My first academic books were just published. The academy tends to privilege “firsts,” but really, these two books came into fruition simultaneously.

Queer Freedom: Black Sovereignty (SUNY Press – Afro Latinx Futures Series, 2020)

Streetwalking: LGBTQ Lives and Protest in the Dominican Republic (Rutgers University Press – Critical Caribbean Studies Series, 2020)

In Afro-Indigenous traditions of the Caribbean, there exists the concept of sacred twins. Twins are considered sacred by virtue of their simultaneous births. Twins are conceptualized as two separate bodies that share one soul; that move in opposite, yet complementary, directions; that balance the energies of the universe and that draw on the deep wells of power from Creation.

• These books are like ibeyi in that they arrived almost simultaneously as two distinct bodies with the same soul (both are from my dissertation, and both center queer people, but from sharply distinct perspectives).
• They are like marassa in that 1 +1 = 3 (these books enable readers to engage with the knowledge contained within them).
• They are like the imagua in that they are here to stir things up and cause a little trouble (but did you think I wouldn’t?).

I am thankful to everyone who made these two publications possible. And I am enjoying their presence.