A few weeks ago, I was having a conversation with a queer friend of mine, who is also a person of color. We were discussing queer culture, and specifically how isolating it is being a person of color within the larger LGBTQIA+ community. We find that, even at a place like Williams, it is difficult to discuss intersectional queerness without creating tension among members of the gay community. Meaningful conversations end up devolving into accusations of reverse racism or into claims that, “We’re all oppressed,” without understanding how multiple systems of oppressions function to criminalize queer bodies of color. That conversation brought us to a larger conversation about finding love as a queer person of color in this world. Digital dating …show more content…
I remembered a response I wrote for this class a few weeks ago, that was inspired by the writings of Moraga and Lorde. In that piece I questioned what it meant for a body of color to love, and for a queer body to be sexed and engage in sex. Wheels began to turn. What would an investigation about queer love in this day and age look like? What does it mean to be brown and to be gay and to seek love? Is love an achievable goal? Did we ever learn to love? Can we be taught to love? How much hurt can we withstand from love before we stop loving altogether? Do we ever run out of love? Then, this weekend we saw A Letter to My Nephew, and I thought about these questions even more. Specifically, I was very enraptured by the scene in which a pair of male dancers engages in very intimate movements with each other. Watching their bodies entwine and entangle and fall in and out of each other made me see my questions literally come to life before me. And so, I have decided I would like my final project to be an exploration of what it means to (not) love, (not) be loved, and (not) find love as a brown, Latinx, gay man. I want to explore the spaces and tensions embedded in this “not.” What does it mean to not find love or to not have hope? Is not “not loving,” the same act as