According to the weather forecast, it will be raining, cold, and overcast most of the time we are there, but the rain forest can be splendid in the rain, so off we go. There is no wifi and no cell phone connectivity there, so I will backblip when we return.